Story
In the book, Gunther records the true story of his teenage son's struggle to overcome a brain tumor, and his ultimate death at the age of seventeen. The story chronicles the period beginning when Johnny experiences the first symptoms of the tumor shortly after being given a clean bill of health. Johnny's complaint of a stiff neck one day leads doctors to operate, thus leading to the discovery of a tumor the size of an orange, according to a doctor.
The book, published in 1949, records in simple detail all the events and tensions that made up the months that Johnny Gunther fought for his life and his parents sought to help him through recourse to every medical possibility then known. When it appears that Johnny has finally overcome the tumor, he dies of a cerebral hemorrage, which occurs the day of a medical checkup - the day before he and his family are to leave on vacation.
Read more about this topic: Death Be Not Proud (book)
Famous quotes containing the word story:
“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
“One story recounts that a Tennessean, after a single day in the then almost impenetrable tangle of cypress, briars, and canebreaks, pestered by myriads of mosquitoes, and bogged in the heavy gumbo mud, declared: “Arkansas is not part of the world for which Jesus Christ died—I want none of it.””
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)