Summary
In “Murder,” a man named Donald suffers a drug-induced seizure and kills his daughter while unconscious. The State concludes after multiple tests that Donald genuinely has no memory of the incident, and they commit him to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. During the fifth year of his sentence, he is given weekend parole, and he buys a bicycle so that he can go on weekend rides. Soon after, he falls off of his bike while riding down a steep hill and sustains a major head injury. After waking from a two-week coma, Donald is in horrific distress, crying and struggling violently. He tells doctors that he is experiencing repeated, hallucinatory visions of his daughter’s murder. “He now knew the minutest details of the murder,” Sacks writes. “[A]ll the details revealed by forensic examination, but never revealed in open court–or to him” (163, Sacks’ emphasis). Donald attempts suicide twice while in the neurosurgical unit and has to be tranquilized. Sure enough, EEG scans reveal “incessant, seething” epilepsies in both of his temporal lobes, extending deep into the emotional circuitry of his brain. Through medication and years of psychotherapy, Donald returns to gardening–a hobby he developed as a prisoner in the psych ward. Although he does not forget the murder, years later he no longer experiences traumatic visions of it. “What actually happened in this strange, half-neurological drama?” Sacks asks. “All these questions remain a mystery to this day” (165).
“The Visions of Hildegard” presents Sacks’ neurological perspective on Saint Hildegard of Bingen, a German nun from the 12th century who is known for experiencing visions of divine power throughout her life. In written accounts, Hildegarde describes seeing stars cascade from the sky and turn into coal, and clouds of “living light” that heal her of all sadness and pain. Historians have determined based on these accounts that Hildegarde was experiencing severe migraines, causing visual auras and fortifications (shimmering jagged lines that cross the visual field). Sacks notes that Hildegard’s migraines -- a mental event that most people fear and hate -- are what lead her toward a life of holiness. He concludes this vignette by drawing a comparison to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who also wrote about and attached momentous significance to his epileptic auras: “During these five seconds I live a whole human existence, and for that I would give my whole life and not think that I was paying too dearly…” (170).
Analysis
Readers often assume that the girl Donald kills in “Murder” is his girlfriend, due to the author’s curiously-phrased opening sentence: “Donald killed his girl while under the influence of PCP” (161). Sacks provides no further details about the victim of Donald’s attack; each time the killing is mentioned, Sacks refers to it simply as “the murder.” Donald’s familial ties are never mentioned, nor are the outside ramifications of the girl’s death. The only other supporting detail we have about Donald’s relationship with the girl is on page 163, on which Sacks wonders if Donald’s hallucinations might be an hysteric fabrication of “some Oedipal struggle or guilt.” As Oedipal struggles are defined generally as the repressed desire for violence between father and child, not boyfriend and girlfriend, this supports the conclusion that the girl is Donald’s child. In addition, children are far more likely to be killed by an adult having a violent seizure. Especially in this light, it makes sense that the author would minimize the role of the girl in Donald’s story. Otherwise, the abject horror of Donald’s hallucinations would overshadow the neurological drama of the piece. Sacks intentionally shields us from Donald’s predicament in order to maintain the distance of a clinical observer.
Sacks tries his best in “The Visions of Hildegard” to support the claim he made in the introduction to “Transports”: that addressing visions and hallucinations from a neurological standpoint does not necessarily cheapen or degrade the meaning behind those experiences. He avoids using scientific jargon to describe Hildegard’s visions, including illustrations of her visions and deferring to Hildegard’s own words to describe her migraines. Just over two pages in length, this essay is more of a testimony this medieval nun’s inspired relationship with her condition. Although modern science can explain these divine visions, the fact of Hildegard’s intense and lifelong love for her migraines remains a beautiful mystery.
