Analyse af Jo Cannons 'Insignificant Gestures'

Throughout life people experience happenings they repress and regret because it’s too hard to accept. This often leads a person into a way of living where everything that reminds the person of the happening is avoided because it might recall the feelings involved in the repressed event. But it’s not possible for a person to avoid and keep these feelings to oneself which results in either psychological problems or a sudden confrontation with something that helps them to overcome their fear of thinking and feeling what they felt. In Jo Cannon’s short story “Insignificant Gestures” from 2007 the narrator experiences how suppressed feelings forces him to avoid what reminds him of a terrible and remorseful event until one day when he is helped to face the feelings he fears the most.

The short story “Insignificant Gestures” is about a British man who in the age of twenty-eight works as a district health officer in Africa. In his African home a young servant called Celia Dimba helps him out with the housecleaning. Celia and the narrator don’t talk but they connect through painting. After leaving the narrator’s house one day, Celia is taken to hospital with injuries. The narrator can’t help her recover from the damage they think she has gotten from her boyfriend beating her and therefore he sends her to another hospital. Later he is told that Celia died from meningitis and feels guilty for her dead because he easily could’ve treated her with penicillin. He leaves Africa and retrains as a psychiatrist which he finds easy. Subsequently he lives with bad dreams and regret for what he did in Africa which he tells no one about until one day he meets an African doctor and it all comes out.