Summary
The subject of “The Lost Mariner,” Jimmie G. is admitted into hospice care at the age of 49. Although he is charming and intelligent, he perpetually thinks that the year is 1945. He is confused as to why he is in a hospital and becomes terrified whenever he looks in a mirror. Jimmie has Korsakoff’s, a degenerative illness caused by years of heavy drinking that causes both amnesia and short-term memory loss. Sacks finds no explanation as to why the cut-off to Jimmie’s memory is 1945, although it seems like this year was a high point in Jimmie’s life. When Jimmie’s brother travels from Oregon to visit, Sacks describes their encounters as deeply emotional and moving to observe. However, Jimmie can’t understand why his brother looks so old, and talking to him does nothing to help unlock his past.
Sacks worries that Jimmie is a lost soul with no hope for improvement. When he asks Jimmie how he’s feeling, Jimmie responds: “I cannot say I feel anything at all” (36). He is often fretful and restless, pacing down the halls of the hospice facility with a vague sense of indignation. However, things rapidly change for Jimmie once he starts going to church. Jimmie’s total focus and awareness during Sunday services open Sacks’ eyes to “other realms where the soul is called upon” (38). He takes to gardening too, and over the years Jimmie gains an astonishing presence of mind, becoming deeply grounded in the beauty of each passing moment.
In the postscript to this story, Sacks briefly describes the case of Stephen R., who like Jimmie has Korsakoff’s. However, Stephen only has two years of retrograde amnesia, which means that when he visits his old home, he feels totally comfortable and at ease, recognizing everything in his relatively unchanged house. However, he becomes completely disoriented and terrified when his wife brings him back to the hospital, an ordeal which is unbearable to watch.
In “The Disembodied Lady,” Christina is a twenty-seven-year-old woman with two children, who in her previous life worked from home as a computer programmer. Just before going into surgery to have her gallbladder removed, Christina suddenly finds it impossible to feel the ground beneath her. A spinal tap reveals that she has a rare form of acute polyneuritis which has affected the sensory roots of her spinal and cranial nerves. She has lost all proprioception, the brain’s innate sense of the position and orientation of the body.
Over eight years, Christina gradually replaces her proprioception by looking at each part of her body as it moves and listening to her voice as she talks in order to operate her jaw. The process is slow and mentally arduous at first, but eventually, this visual monitoring becomes second-nature. Once a “ragdoll” who was totally unable to move, Christina regains most of her motor skills and is, over time, able to function regularly as long as her attention isn’t diverted. However, her stature is unmistakably forced and her voice a bit theatrical, staged. “She has succeed in operating, but not in being,” Sacks laments (53). She is the first and only known “disembodied” human.
Analysis
The author begins to give his characters more detailed description in these two stories, leaning into archetype and symbol to enhance the drama of their relatively bleak situations. For example, of all the cases of Korsakoff’s available to him, Sacks chooses a man who perpetually believes that he is a sailor in the Navy. By including (or perhaps endowing Jimmie with) this detail, the author evokes an image that is likely familiar to us: an Odysseus-like sailor, lost at sea as he returns from war. Christina once spent her days as a computer programmer, sitting still as she interfaced with a complex inner-world of algorithms and data. Now her body has become like a computer, able to operate and execute specific commands, but unable to feel and physically intuit. Whether these details are true to real life or not, they add valuable symbolism and situational irony to Sacks’ stories, allowing us to emotionally engage with Jimmie and Christina on a level of empathy that might otherwise be impossible.
Sacks also deepens the intrigue of these two individuals by adding a degree of mystery to their stories. Although Sacks identifies that Christina has lost communication with her proprioceptive nerves due to an inflammation, he is never able to explain where the inflammation came from, and why the damage it caused was completely unheard of. Christina’s eventual ability to walk comes as a surprise too; Sacks had never met a person who managed to replace her proprioception with visual automatism. Similarly, Jimmie G. returns to a state of wellness seemingly out of divine intervention. Sacks never explains why he wanted to start attending church, or what about his condition changes to help him become a more present, connected person. He is seemingly transformed by his faith and his garden–an appropriate symbol for the solid ground that a sailor lost at sea desperately needs. By keeping these mysteries intact, Sacks charges his subjects with a captivating, magical energy that great literary characters share.
