Richard Selzer\'s \"The Knife\" Richard

Richard Selzer's "The Knife"

Richard Selzer's ability to juxtapose real life step-by-step surgical procedures with metaphor, irony, similes, personification and abstract language shows that not only does he fully understand the delicate, dangerous work of a surgeon, but also he gully grasps the art of descriptive narrative.

Embracing reality, spicing reality up a bit with metaphors is always a good idea for an essayist. "One holds the knife as one holds the bow of a cello or tulip -- by the stem," he writes to open the essay. Certainly when an alert reader is confronted with a metaphoric comparison of a tulip or cello bow with a razor sharp surgeon's knife -- one smells good, another makes music and the third slices into human skin -- Selzer's artistry is in full bloom.

Reading Selzer's "The Knife" is more than a trip into some great literature by a brilliant writer -- it is also an education. Mixed seamlessly into Selzer's narrative are specific tasks that a surgeon must perfect in order to get the patient fixed and sewn back up. Readers learn about colors that are seen on the inside of a live human body. But first Selzer takes us there, into the "pink and gleaming membranous" of the "peritoneum" and finally there it is, the cavity, a "primitive place." There is an irony in the use of "primitive place" where the surgeon expects to "find drawings of buffalo on the walls." So what -- why is he writing about ancient cave pictographs? Here he is cutting into the flesh of a human with a very sharp knife, and yet he calls the cavity of that human "primitive." Look who's calling the kettle black. And by the way for that reader who is fascinated with the idea of becoming a surgeon, the organs in that open body are "maroon and salmon and yellow."

Selzer jumps around like a jackrabbit from metaphor to metaphor in succeeding paragraphs, and it works well to keep the imagery fresh in the mind of the reader. In paragraph #4 he is a trespassing time traveler discovering the Lascaux Cave Paintings in France; meanwhile in paragraph #6 his "priestliness" has "ever been impressed" on him. And in this case, he holds life and death in his hands, presiding over major surgery as though he might be God Himself. In paragraph #4 he uses the simile of his colleagues being "like children absorbed in a game." But then in paragraph #6 there is no doubt what he went through was no child's game: he took a "vow…with all solemnity" and now his world is "blood and flesh." Being able to juxtapose images so smoothly is a mark of a writer who understands artistry.

Good literature always features the skilled use of literary devices such as personification and Selzer's essay is certainly good literature in that respect. In paragraph #18 the knife looks like it probably did three thousand years ago except that now it's "head" has "grown detachable." And in paragraph #19 the knife "springs instantly to life" when it is clicked into proper position. Readers did not know until now that a knife, whether a surgeon's knife or any knife, could come to life. The scalpel even "sings" in the 20th paragraph and it has a "snout" as well. In paragraph #22 personification strikes again as the tumor comes alive (it is "toadish").