StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...

Nothing Routine About It: The Lavatory Operating Room Routine in Naked Lunch - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
Everyone knows that we mugwumps of the modern world are stuck deep in the rut of the everyday routine of life. We know too that this rut of routine is a drug as potent as any ever made by nature or man or corporation. William Burroughs' 'routines' in Naked Lunch may remind the reader of the crude antics of rutting beasts or give off the odor of rotting filth; they may appear both knotted and nutty, but there is absolutely nothing routine about them…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER98.7% of users find it useful
Nothing Routine About It: The Lavatory Operating Room Routine in Naked Lunch
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Nothing Routine About It: The Lavatory Operating Room Routine in Naked Lunch"

Download file to see previous pages

A close examination of Burroughs' description of this routine will show how modern medicine could so easily descend from the lofty heights of Hippocratic ideals to the abyssal depths of modern hypocrisy. From the start of the 'operation' to its finish, Benway ad libs with puns and quips, making light of the nurse's fears and doubts. At her dismayed gasp, "I can't find the pulse, doctor", Benway shoots a pun: "Maybe she got it up her snatch in a finger stall" (51). To her tongue-in-cheek query "Adrenalin, doctor" he blithely replies, "The night porter shot it all up for kicks.

" Picking up "one of those rubber vacuum cups at the end of a stick they use to unstop toilets," he improvises an instrument for massaging his patient's heart, instructing his "appalled assistant" Dr Limpf to make the incision. Dr Limpf may have been "appalled" but his reaction is nevertheless quite routine-he "shrugs and begins the incision" (51). Benway washes his new-found instrument by "swishing it around in the toilet bowl" The nurse, who is obviously not quite as blas about these 'routine' procedures as Limpf, is sufficiently shocked to inquire, "Shouldn't it be sterilized, doctor".

Dr Benway's dry response is "Very likely, but there's no time" (51). The doctor follows up this sharp rebuke with a harangue on modern "young squirts" with a yen for new-fangled equipment. He pontificates, "Soon we will be operating by remote control on patients we never see. . . . We'll be nothing but button pushers. All the skill is going out of surgery. . . ." (51). He continues, with a description of an appendectomy he had once performed "with a rusty sardine can." He even goes one better than that: "And once I was caught short without instrument one and removed a uterine tumor with my teeth" (51).

All this may be quite exciting and out of the ordinary as far as the reader is concerned, but Dr Limpf only says, "The incision is ready, doctor." Then follows a description of Dr Benway's much vaunted surgical "skill": Dr. Benway forces the cup into the incision and works it up and down. Blood spurts all over the doctors, the nurse and the wall. . . The cup makes a horrible sucking sound. (51)It remains to the nurse to say, somewhat like the child in the tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes", "I think she's gone, doctor" (51).

Dr Benway, however, is quite philosophical about this contretemps. "Well," he says, "it's all in a day's work." Quite routine, in fact! Having failed to save a patient, Dr Benway decides to follow the classical dictum, "Physician, heal thyself", and turns to his medicine cabinet for a fix. It is then that all hell seems to break loose from within him: "Some fucking drug addict has cut my cocaine with Saniflush! Nurse! Send the boy out to fill this Rx on the double!" (51-2). "The Lavatory Operating Room" routine wouldn't be complete without the picture of Dr Benway the professor of surgery, and Burroughs treats us to this dish too on his naked spread.

