Characters
Johnny is an example of a truly valiant person. He is selfless in his hope that he will not cause too much pain for others. In Johnny's last few weeks on earth, he still hungers for knowledge. He does not give up because of his illness. He still has hopes and dreams intact.
His parents are also notable for the remarkable degree of communication and care they managed to share with each other and their son when his diagnosis was confirmed, and on to the end of his life. Although by the time of his diagnosis they had divorced and were living separately, they transcended distance, time, and whatever history had led them to separate in order to discuss carefully and kindly the options, care, and ongoing prognosis for his life.
Frances Gunther, his mother, takes care to have conversations with him about the ultimate issues of life and suffering as addressed in many cultures worldwide, making spiritual writings accessible to him and impressing on him the value of his thoughts and the effect of his actions on others.
Johnny's character is inspirational to not only his parents, but his caregivers as well, who employ sometimes radical treatments to try and save his life. Among them are Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield and Dr. Max Gerson, whose Gerson diet was used.
Wilder Penfield wrote a letter to his family after his death saying, "for such there must be an immortality which we who tinker at the body may guess at but not understand."
Read more about this topic: Death Be Not Proud (book)
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life—the first twenty years of it—had about them something semi-fictitious.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“Of the other characters in the book there is, likewise, little to say. The most endearing one is obviously the old Captain Maksim Maksimich, stolid, gruff, naively poetical, matter-of- fact, simple-hearted, and completely neurotic.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The major men
That is different. They are characters beyond
Reality, composed thereof. They are
The fictive man created out of men.
They are men but artificial men.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)