Analysis Very Rough Draft

Solemnity: the mask the worldly divine wear when enacting rites; the face of the arranged bride vowing to spend her life with a stranger; the tears of the unflinching parent over her suicidal son’s grave. Solemn looks echo in solemn eyes. Solemn words fall from solemn mouth. However, solemnity only reaches full tragedy (and hypocrisy of its differing interpretations) when it becomes an “observance of ceremony or special formality on important occasions; sacred; performed with due ceremony and reverence; having a religious character,” yet has “gloomy, dark, somber; grand, imposing; sumptuous” tone (Oxford English Dictionary). The two meanings do not naturally coincide. Religious or otherwise important occasions do not carry the subtext of being morose or melancholy. There are usually observed as special days of joy; resolution. Though when the two definitions do intersect, a level of irony arises that impacts the event with a certain kind of implication. An implication comes to the foreground exposing the lies and duplicity that spice an event. Therein we find truth and art. Therein we find revelation in the glorified revelation, thus giving it a conscience and ridding its opacity.

In “The Knife” Selzer uses the act of surgery as a God’s endeavor. He endows the occasion with holy significance. “I must confess that the priestliness of my profession has ever been impressed on me. In the beginning there are vows, taken with all solemnity.” (Selzer 709). Here he explains that surgeons take upon themselves the sacred duty of saving lives and compares them to that of the priest, a reoccurrence in the passage. He also juxtaposes his humanity with the daunting task, revealing and contrasting his confidence in his abilities and his thoughts of ineptitude. He, a flawed human being, bestowed with the knowledge and skills of a supreme being. He therefore, expects to cut into another human’s flesh to carve out the animosity in the body. He cuts, mangles, mutilates, and kills to bring back life. Sometimes he cannot succeed, and there lying open on the table to brand his mind, is his handiwork, his failure. “I try not to listen to those terrible last questions, the answers [of the Last Rites], but hear, with scorching clarity, the words that formalize the expectation of death.” (Selzer 711). He considers himself a God, but Death still comes at its own will exposing his talents are only worldly. To Selzer, this embodies irony and the reason he chooses to use the word solemnity. Its double entendre is far too perfect for his piece to exclude. Performing a kind of sacred rites with doubt and gravity pairs solemnity’s meanings. Selzer feels he holds the scalpel unworthily, that the knife may even have its own agenda that he cannot compete with. He holds it in solemnity because its weight reminds him of struggling to reclaim life already lost, his duty as a surgeon but his blight as a man. Though “The Knife” describes many facets of a surgeon’s world, the utilization of this term characterizes the whole piece with a solemn theme. And blah blah blah blah blah.