Part II: Full Moon Friday the Thirteenth In Atul Gawande’s book Complications, Gawande discusses how superstitions play a role in a hospital environment. To start his story of superstitions in a hospital, Gawande gives a couple quick examples of people who strongly believe in superstitions. Later, Gawande conveys to the read how he felt when deciding to volunteer to work on Friday the 13th. Following the period of volunteering for the infamous day, he creates a sense of worry by using pauses and short sentences to describe the sequence of events that unfolded as he discovered why his coworkers did not volunteer for that Friday. In the introduction, Gawande gives a couple examples of famous individuals that believe in superstitions. In his examples, …show more content…
On page 110 of Full Moon Friday the Thirteenth, Gawande describes how all of the residents avoided volunteering for Friday the thirteenth. The use of short sentences and commas helps the reader follow along chronologically what was happening at the moment but more importantly these pauses add tension to the reading. While reading what Gawande is describing the surgical residents sitting around the table the pauses indicate some sort of hesitation. Hesitation is surrounded around the free infamous day, Friday the thirteenth. It appeared as though there is a significant amount of tension surrounding who is going to be forced to volunteer on that day. Following Gawande volunteering for Friday the thirteenth, the tension is released when a fellow surgical resident gives Gawande the advice to “Rest up. You’re going to be in for a busy night.” Although this advice is not reassuring for Gawande, the other residents seem to be …show more content…
Similar to the previous paragraph the pauses created by the commas and hyphens create a sense of worry in Gawande. Gawande’s fellow resident’s advice prompted him to research as to why all the residents avoided that one specific date. “And for a moment—only a moment, mind you—I felt my confidence slip.” The pauses create emphasis on the specific phases indicating to the reader that Gawande is worried that the night is going be tiresome. This prompts him to look for scientific evidence to subdue this doubt that was created by his fellow surgical