Optimism in Anatole Broyards Intoxicated by My Illness Essay -- Intox

In Anatole Broyard's Intoxicated by My Illness, instead of confronting the reality of his illness, he tries to rise above it. From the moment he found out he had been diagnosed with cancer of the prostate, Broyard was composed about it. "He felt something like relief" he says. He figures you have two choices when your life is threatened, "you can turn towards it or away from it" He turned toward it and let the illness make him even more appreciative for being alive. Although he had realized for the first time that he didn't have forever he knows that life itself has a deadline, his might just come a little sooner than other peoples'. His friends found him courageous for thinking this way. Broyard never believed that his perspective of life had anything to do with courage, but instead with his desire to live and move on with his everyday routines. If he still had more time to live, why should he waste it by becoming depressed over the reality of things? In the 1950s, when he tried to talk his friend Jules out of commiting suicide, he began to "sell life to him" by makin...