“Witness”
The title “Witness” is a legal allusion; in the legal setting a witness yields material evidence in a case. The witness in “Witness” is the testicle as it observes the boy’s affliction all through his six year life. In court settings the witnesses are distinctive from the plaintiffs and complainants. The elimination of the testicles from the boy’s boy, in “Witness” is analogous to the summoning of a witness to transmit his or her evidence that could assist the judge to come to a judgment. The doctor utilizes the testicle, as a bystander, to conclude that the boy’s physical disabilities boil down to the testicle.
The doctor’s statement: “there is something pure about the woman out of whose womb this child had blundered to knock over their lives. As though the mothering of such a child had returned her to the state of virginity”, portrays as a victim of her son's situation. Even though the mother’s womb is symbolic of pureness, it gives birth to deficient child. The child’s life is a bungle twists the parents’ lives. “The State of Virginity” make reference to the mother’s blamelessness in her son’s situation. At heart the mother is still a virgin as she does not know how to stabilize her incapacitated son’s existence.
“Whither Thou Goest”
Richard Selzer endeavors to respond to the query “Whither Thou Goest?” using religion and science; ‘thou’ denotes to the human heart. “Whither Thou Goest” juxtaposes religious beliefs about life after death and science. Religion gives a grounding in Jesus raising deceased people from death. Comparatively, science makes it feasible for people to keep living through organ transfer.
Selzer’s usage of flashbacks in “Whither Thou Goest” facilitates the reader to recognize the connection between Hannah’s older experiences and her present-day life. The flashbacks advance an underlying principle for Hannah’s current preoccupation, which is comparable to an apparition, with finding the man go utilizes her husband’s heart. If the flashbacks were debarred, the reader would have misconstrued the psychological impetus of Hannah’s guilty inclinations.
Arguably, Pope represents the intersection of religion and science (specifically organ transplant). Pope is a Christian name for the crown of the catholic church, thus it has religious insinuations. Also, Pope carries the heart of another man thanks to the phenomena of science. Pope Henry is an exemplification of the adjoined science and religion. Perhaps Selzer used this approach with intent to critique the perspectives of various religions, specifically Christianity on the issue of organ donation.
