Excerpt from When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi
(focus on purpose)

The following narrative excerpt was written by Paul Kalanithi prior to his death in March of 2015. Published posthumously, When
Breath Becomes Air chronicles his experience with death both as a neurosurgeon and as a patient diagnosed with stage IV lung
cancer.

Read the passage carefully, focusing on clues about the purpose of Kalanithi’s message in the passage. As you read, highlight
these clues, considering HOW he conveys the purpose of sharing his story. Be sure to add a comment in the margin with
each highlighted portion, explaining how Kalanithi aims to modify his audience’s perspective and why. Be specific! Then,
answer the questions that follow, using strong purpose verbs in your analysis.
Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me There’s a feeling of openness. As a surgeon, focused on a
further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next patient in the OR, I might have found the position of the
recurrence--and, eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, clock’s hands arbitrary, but I never thought them meaningless.
but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two Now the time of day means nothing, the day of the week
responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an scarcely more. Medical training is relentlessly future-oriented,
impulse to frantic activity: to “live life to its fullest,” to travel, all about delayed gratification; you’re always thinking about
to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the what you’ll be doing five years down the line. But now I don’t
cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time; it know what I’ll be doing five years down the line. I may be
also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can dead. I may not be. I may be healthy. I may be writing. I don’t
squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races. And even know. And so it’s not all that useful to spend time thinking
if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoiselike approach. I about the future--that is, beyond lunch.
plod, I ponder. Some days, I simply persist. Verb conjugation has become muddled, as well. Which
If time dilates when one moves at high speeds, does it is correct: “I am a neurosurgeon,” “I was a neurosurgeon,” or
contract when one moves barely at all? It must: the days have “I had been a neurosurgeon before and will be again”? Graham
shortened considerably. Greene once said that life was lived in the first twenty years
With little to distinguish one day from the next, time and the remainder was just reflection. So what tense am I living
has begun to feel static. In English, we use the word time in in now? Have I proceeded beyond the present tense and into
different ways: “The time is two forty-five” versus “I’m going the past perfect? The future tense seems vacant and, on others’
through a tough time.” These days, time feels less like the lips, jarring. A few months ago, I celebrated my fifteenth
ticking clock and more like a state of being. Languor settles in. college reunion at Stanford and stood out on the quad, drinking
a whiskey as a pink sun dipped below the horizon; when old
friends called out parting promises--”We’ll see you at the
twenty-fifth!”--it seemed rude to respond with “Well...probably
not.”
Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the
only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are
either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the
past. The future, instead of the ladder towards the goals of life,
flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the
vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described hold so little
interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.
Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: our
daughter, Cady. I hope I’ll live long enough that she has some
memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought
I could leave her a series of letters--but what would they say? I Questions begin on next page
don’t know what this girl will be like when she is fifteen; I
don’t even know if she’ll take to the nickname we’ve given
her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is
all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the
improbable, is all but past.
That message is simple:
When you come to one of many moments in life where
you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what
you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I
pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated
joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does
not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time,
right now, that is an enormous thing.
 Name: Class Period:
1. What is Kalanithi's message/purpose in this excerpt? What does he hope to accomplish with the text? Use your strong purpose verbs list to help you craft
your response (be sure to phrase the purpose as “to + purpose verb + clarifying statement). Support and explain your answer using at least one specific piece
of evidence from the text.
His message is to forbid thinking about the future and live life in the moment. He hopes to accomplish the text to be public and his daughter to
remember her as he says, “Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: our daughter, Cady. I hope I’ll live long enough that she has some
memory of me.” He wishes that his daughter remembers him after he passes.

2. How does Kalanithi go about conveying his message/achieving his purpose in this passage? Specify at least one example of how he modifies the rhetoric/
communication (in other words, how do you know what his message/purpose is?). Then, support and explain your answer using at least one specific piece of
evidence from the text.
One way he achieves his purpose in the passage is by using metaphors like when he says, “It is a tired hare who now races”. He refers to himself
as a hare who is physically and mentally exhausted from his disease and has to finish the game of life by persevering. He also describes his
devastating situation when he says, “In English, we use the word time in different ways: “The time is two forty-five” versus “I’m going through
a tough time.”” He uses a type of alliteration to distinguish between the 2 “times” to emphasize his struggle with his life.