Autobiography Of A Face

Unable to truly help her daughter, Lucy’s mother attempts to do so by telling her to be brave and encouraging her not to show pain or fear about her illness and medical treatment. Lucy accepts this and makes every effort to suppress her emotions when she is around her mother, remembering her “first visit to the emergency room” where she had “been praised as good for being brave” which she took as “a formula for gaining acceptance” (30). Symbolically, this is highlighted by her attempts to not cry, with her again focusing on the time when she was “courageous and didn’t cry and thus was good” (21). She develops this into the most important component of her adopted code of conduct, that “[o]ne had to be good. One must never complain or struggle. One must never, under any circumstances, show fear and, prime directive above all, one must never, ever cry” (29-30). Time after time, she fails to stop herself from crying before, near the end of her two and half years of treatment, she finally stops weeping during chemotherapy. However, this comes at a cost. While her mother praises her “for being so good,” Lucy’s repeated efforts to deny her need to engage with her emotions, and release her pain and fear through crying, leave her feeling “absolutely nothing” and “only a void” (137).