The first thing that made me really love War Dances, was Alexie, and his way of being witty while writing. He (or his character) was able to infuse humor throughout the story, which made it an easy read. Even though he was writing about some things that were difficult-like his father’s surgery and death, his hearing loss, and his potential tumor. I could really envision the scene that he had created with his father in the hospital bed, post-surgery. He says “my father was exposed-his decades of poor health and worse decisions are illuminated- on white sheets in a white hallway under white lights”(6). I could see the scene that Alexie laid out: the busy nurses and doctors, the patients who, after their surgeries and procedures were left longing for a sense of comfort. As his father was longing comfort from a blanket in the suffering post-surgery, all the nurses could provide to him was a thin, white blanket. Just like his father needed comfort, the narrator did as well. Suffering through partial hearing loss and through the scare of potential tumors pushing up on his brain, all the narrator needed was comfort…he needed a good, un-thinned “blanket”. Even after his doctor was giving him “thin blankets”- telling him that “Hey, you’re ok”, and that he is just “obsessing”- he still felt “distant from the world-from my wife and my sons, from my mother and my siblings, from all my friends.”(34). People yearn for comfort, and all these stories that the narrator chose to say, starting with his father and ending with his own experience, left him needing a sense of comfort from the world.
Interesting connections between the “thin blanket” in his father’s situation and the main character’s doctor’s “thin blanket” response. I think you are right when you say that the main character needed a “sense of comfort from the world.” This is often the case. Patients aren’t always looking for the drug, the surgery, the solution, but they are often needing comfort.