Poem Analysis: The Empathy Exams By Leslie Jamison

Things All Return and Repeat
In “The Empathy Exams,” Leslie Jamison examines the level of empathy and the way to approach it more than by just saying a word or showing some kindness and call it empathy. In the first place, the narrator, as a medical actor, tries to understand the character in the script and grades medical students referring to the trope of expressing empathy to a patient. Then, she delves into the meaning of the word that empathizing is something we perhaps can easily utter, but in fact, it is very complicated to understand other people’s experience and feelings. The last two paragraphs of the essay almost sum up the whole essay by repeating the narrator’s feelings and the process of thinking all the way through her sufferings which make her understand the character in the script, in other words, make her empathize the character of Stephanie Phillips and other people around her, especially Dave, her lover.
You wake up from another round of anesthesia and they tell you all their burning didn’t burn away the part of your heart that was broken. You come back and find you

aren’t alone. You weren’t alone when you were cramping through the night and you’re not alone now. Dave spends every night in the hospital. You want to tell him how disgusting your body feels: your unwashed skin and greasy hair. You want him to listen, for hours if necessary, and feel everything exactly as you feel it – your pair of hearts in such synchronized rhythm any monitor would show it; your pair of hearts playing two crippled bunnies doing whatever they can. There is no end to this fantasy of closeness. Who else is gonna bring you a broken arrow? You want him to break with you. You want him to hurt in a womb he doesn’t have: you want him to admit he can’t hurt that way. You want him to know how it feels in every one of your nerve endings: lying prone on the detergent sheets, lifting your shirt for one more cardiac resident, one more stranger, letting him attach his clips to the line of hooks under your breast, letting him print out your heart, one more, to see if its rhythm has calmed.
It all returns to this: you want him to close to your damage. You want humility and presumption and whatever lies between you, you want that too. You’re tired of begging for it. You’re tired of grading him on how well he gives it. You want to learn how to stop feeling sorry for yourself. You want to write an essay about the lesson. You throw away the checklist and let him climb into your hospital bed. You let him part the heart wires. You sleep. He sleeps. You wake, pulse feeling another pulse, and there he is again. (Jamison, 25-26)
It is interesting that the author employs second person narrative in the last medical script of Leslie Jamison, herself. The words such as you, your, and yourself are used for 40 times considering only the last two paragraphs. The excessive use of the second person pronoun usually causes a stronger emotional impact on readers rather than third-person pronouns which deal with other persons such as he or she. Besides, while the I or the first-person pronoun creates two possibilities either I am a reader or I am the character, the word you likely addresses straightly to readers. For example, when someone greets hey you! and I automatically respond yes, it is me. Readers impose themselves to the character and they tend to follow and conceive Jamison’s feeling after every you. In addition, Jamison writes the essay in present tense in order to, perhaps, add the sense of immediacy. This present tense aims to take readers to an instant action; it emphasizes that you-do-it. And significantly, the application of the second-person pronoun and the present tense accommodates the sense of commanding. To illustrate, “you wake up…” in line 1 can be read as ‘you! wake up!’ and then readers imagine that they wake up although they were not sleeping. Again, when readers see the line “you want him to…” and they automatically imagine that they want that man to do something too. The use of these two elements, the second-person pronoun and the present tense, enhances the author’s intention in putting readers to stand in the character’s shoes. In other words, they serve the purpose of the essay which is attempting to empathize the other(s) in order to learn the real empathy.
However, in order to make the interpretations accessible, the you here will be interpreted as Leslie Jamison, not the readers. For one reason, these experiences belong to Jamison; the author just experiments readers to try to imagine being Jamison. The author exaggerates the first sentence of the paragraph that the doctor did not burn away the broken part of her heart. The operation definitely cannot burn that part because the broken part here is invisible. In fact, people usually consider heart associated with feelings; the broken heart here is somehow a cliché metaphor she refers to her shattered feelings after loss. Or maybe the team does not actually tell her about any broken part left but simply inform the result of the operation. Yet, all she could hear is that they do not intervene with the broken part she wants to get rid of. Then, she comes back from the state of numbness (anesthesia), which may be a metaphor of unconsciousness or ignorance. In another word, the state of not knowing, she does not understand and she seeks for empathy. She wakes up and realizes that she is not alone; Dave always be with her so that she was not alone when she was struggling through the suffering night and now she is still not alone (my emphasis and adaptation, p.25). Yet, although she realizes that she is not abandoned by her lover, having someone beside is not enough for her. She aches for Dave to know how filthy she feels, probably she does not mean only physically but also mentally that she bears the guilt of an abortion. She wants Dave to know, feel, and hurt as exactly as she knows, feels, and hurt. She alludes to the two crippled bunnies in page 8 that she wants a pair of hearts of herself and Dave like these crippled mates. That is, although they are injured, they will not separate from each other. Anyway, Jamison thinks that “there is no end of this fantasy of closeness” which likely is a paradox. Because fantasy tends not to be limited and no ending is completely contrast to closeness. The fantasy and closeness seem to be irrelevant. Yet, this sentence is understandable in a way, too. Closeness may sound similar to darknes; Jamison probably describes that it is dark and she does not know the place to escape from this desperation of guilt, pain, and whatever. To put it another way, she imagines or yearns for the absolute empathy, but there is no way she can find that kind of empathy; and this becomes a dead-end. Still, she keeps thinking about this even though she cannot find the answer; there is only closeness in the end.
In line 8-9, Jamison proposes that “who else is gonna bring you a broken arrow”.

She is caught in a state of insecurity that she would be hurt by other people. This sentence implies that she believes ‘others’ bring her a broken arrow. She is being ridiculous of blaming faults on others as on page 11 she says that “whatever we can’t hold it, we hang on a hook that will hold it.” And that hook now is obviously Dave who shares the responsibility for the fetus. She likely tries to forget that she is the one who decided to get an abortion. Dave is the one who suggests the idea, but she is the residence of the fetus. No one could physically drag her to the abortion clinic if she resolutely insists on keeping the child. Certainly, this does not mean to defend Dave against the responsibility, but to clarify that she is in company with those ‘others’ to fire the broken arrow into

herself.
In the last paragraph, after she thinks of everything, it all returns to the beginning that she wants Dave to absolutely empathize her. But because their lives, their experiences, and their bodies are different, it is impossible to ask someone to feel as exactly as the other one feels. Therefore, she ignores the checklist which requires the one who besides her to do and feel this and that. Also, she lets him enters to her zone which is a hospital bed to sleep aside. She lets him ‘part’ the heart wires which, maybe, means that she shares some of her thoughts and feelings with him without wanting him understand the whole and exact feeling of hers. They take a rest. Here is a pause of her restless fantasy of closeness; and she untightens her need to be empathize. And when she wakes up again, pulse feeling another pulse. They likely ‘touch’ or understand each other by the rhythm of the pulse, another cliché metaphor of feelings or thinking
In conclusion, to me, there is no absolute empathy that people know exactly everything the others feel. To put it another way, if someone feels hurt and wants others to empathize his/her hurt too. It is ironically that you want others to feel the hurt that even you do not want to feel. If you want someone to empathize you, you must empathize them first. And then you will not want them to empathize you, to be as hurt as you.

Work Cited
Jamison, Leslie. “The Empathy Exams.” The Empathy Exams: Essays, New York and St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 2014. 1-26. Print.