ENGL 2609H Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Mary Mallon, Irony, Hubris
18 Apr 2019
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Wald: bodily interconnectedness of people living in and moving through the shared spaces of cities and of the nation . Wald: outbreaks as medical basis for emergent ideas of social and political belonging renovating sense of social responsibility . Exaggerated sense of duty transforms circumstantial tragedy into personal guilt. Dr. steinberg as prophet: it"s a lot of responsibility for you we can be severe judges of ourselves when it is in no way warranted. He was the very antithesis of the country"s greatest prototype of the polio victim, fdr, disease having led bucky not to triumph but to defeat. The paralysis and everything that came in its wake had irreparably damaged his assurance as a virile man, and he had withdrawn completely from that whole side of life. The lesson of [mary mallon"s] story is that all individuals must strive to know themselves even as, like oedipus, they recognize themselves as fundamentally unknowable to themselves (wald 113)
