The story Cancer by Janice Deal is told from third person limited point of view. The author focuses primarily on the one character Janine, to the exclusion of the other characters. We know very little of the other characters, Janine’s coworkers and her male friend, but we are armed with a plethora of information about Janine. We get to know her intimately.
The motivation behind Janine’s lie is founded in the lack of connection and mutual interest that she finds between herself and the other secretaries. She is motivated by her desperate need for a fulfilling relationship. When Janine gets the flu and she calls in to work to explain, she gets her first taste of sympathy and is greedy for more. The lie starts off as all lies do but grows exponentially. The fact that she was
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She supports the lie by researching the symptoms of her cancer and embodies them physically. She loses weight and stops wearing makeup. The secretaries at work are swept up into the lie and they send her notes of encouragement and suggest a cancer support group. There is no stopping her lie and in the end we are left wondering how far she will go.
The reaction Janine gets from her co-workers is sympathy and concern. She sates that although the concern might not be sincere it doesn’t matter. I think the response from the secretaries is very realistic. I would expect to see this type of response to anyone when they were experiencing an illness. It was possible for Janine to deceive the secretaries because all of her circumstances were working in her favor: she was sick and took two days off which was out of character; she was not known well by the group.
Janine is a character in Janice Deal’s, “Cancer” that describes herself as “lacking”. We are not told what she lacks but can assume that it goes beyond confidence and refers to her entire existence. We never get a description of her appearance from any of the other characters in the story but only