Gawande, ?The Itch?

Discussion questions: Gawande, "The Itch" (2008)

Major typos: 72R "Mat" should be "that"; 73L "dear" should be "clear.

1. What idea(s) in the essay did you find most interesting? Did anything about the way those sections were written help create or increase your interest?

2. When and how in this essay does Gawande use case histories in story form? What do they add to the essay? How does he move between them and the more informational parts of his essay?

3. What new theories are covered in this essay? How does Gawande make each intelligible to a lay reader? Find one place where he needs to explain some body of knowledge, like an experiment and its results or the history behind some treatment. What writing strategies does he use? (E.g., how much detail? Any analogies? Does he stop to define terms?)

4. How does Gawande move from itching to other sensations without making his essay feel disconnected or tangential? Would the essay be stronger if he reserved the other topics for another essay?

5. How long are Gawande's average paragraphs? How long are his typical sentences?