On Confessions-Blog 2

Confession, by definition, is “a formal statement admitting that one is guilty of a crime” (Oxford Dictionaries 1).  Thus, confession requires a person to spill out their darkest secrets and confide these thoughts into another individual.  As seen in medical pieces such as “Bless Me Reader For I have Sinned” and “The Final Cut”, the authors, Wear & Jones and Gawande, divulged to their audience the dark side of the medical profession.  By doing so, these authors engaged the reader’s attention and also expressed forms of confessional literature.

                An important distinction to create is the difference between confession and apology.  As defined by Jones, “an apology is an expression of regret – “I am sorry” - but a confession is an admission of fault – “I am sorry because I did something wrong. I sinned” (224).  Based off of this definition, confession is a stronger form of an apology because in confessing, one admits that they did something wrong and is truly remorseful about the sin they committed.

                Confession can be very useful in writing, assuming that an author knows when to appropriately use it.  An appropriate time to use confession in writing is when one is trying to spread a point across (i.e. call attention to certain problems) to their audience.  For example, Gawande confesses in his piece that doctors do not perform enough autopsies and that only autopsies can uncover what actually killed a patient in certain situations.  By doing so, he stresses the point that doctors are becoming lazy and ignorant of many types of unknown diseases.  Another critical time for confession in literature is when an author accounts for a sin so others do not make the same mistake.  In many pieces written by doctors, the doctors admit that they may have not read a test result correctly or downplayed the severity of a patient’s disease.  After the patient suffers a debilitating injury or dies due to the physician’s carelessness, the doctors experience a period of self-reflection, where they acknowledge their fault and tell others about it so the same mistake is not made again.  These two examples are the most appropriate forms in confession in medical literature.

                Confession is not always appropriate in writing though.  It is not really acceptable for an author to confess a mistake that he or she made just so they can feel better about an incident that happened.  For example, it is pointless for a writer to reminisce back to their childhood and describe a time when they might have ate a cookie when their parents told them not to.  In this case, the author is not trying to teach an audience a lesson, or call attention to a problem.  The author is just simply imploring the readers for forgiveness for a trivial incident.  Thus, authors should only use confessional literature for matters that might benefit others and prevent similar mistakes from being repeated or made. 

Works Cited

“Confession." Def. 1. Oxforddictoinaries.com. Web. 5 Feb. 2011. <http://oxforddictionaries.com/search?searchType=dictionary&isWritersAndEditors=true&searchUri=All&q=confession&contentVersion=US>.

Wear, Delese, and Therese Jones. "Bless Me Reader for I HAve Sinned." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 53.2 (2010): 215-30. Print.