This scene is not, of course, set in a lavatory, but "in an auditorium filled

...Download file to see next pages Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Nothing Routine About It: The Lavatory Operating Room Routine in Naked Essay”, n.d.)
Nothing Routine About It: The Lavatory Operating Room Routine in Naked Essay. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1525589-nothing-routine-about-it-the-lavatory-operating-room-routine-in-naked-lunch
(Nothing Routine About It: The Lavatory Operating Room Routine in Naked Essay)
Nothing Routine About It: The Lavatory Operating Room Routine in Naked Essay. https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1525589-nothing-routine-about-it-the-lavatory-operating-room-routine-in-naked-lunch.
“Nothing Routine About It: The Lavatory Operating Room Routine in Naked Essay”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1525589-nothing-routine-about-it-the-lavatory-operating-room-routine-in-naked-lunch.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Nothing Routine About It: The Lavatory Operating Room Routine in Naked Lunch

Routing Protocol Security

According to Jones & Moigne  (2006) abuse of routine protocol and mechanism is perhaps the simplest available protocol-based attack.... The paper “Routing Protocol Security” seeks to examine OSPF v2 Routing protocol Security with a focus on various security measures such as message digest and digital certificate....
3 Pages (750 words) Dissertation

Routine in Business Organizations

Many of today's psychology articles on routine focuses on broad topics like the impact of routine in the work... Most of a person's days are spent just keeping up with what one perceives are the have-to-do tasks and routine of daily life.... If one has kids, one's daily routine can begin with the realization that everything planned must be unplanned. A routine is defined as a habit of doing something in a particular order.... The pattern of routines in a family calls for a core routine which is followed daily such as waking up, taking breakfast, getting ready for work or school....
19 Pages (4750 words) Essay

The Importance of Routines to Young Children

Planning should include transition activities from one routine to another, as it is in transition times when children may slip into rowdy behavior if they are not managed well enough.... The following routines observed in a class of 4-5 year olds shall be carefully analyzed and critiqued: At first glance, the routines seem to serve only the teacher's understanding of what happens in her day, with knowledge of what goes on in each routine.... The routine at hand does not give enough information on what the children do the whole time....
10 Pages (2500 words) Essay

Establish brief and effective business communication routines

The main purpose of a communication routine is to enable any organization better itself.... It is very important that this routine be followed seriously (Bonnye, Sarow & Stuart, 2007).... Another communication routine would be the type or kind of message drafted....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Routine Coffee Consumption

The paper "routine Coffee Consumption" describes that the routine consumption of coffee may have caused a functional change in my brain, and thus may have altered my brain organization or structure where the brain is in constant demand for caffeine obtainable from the coffee.... espite the fact that the coffee consumption habit started as a routine activity to accompany some selected personal activities, with time it emerged that I needed the coffee more often than just when undertaking such activities, and it became a routine that I would feel really thirsty whenever I would spend a day without taking coffee, regardless of consuming large amounts of other beverages, both hot and cold....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Pre-performance Routines in Sports

The main aim of the literature review "Pre-performance Routines in Sports" is to critically evaluate how and why pre-performance routines are developed for enhancing sports performance.... Moreover, the writer of the review will analyze several particular pre-performance forms of training....  … The world of Sport is considered to be one of the most important professions today – in fact, it can be considered to be “a whole new world” altogether....
9 Pages (2250 words) Literature review

Exploring Culture through Ritual and Routine

The essay "Exploring Culture through Ritual and routine" focuses on analyzing the possibility of exploring one's culture through ritual and routine.... Teachers in a community perform rituals that enable children brought to school to get used to the routine despite the availability of their parents.... Teachers also need to teach these children on potty time to reduce accidents that occur in washrooms and bacteria contraction through the routine (Baubeau and Patrice, 254)....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Incidental Neoplasms Found on Routine Emergency Appendectomy

The object of analysis for the purpose of this paper “Incidental Neoplasms Found on routine Emergency Appendectomy” is an incidental neoplasm, a broad concept that refers to the secondary or subsidiary new and abnormal growth of particularly the tissue in a body part.... As such, this clinical audit seeks to enlighten on the three earlier mentioned tumor types as incidental neoplasms of the appendix infrequently found in a routine emergency appendectomy in a single institution, the demographics variants that will increase the risk of the findings and effective recommendations that are based on the findings in relation to the preoperative imaging and surgical techniques....
7 Pages (1750 words) Research Paper
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us