Death With Dignity

Andrew Ebratt
Mr. Coulombe
English II

Legal Suffering The Percent of public who support euthanasia for the terminally ill or on life support is approximately 86 percent. Despite this, euthanasia or assisted suicide is only legal in four states in the US: Montana, Vermont, Washington, and New Mexico. Because of the illegality of euthanasia in most places, it is a wide spread crime in most cases outside these states, although, these terminally ill patients are suffering terribly without cure. An example of someone who committed this “crime” is nurse and activist, Barbara Huttman, a nurse from the San Francisco region, a patients’ rights writer, and proponent of legislature for terminally ill patients. The following article, “A Crime of Compassion” is a narrative written by Huttman and which appeared in Newsweek as a heart-wrenching story of Huttman’s struggle with a terminally ill patient in horrid suffering who’s right to die with dignity can’t be exercised. Huttman accomplishes her purpose to enact support for death for those terminally ill patients suffering by using extremely emotional moments, incredibly graphic moments, showing us the emotional bonds with the patient and his family as the story develops, along with the use of a multitude of literary devices. Huttman expresses incredibly poignant moments throughout the narrative that stirs piteous emotions within readers with the use of rhetorical devices to substantiate the emotional moments throughout the composition. She uses tone to show us the emotional toll that Mac’s toils take on her with the quote, “And every night I prayed that Mac would die, that his agonized eyes would never again plead with me to let him die.” (Huttman 345) This quote shows Huttman’s tone as depressing and filled with pity that allows her to accomplish her goal of allowing the reader to sympathize with her later actions. Huttmans use of symbolism to convey her emotional anguish is seen through: “At night I went home and tried to scrub away the smell of decaying flesh that seemed woven into the fabric of my uniform, it was in my hair, the upholstery of my car-there was no washing it out. (Huttman 344)” This “smell of decaying flesh” that follows Huttman around is more symbolic that the suffering of Mac is something that follows Huttman wherever she goes that she can’t dispose of. Another part of Huttman’s methodology to induce the reader to feel sorrow and shame is the use of graphic imagery. Huttman tells us that max is “a sixty pound skeleton kept alive by liquid food,” “IV solutions dripped into his veins,” and oxygen “piped to a mask on his face.”(Huttman 344) This graphic exhibit an excruciating, unbearable conditions that God would never allow, but whom science has created which Mac suffers through. The immense pain that Huttman feels for Mac is seen through the strong imagery is seen when Huttman doesn’t press the code until she believes it’s too late and she is “shrieked” for the code team to let Mac go: “No…don’t let them do this to him… for God’s sake... Please no more.” (Huttman 346)The image painted in our heads is like a mother’s son being tortured by terrorists and her plead for his suffering to end, which is Huttman’s point in showing us how much Mac means to her and how she feels his pain. Another example where Huttman use imagery to shows us the grave, over whelming emotions to rouse sympathy for her is by giving the readers direct quotes of Mac’s desire to perish from his degenerating condition: “Pain… No more…Barbara… do something… God, let me go.” (Huttman 345) Huttman’s article in Newsweek does an incredibly efficacious job in creating sorrow, pity, and understanding for the reader. Barbara Huttman asserts various points in her essay that allow us to understand the logical side of her argument of her “murder” by showing us his suffering and his right of basic free will, including his right to choose death. Huttman expresses the logistic aspect of her relationship with the first introduction of Mac, “a young, witty, macho cop who walked into the hospital with thirty-two pounds of attack equipment” (Huttman 344) who is the pinnacle of a healthy, bright, and vibrant man that “can’t get rid of a cough.” (Huttman 344) This foreshadowing is effective as we learn that Mac is a relatively healthy human which will cause a huge contrast to his later conditions. Seeing a man health’s dissipate beyond believe causes us to want him to put out of his misery accomplishing Huttman’s goal. Huttman’s imagery also shines a logical reason for her decision to euthanize a hopeless, broken Mac when she states: “The nurses stayed to wipe the saliva that drooled from his mouth, irrigate the big craters of bedsoresthat covered his hips, suction the lung fluids that threatened to drown him, clean the feces that burned his skin like lye, pour the liquid food down the tube attached to his stomach, put pillows between his knees to ease the bone-on-bone pain, turn him every hour to keep the bedsores from getting worse, and change his gown and linen every two hours to keep him from being soaked in perspiration.” (Huttman 344) This quote shows us the legal torture that Mac suffered in his terminally ill state, which gives suffice reason that he should have the right to be euthanized, confirming Huttman’s point. In Huttman’s essay, the strongest literary device that she uses to establish her point through logical reasons is with the use of rhetorical questions. These indirect rhetorical questions cause us to understands Barbara Huttman’s decisions to allow Mac to die, question keeping someone alive who is terminally ill and suffering, and playing God to cause suffering is fundamental wrong. Huttman asks us indirectly about the unreasonable behavior of the medical community with the quote, “Did we really believe that we had the right to force "life" on a suffering man who had begged for the right to die?” (Huttman 345) After seeing a question like this, presented to us in the essay, we can lucidly see that the medical community is infringing on the free will of Mac by keeping him in this debilitated, dying state. Huttman also uses the indirect rhetorical question to tell us from a moral perspective does it matter if it was legal or not, but that is regardless the right decision when someone is suffering. This form of logical persuasion by using the invalidity of the crime is seen in the quote “If a doctor had written a no-code order, which is the only legal alternative, would he have felt any less guilty? (” Huttman 346) With the use of imagery, diction, tone, symbolism, imagery, and the use of rhetorical question, Huttman conveys an eloquent message through logic and emotion to convince readers of her correct decision as well as supporting the argument for the legalization for Euthanasia. Her essay brings the point, that as human can we play God to cause suffering and anguish to a person which will not recover? From personal experience, I understand the help that euthanasia can bring to terminally ill people suffering across the world. My aunt, Norma, who was diagnosed with stage four terminal breast cancer two years ago was told she had a year left to live. For six months, she traveled the world, visited family, and fixed all her problems, and even forgave the people that had wronged her. After these six months the cancer became more apparent than her cough at first and she was hospitalized. A month later, still in the hospital and in terrible suffering, she was euthanized and put out of the terrible, unrecoverable fate she was in; this is because in Colombia the practice of Euthanasia to suffering, dying patients was legalized in 1997. As much pain as her death was to the entire family, her little suffering caused much closure. I would by an atrocity of she had to suffer prolong sufferings, if not legalized and my family would have gone through an exponential worse suffering if she had to live in those sub-human conditions. To prolong death when suffering and pain is present is a legal torture that no person should have to go through as humanities the right to die with dignity is a basic right of free will. This raises the point that until legislation is brought to legalize Euthanasia world-wide, we will continue to live in a world that prefers torture and pain, over dignity and free will.