Anne Boyer asks “What is the Language of Pain?” in this excerpt from her book The Undying. Her analysis of pain is a commentary on modern society: “To be a minor person in great pain at this point in history is to be a person who feels inside their body when most people just want to look.” To be sure, ours is a society of superficialities. Boyer goes on to outline the different kinds of pain, including the “epic pain of a cure.”

She argues that “pain doesn’t destroy language: it changes it.” She describes Hannah Arendt’s claim that pain’s “subjectivity is so intense that pain has no appearance.” Have you experienced this type of intense pain? Were you able to find the words, the language to describe it? Boyer argues that pain is, in fact, excessively communicative, that “if pain were silent and hidden, there would be no incentive for its infliction. Pain, indeed, is a condition that creates excessive appearance. Pain is a fluorescent feeling.”

Boyer concludes the the question is not whether pain can communicate, but actually “whether those people who insist that it does not are interested in what pain has to say, and whose bodies are doing the talking.”

Writing Prompt: Would you argue that “the spectacle of pain is what keeps us from understanding it, that what we see of pain is inadequate to what we can know?” Why or why not? Think of a time you’ve been in pain or witnessed a loved one or a patient in significant pain. Try writing (or drawing or painting) the experience with all of your senses. Alternatively, consider what pain has to say to you or those around you. Write for 10 minutes.