Cierra Winkler Barrett 1

Composition - AOL5

October 27, 2017

“Stripped for Parts” Review Questions

Subject and Purpose

1. What did Kahn expect to see at an organ transplant?

When she arrived at the hospital, the author had anticipated the good part of an organ

transplant surgery. She had thought that the procedure would be quick and concise, ending in the

saving of a life. She had not, however, considered the more gruesome side of the transplant -

taking the organs from a dead patient.

2. Why does Kahn get on a plane with the heart and kidneys at the end of the story?

The kidneys were being shipped to another city hundreds of miles away anyway, and the

heart was apparently unfit to go to its original destination, so it went to a biosupply company

instead. Although not explained in the story, I suspect Kahn got on the plane because she had to

go to home.

Strategy and Audience

1. Why might Kahn have titled the essay “Stripped for Parts”? What associations do you have

with that phrase?

The essay’s name likely budded from its parallelism to the topic. After all, the dead man

was “stripped” of his own “parts”, his organs removed in order to benefit someone else. This is

similar to the customary use of the phrase, which refers to a car’s parts being removed once it

had stopped working, so that certain components might help in the fixing of another car.
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2. How effective is the opening paragraph? Does it make you want to keep reading?

The first paragraph of the essay outlines the setting. She begins by describing the

television programs broadcasting in the dead patient’s hospital room, and the time, four o’clock

in the morning. Her description of the nurses being “worried about the dead man’s health” are

verging on humorous, and certainly catch the eye.

3. What could Kahn assume about her audience?

The author could likely assume that her audience did not know much more about organ

transplants than she had. The informative, yet captivating, style of her essay probably

enlightened many people to the sad part of the procedure.

Vocabulary and Style

1. How is the story told or narrated to the reader? How else might the story have been told?

This is a very broad question. The essay was written in first person subjective form, with

the author opening her thoughts and feelings to the reader. The way she relates the actual story is

in a very interesting style. She endeavors to truly capture and hold the reader’s attention

throughout the story and uses her wording and perspective to that end. The work is classified as a

process, but could have also fallen under the descriptive or narrative divisions.

2. How would you describe the tone of the essay?

In my opinion, the tone is one of appreciation for the doctors who perform organ

transplants, and sadness for the fact that it requires taking one life for the preservation of another.

The author treats the surgery as an almost primitive procedure, as well as for the physical

transportation of the organs from one place to another.

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3. Be prepared to define the following words: culminating (paragraph 3), provenance (3),

evisceration (4), viscera (4), anachronism (7), sotto voce (10), elfin (11), entropy (12),

debilitating (19), morbid (19), slough (22), hyperechoic (24), ensconced (24).

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the word culminating refers to

something reaching a climax. The provenance of something is its place of origin. To eviscerate

something is to disembowel it, while the viscera are the organism’s internal organs, specifically

in the abdomen. The next word, anachronism, is a thing that belongs to a period other than the

one in which it exists. If someone says something sottto voce, he or she is speaking in a quiet

voice. Next, the word elfin describes something that is small and delicate, but often strangely

charming. The idea of entropy refers to a decline into disorder, and the word debilitating is

something that weakens someone or something. Watching a debilitating process would be quite

morbid, or disturbing and unpleasant. Next, a slough is defined as being a swamp, and the use of

the word in the essay would refer to the swampy mess of the intestines that the doctors sorted

through in the body. The next word, hyperechoic, means brighter than normal. Finally, the word

ensconced is a state of being settled into a safe or comfortable place.

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“Stripped for Parts”: The Condensed Response

I believe that Kahn’s purpose for writing her essay was to inform her readers of the tragic

and primitive side of an organ transplant surgery. She likely wanted to enlighten them to the sad

truth that sacrifice is required on the part of an organ donor in order to help someone else. The

author also probably wanted to remind her readers of the fact that many people do not receive

organs at all because of complications in surgery or the body part not being a good fit for its

recipient. She made clear the potential tragedies on both sides of the precarious surgeries, as well

as a few harmful circumstances that could ruin the organs in between.

Kahn made use of the three rhetorical appeals to help her accomplish her goals as well.

Her use of ethos was revealed throughout the essay as she made clear her qualifications and the

credibility of her perspective, seeing as how she viewed the procedure herself. Pathos was

utilized to appeal to her readers’ sense of emotion when she described the harsh realities of organ

removal and transferral, while logos was sprinkled throughout the story as the author pointed out

the logic used in the procedure, and in the strangely primeval transporting of the organs to other

patients in need. I believe Kahn used ethos, pathos, and logos successfully, as she held my

attention and sympathy throughout the story, and heavily influenced me in my decision to be an

organ donor.

Although it was categorized as process writing, “Stripped for Parts” is not the typical

archetype of the category. It is not a step-by-step description, but a much more detailed and

emotional account of organ transplant, ridiculous as that may seem. One notable distinction is the

fact that the essay is not written in third-person, removed from the operation, but a first-person
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direct narration. This automatically causes the story to feel more personal to its audience, and as

a result they are more open to considering its message. However, it is a process essay in the

sense that the author does explain the process of the surgery that removes the vital organs from a

deceased donor. She does recount the long, stressful hours of surgery and the risky state of the

organs that must be treated so carefully. Kahn does outline the exhaustion that is thrust upon the

doctors and nurses who extricate the necessary body parts and pack them up to be shipped away,

as well as the looming possibilities of all that could go awry. It is for these reasons that I consider

the essay an example of process writing, though still a potentially multimodal paper.

Kahn’s writing is extremely dynamic. As stated above, her story “Stripped for Parts”

could also be considered a personal narrative, with her storytelling writing style. The essay could

be classified as a descriptive work. After all, the author heaps mounds of details and observations

of the subject during the procedure often to a gruesome point. This is illustrated in areas like

paragraph 22, as she writes about the heart beating: “…I can see the heart, strangely yellow,

beating inside a cave of red muscle. It doesn't beat forward, as I expect, but knocks anxiously

back and forth like a small animal trapped in a cage.” This work is a multifaceted one, and

covers many different categories of work with great finesse and admirable writing.e