“Echolalia,” Dr. Hayes called it. “Perseveration. He’s imitating what he hears.”
Karin would not be dimmed. “If he can say a word, it must mean something, right?”
“Ah! You’re pushing up against questions neurology can’t answer yet.”
This passage was one of the few parts so far of the reading that made me actually sympathize with the characters. The reason it did so was because it was the most realistic portion yet, the portion I could actually imagine real people hear everyday. There is so much we still don’t know about the brain yet, and in situations like the ones that Karin is experiencing with her brother Mark, one of the most disappointing and shattering things one may hear is that the doctors in charge of saving their lives don’t know enough about the brain or the patient’s condition to actually help. I imagine that millions of patients diagnosed and their caretakers and loved ones must feel the heart-gripping hopefulness that Karin feels, that any little word must meet something, some sign of progress, some clue that their loved one will soon become the person they used to be.
I liked this passage too, Daniela. I definitely agree that this scene makes the reader feel for Karin, being a good example of how trauma not only affects the person who has been most debilitated (e.g., Mark from his accident) but also heavily affects their loved ones (e.g., Karin). But I also felt a lot of sympathy for the characters prior to this scene, even at the very beginning when Karin is driving and retrospecting on her family’s past. I think there’s a lot of guilt and trying to grapple with causality, and an individual feeling the immense burden of possible implications of their own actions (the whole, “was there something else I could have done?” feeling).