When Breath Becomes Air

Autobiography

The book, When Breath Becomes Air is an autobiography about a guy named Paul Kalanithi. Paul lived in Kingman Arizona and at the time was 36 years old. He had a girlfriend named Lucy and they were both working towards becoming doctors. Paul had less than a year of residency to go before becoming a neurosurgeon when he was diagnosed with cancer. When he found out he had cancer his whole life changed. Throughout the book it talks about the changes he went through and his end of life journey. Paul is a lot like the character Mrs. Dubose from To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee. Mrs. Dubose was an older lady going through the same sort of things that Paul was. They both have a lot of similarities while going through

Pauls goal was to make his daughter know how much he loved her. When he was first diagnosed with cancer him and his girlfriend decided to have a kid together. He already knew that when his daughter was born he had a limited amount of time with her. So he spent all the time he could with her before he died to prove to her once she grew up how much he loved her. He also had the goal of finishing his schooling. He had been working towards that goal for a very long time and wanted to achieve it. He had less than a year left and even though it didn’t matter anymore if he finished or not he still wanted to, so he could take pride in making it through all those years of school. He did achieve both of the goals he set before he died. He graduated from residiancy and made sure his daughter knew how much he loved her. The same thing happened with Mrs. Dubose. She set a goal of becoming free from the drugs she was using. She was put on morphine to stop the pain from her illness. However, she became addicted to it which is something she wanted to change before she died. She didn’t want to die the weak way by continuing with her addiction problem, so she decided to stop taking the pills. After a while of her slowly stopping to take them she got used to being free from them and beat her addiction before she died. Both Paul and Mrs. Debose set goals before they died and they were both able to achieve them which makes them