Essay Questions

How do childhood encounters impact the adulthoods of Christina, Rachel, and Ruth?

Ruth explicates, “The experience of watching Louis being born affected us all differently. Christina had her baby via surrogate. Rachel had five. Me, I became a labor and delivery nurse.” Evidently, Christina was petrified of giving birth because she regarded it as an excruciating mission. Based on her decision to embrace surrogacy, her unconscious fear of delivering her baby, which was moulded during Louis’ birth, enthused her to circumvent the supposed agony. Rachel resolution to have five kids indicates that witnessing Louis birth inspired her to be an audacious mother. For Ruth, Louis’ birth informed her career choice of working as ‘labour and delivery nurse’ where she would partake in the marvels of delivering babies like her mother did with Louis.

What is the consequence of intertextuality in “Small Great Things”?

In “STAGE ONE: Early Labor," Ruth cites Benjamin Franklin: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.” This citation supports Ruth’s descriptions regarding the phenomenon that prevails during Louis birth. Justice prevails temporary when Ms. Mina holds hands with Ruth’s mother and Christina seeks consolation from Ruth. Absolute justice must rise above racial and class dissimilarities.

In “Active Labor” Ruth quotes James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” This quote is applicable when Ruth compels a father to ‘face’ his son’s disability instead of snubbing him. Besides, Ruth’s experiences at the ‘birth pavilion’ authenticates the quintessence of dauntlessly confronting fear, bereavement and incapacity.

How does Ruth demonstrate the universality of facades?

Ruth reports, “I know nurses who work on surgical floors who tell me about men wheeled out of surgery who insist on taping their toupees into place in the recovery room before their spouses join them. And I can’t tell you the number of times a patient who has spent the night grunting and screaming and pushing out a baby with her husband at her side will kick her spouse out of the room post delivery so I can help her put on a pretty nightgown and robe.” Ruth’s illustrations surmise that patients use facades to secrete the realism of their discomforts. Facades such as the immaculate toupees and the ‘pretty nightgowns’ give the audiences the impression of flawlessness which does bid any inkling of the preceding agony. However, the facades cannot obscure intrinsic spirits and agony for they are in fact posturing.