Ingenious Pain Andrew Miller Prompt: One Major

¶ … Ingenious Pain Andrew Miller

prompt: One major themes discussed Alain de

One of the central philosophical components of Friedrich Nietzsche's varied stance is the fact that pain is integral to providing meaning to the human life. This basic tenet is echoed in Andrew Miller's Novel, Ingenious Pain, which chronicles a protagonist who is born with a marked inability to perceive suffering or physical pain -- whether it is his or that of someone else (Barnard). Although the life of James Dyer -- the protagonist -- is highly eventful and full of action, it is curiously devoid of much meaning from Dyer's perspective, until a change encounter with a woman named Mary bestows upon him the capacity to feel pain. The sudden transition for the young man, and the fledgling empathy he eventually develops as a result, eventually overrides his life and leads to his death. Yet in the process, Dyer's life gains the significance and meaning that Nietzsche believed pain delivers to people in their respective journeys through life.

Although Nietzsche certain evinced a tendency to maunder in his writings, his philosophy regarding the beneficence of pain is ultimately revealed in Twilight of the Idols fsairly succinctly. In this work of literature the author philosophizes that "What does not kill me makes me stronger" (Nietzsche). This statement was made in the context that suffering and pain are ultimately beneficial for the well-being of an individual if he or she can learn from these things, adapt from the mistakes that rendered pain and suffering, and ultimately endure them to reach additional triumphs. Yet there is a slight degree of difficulty in applying this phrase to Dyer, for the simple fact that Miller's book is a work of fiction and that it is only after the protagonist gains the capacity for pain that his life ultimately suffers and falters. However, a close analysis of this work demonstrates that in Dyer's faltering, he actually gains a great deal more humanity than he had when he was unable to empathize with others. Therefore, even though Dyer's ability to experience pain ultimately does kill him, in the process it allows him to become much stronger and much more of a human being than he previously was.

The progression of Dyer's march towards fully realizing his humanity which his capacity to pain brought him is slow and lengthy. As a child, the protagonist was born both mute and without the ability to feel pain. Although the latter aspect was what eventually would gain him renown and was most remarkable about him, it prevented him from fully connecting with other individuals, including his family. When Dyer's entire family is devastated by the small pox killing them all except for the young boy (who has a swift, regenerative healing power in addition to his imperviousness to pain), he is not as affected by the loss (K. Miller) as a child who should have been -- largely because he cannot experience pain. To the contrary, as a child Dyer is described as " a most delightful, cold-blooded monster of a boy" (Miller). On the one hand, his incapacity to feel pain protects Dyer from the terrible trauma of losing his entire family to a pernicious disease. Yet further events in the story allude to the fact that his dearth of feeling pain ultimately prevents him from engaging in the richness of life and experiencing what it fully means to live.

The nadir of the icy hardness that Dyer's life encompasses is probably best shown after he has embarked on a career as a doctor. His composure and lack of sensitivity for the agony that his patients experiences actually aids him in tangible ways -- such as the fact that he is able to garner a significant amount of acclaim as a military physician. Yet as beneficial as this trait of Dyer's is both to his professional career and to the livelihood of the numerous maimed soldiers that he is able to treat during his tenure in the armed services, the author constantly alludes to the fact that his inability to empathize with his patients was somehow noxious. Dyer's lack of humanity is underscored by the following quotation, in which an individual remarks upon his prowess for emotionally detaching himself from others and his work during the throes of battle.

We brought the worse cases to him -- dangling arms, crushed legs, gaping bellies -- and he cut and sewed and pushed men's innards back into their natural cavities. I swear to you, Sir, he took pleasure in it, this demonstration of his genius, and I cannot believe any man ever cut human flesh with a cooler head or a steadier hand… (Miller).

This quotation is indicative of the positive aspects of Dyer's condition; it makes him extremely efficient under duress. However, it also limits his ability to not only experience things, but to experience them as well. Despite the fact that he is successful as a physician in the military, he is far from content in his life. He seems to be aware of the fact that there is more to life which he is missing, and which is keeping him from fulfilling his true capability as a human being. Due to the fact that he is emotionally isolated from people, Dyer becomes physically detached from them and is unable to foster significant relationships with others -- and earns nearly as much acclaim for this physical and emotional aloofness as he does for his prowess as a surgeon.

The most significant way that Miller proves Nietzsche's philosophy is correct that until man experiences pain he effectively is limited in his knowledge and capaiblity as a human being is by having Dyer allude to this weakness of his. He does so early on in the novel, foreshadowing the transformation his life will endure. During casual conversation with a woman, the protagonist alludes to his circumscriptions as both a doctor and as a person when he confesses to the icy aloofness that plagues him for the majority of the novel. The following quotation reveals this fact. "I had a certain genius, madam, mostly for the knife. But I never had…that quality of attention towards another's suffering which marks out the true healer." This quotation shows just how limiting Dyer's condition actually was. Even as a doctor -- one who heals -- he was inefficient, because he could not truly empathize with his patients or those on whom he performed surgery. The effect of his condition on his personal life was even worse, yet all changed the day he travelled to Russia and met Mary, who was able to reverse his condition and allow him to suddenly feel pain. What Dyer gains in terms of empathy and compassion directly affects his ability with the knife. Now that he understands what his patients are going through, he becomes squeamish and his surgical abilities deteriorate -- while his understanding of life, and of what it means to be human and to feel that which another does, grows exponentially.