Pity as pain: Narrative Medicine and Melville's "Bartleby"

Abstract

Narrative Medicine is an interdisciplinary concept that joins literary texts and theory on the one hand with medical education on the other. It suggests that specific skills can be practiced by reflecting about literature and the arts, which represent existential human experiences. These skills are narrative competence, tolerance for ambiguity, changing one's perspective, empathy, and self-care. This article describes aNarrative Medicine course and focuses on one unit in which Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener: AStory of Wall Street" was discussed. In combining participant observation and aclose reading of the short story, the article describes how students responded to the text and how "Bartleby" speaks to central topics in medical practice, such as pain management and the significance (and limits) of pity and empathy. Melville's text represents pain and empathy in complex and ambiguous ways. In presenting acompassionate narrator who ultimately fails to empathize with the pain he perceives in his employee, the story challenges readers to reflect on the complexities of dealing with the suffering of others and invites adiscussion about professionalism, personal values, and expectations. Literary texts in amedical classroom can be aproductive resource to practice and critically discuss competences identified in the National Competency-Based Learning Objective Catalogue for Medicine2.0.