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Zain Salman

White

AP Language and Composition

21 November 2020

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Family

In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot uses several instances of pathos,

which appeals to the emotions of the reader, relate to how some people understand some

situations more than others, but the author intends the readers to look back upon their views and

re-examine the situation that is given to them. Rebecca Skloot shows several examples of pathos

by appealing to reader’s emotions such as guilt or hatred. For example, . For example, Henrietta

Lacks developed an unfamiliar cancer that is new to the medical world. At first, the cancer

affects Henrietta a little, so doctors at John Hopkins Hospital took the cancer lightly and gave

Henrietta medications. However, Henrietta’s cancer worsened, and the doctors start to pay more

attention to it as Henrietta’s condition worsened. Skloot quotes a few doctors, “Her doctors tried

in vain to ease her suffering, ‘Demerol does not seem to touch the pain,’ one wrote, so he tried

morphine. ‘This doesn’t help too much either’” (Skloot 66). In this example, a feeling of panic

forms as none of the medications that the doctors are giving Henrietta are not working. The

appeal is intended to create an effect where the audience starts to lose hope for Henrietta because

the doctors are unable to do anything mainly because they did not communicate with the family

as much as possible. As a result of the panic that the author is creating, the effect of the appeal on

the meaning is to show that certain bad things can happen simply because of a lack of

communication and unison between people. The Lack’sFurthermore, people expect doctors from
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John Hopkins Hospital, a renowned world-leading hospital, to solve Henrietta’s cancer, but even

John Hopkins Hospital could not solve the problem with Henrietta’s cancer. Because of the

struggle doctor’s are facing, the author presents an argument that the Lacks family deserves more

recognition because of the struggle that Henrietta Lacks and her family went through because

people were so focused on the cancer that they did not pay much attention to Henrietta or her

family. Towards the middle of the book after the death of Henrietta Lacks, Joe Lacks, one of

Henrietta’s children, was greatly affected when Ethel and her husband moved into the Lacks’

household. Ethel wanted to destroy the family because she was jealous of Henrietta. Rebecca

Skloot describes how Ethel treated the Lacks’ family when she moved in. Skloot states, “She

made him stand in a dark basement, corner on one foot, nose pressed to the wall, dirt filling his

eyes…Joe grew into the meanest, angriest child the Lacks’ had ever known.”(Skloot 112). Skloot

uses imagery to show the cruel behavior of Ethel’s interaction with Henrietta’s family. In

addition, Skloot describes Ethel’s behavior towards Joe because Ethel’s behavior would be

considered inhumane. Like the first quote, the author argues to support the Lacks family because

Skloot thinks it is important to understand the perspective of Henrietta’s family, which received

the most attention because Henrietta Lacks acquired the cancer. Though they did get attention

from the public on the cancer, Henrietta Lacks, specifically, was not acknowledged for helping

the world lead to new solutions to finding a cure to cancer. Not only do the events in the middle

of the book appeal to the theme and pathos, but the ending of the book, also created an emotional

feeling. After interacting with the family multiple times and gaining their trust, the author finally

talked to Joe, also known as Zakariya, and she shows him the cells that Langauer, a researcher

who visited Deborah, wanted to show Henrietta’s children. The entire family except for Day,

who became sick, agreed to go to John Hopkins lab to see Henrietta’s cells. The family was
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introduced to a researcher at John Hopkins, and he showed them a small flask of Henrietta’s

cells. Deborah seemed to like the researcher from John Hopkins Hospital because he

acknowledged that it was the hospitals fault for the tensions that the family has faced. Rebecca

Skloot quotes Deborah Lacks, “As Zakariya and Christoph walked away, she raised the vial and

touched it to her lips. ‘You’re famous,’ she whispered, ‘Just nobody knows it’” (Skloot 263).

The pathos in the example creates a feeling of sympathy and empathy because the quote can

create a feeling of understanding, but it can also create a feeling of pity towards Deborah. A

feeling of understanding shows that the audience is able to get a rough feeling of Deborah’s pain,

and the effect creates a feeling of pity for Deborah for the things she had to go through because

people have not experienced it themselves. At the same time, Deborah was surprised by a person

from John Hopkins acknowledging the mistakes the hospital made. This ties to the meaning that

even the Lacks family did not know the perspectives of some people, so they should have also

taken the time to understand what the people thought of Henrietta’s family and suffering.

Rebecca Skloot uses the samean argument throughout the book, where people should take the

time to understand the background of a person and the pain he or she had to go through before

reacting to something that someone did that seemed unreasonable. Therefore, it is important to

look back on what others view, then people can look at a situation again and provide their view

on it.
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Work Cited

Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Broadway Books, 2010.