“Witness”
The short story “Witness” opens with a brief of the agony that children endure due to indispositions. The speaker is a doctor, which is consistent with the Book’s title, who attends to a six year old boy with multiple maladies. The boy neither sees nor speaks, he cannot walk, and his right cheek is besmirched. The boy transposes by rolling and he converses to his parents by grating teeth.
The doctor carries out a physical investigation, and notices a walnut-sized lump in the boy’s groin. The doctor notices that the boy’s optic nerves are infantile. The doctor notifies the boys’ parents that he could be suffering from “incarcerated hernia” after which he plans for an emergency operation.
The boy’s father accompanies him to the operating room and implores the doctor to care for the boy as he is not permissible for the father to be in the operating room. The doctor determines that the father adulates his incapacitated son. The boy is put under anaesthesia after which the surgeon starts operating on him.
During the operation the doctor recognizes that it was inaccurate to conclude that the boy was suffering from incarcerated hernia. The boy’s ailment is due to “a testicle that had failed to descend into the scrotum” occasioning the twisting of the cut which blocks blood from getting into the testicle. The surgery is efficacious and the doctor delivers the news to the boy’s parents.
“Whither Thou Goest”
After Hannah’s Sam turn out to be brain-dead the doctor proposes that they turn off his life support machine. The doctor sends Hannah a letter to let her know that the procedure of gathering and bequeathing the organs crystalized. Sam’s residual body parts are interred.
Through a flashback, Richard Selzer updates the reader that Sam had passed away three years before. He lost his life after being shot by a robber who wanted to steal from lady, whom Sam had stopped to help in fixing a car tier, who was deserted at the road as her car tire had burst. Hannah become conscious that the process of ‘cleaning a chicken’ is analogous to the process of harvesting organs after visiting a butchery and this recognition prompts her to interrogate her standpoint on the status of her husband’s body.
Religion, specifically the teaching on resurrection , does not comfort Hannah. One night, after a storm, Hannah reveries Sam bestowing his heart to another man. She embarks on an undertaking to find the man who benefited from Sam’s heart by masquerading as librarian at the university hospital ,and with the help of Ivy Lou, they locate Pope Henry’s, the benefactor, contact details.
Hannah dispatches a letter to Henry Pope and his wife responds to it. After setting a rapport and reassuring the Henry that she is not a freak, she sends one more letter requesting that she visits them so that she can get one hour to listen to the pace of Pope’s heart. Mrs. Pope avers, in all her correspondences to Hannah Owen, that they cannot permit her bidding. Eventually, Hannah resigns herself, but appeals to Pope Henry sends him a photograph of him to help her deal with her sentimentalities. Eventually, when Hannah least anticipates Pope Henry summons her to his house on 20th October after determining that his wife will not be at the house. In the story’s falling action Hannah lounges on Pope Henry’s upper body and pin her ears back attentively as the heart is pulsating. Pay attention to the heart makes Hannah reminiscent of the heart beats that she had heard on Sam’s chest. Listening to the heart soothes her and makes her exultant.
