Here’s what I wrote about Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder for my profile class.
Choice of Point of View
The most engaging sections of Tracy Kidder’s profile of Paul Farmer occur when the author is on the page, offering his own reflections on the complexities of his subject. By using a first person narrative and inserting himself into the action, Kidder skillfully guides the readers on the journey of figuring out Paul Farmer and his obsessions. The first person point of view allows the author to expose the complexity of his own relationship with Farmer, which adds another dimension to the narrative, creating tension points where there otherwise wouldn’t be any while strengthening the ones that another point of view could provide.
In the first chapter, Kidder describes how his first meeting with Farmer didn’t impress him. “I remembered thinking that Captain Carroll and Dr. Farmer made a mismatched pair, and that Farmer suffered in the comparison…Next to the solider, he looked skinny and pale, and for all of that he struck me as bold, indeed down-right cocky.” (4) He tells us that after that event, he didn’t spend much time thinking about the doctor. It isn’t until the two men end up on the same flight and then have dinner together that Kidder notice that there is something unusual about Farmer. “He had described himself as ‘a poor people’s doctor,’ but he didn’t quite fit my preconception of such a person…What struck me that evening was how happy he seemed to be with his life.” (7) Because Farmer doesn’t act as expected, Kidder is intrigued and this is the first time the reader glimpses Farmer’s complexity. What makes it powerful is that the reader’s experiences of Farmer appear to happen at exactly the same moment that Kidder has his insights.
As Kidder spends more time with Farmer and realizes how many facets there are to this man, the reader too understands why this story is a book and not a magazine article. “I felt I was in the presence of a different person from the one I’d been chatting with a moment ago, someone whose ambitions I hadn’t yet begun to fathom.” (16) In first person, Kidder is able show how fierce the impact of interacting with Paul Farmer can be. His honesty when describing the conflicting emotions experienced in his relationship with Farmer solicits empathy from the reader. “I’d feel sorry that so many Haitian children died of measles…but I’d also feel that I could never be sorry enough to satisfy him. I’d end up annoyed at Farmer for a time, the way one gets annoyed at others when one has done them a disservice.” (29) Through first person point of view, Kidder shows that it is human to recent what at this point appears to be the perfect Farmer. It is therefore okay for the reader to be irritated with Farmers altruism, let go of it, and instead pay attention to the larger issues that Kidder is using the story of Farmer to draw attention to: the epidemics of AIDS and TB in third world countries, the relationship between poverty and disease, the intricacies of world health politics. If the reader isn’t ready to let go of his or her negative feelings quite so fast, Kidder’s first person guidance gently forces the point again later on in the book, “…I’d begun to be relieved of the shallower discomforts I sometimes felt in his company…Farmer wasn’t put on this earth to make anyone feel comfortable.” (210)
The sections in the book that describes how Farmer grew up, his academic career, how he relates to his family, friends and business partners, as well as the description of how Partners in Health came to be is told mostly in third person. In these sections, Kidder provides detailed scene descriptions and direct quotes from conversations between a variety of people and Farmer, research he gathered from numerous interviews. Although rich with colorful details, the story loses some of its focus here. Its direction is no longer obvious, an effect caused by the absence of Kidder’s brilliant first person guidance.
When Kidder steps back onto the page, his relationship with Farmer has matured. “…at some point—I’m not sure exactly when—I realized that I’d become inclined to hold Farmer to a higher standard than I did most people, including myself. And, as a rule, to see him in action was to excuse him.” (153) By showing the reader how he himself experienced this, Kidder enforces the point of how everyone in Farmer’s circle—family, friends, business partners—has learned to forgive the doctor for any hurt feelings he causes. He’s also become more invested in the friendship with the doctor. “He greeted every one in his wide circle with blushing elation. I was no less immune than most people to his warmth. Now he seemed to be withdrawing it, and I felt the chill.” (207) Here the first person narrative allows the author to show his vulnerability, hooking the reader in a way that another point of view would not accomplish.
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Towards the end of the story, Kidder is so close to Farmer that he can tell what his mood is by the tone of voice the doctor uses. “I don’t want to nettle him…But I recognize his tone of voice. He’s not really irritated. He’s just delivering a preamble, warming up to his argument.” (287) Because of the first person narrative, the reader gets to know Farmer almost as well as the author does. This point of view creates a more powerful story by making it not just about Paul Farmer and his passions, but one about how the author developed a close friendship with his subject, which exposes more of the complexity of Farmer while lending more authority to the author’s reflection.
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A note that may be of interest:
After completing this assignment, I noticed that the Readers Guide at the end of my copy of the book states that “Kidder has never before written a book in which he made himself a character.” (122) This made me even more curious about why exactly he chose to use first person. I did some research (i.e Googled it) and found a Q&A section with Kidder in the Mountains Beyond Mountains area on the Random House website (www.randomhouse.com). When asked how this book differed from other projects, Kidder answered:
“…Farmer is less ordinary than anyone I’ve ever met. This is the main reason I wrote this book in the first person, something I’d done in only one other book. After I’d spent a lot of time with Farmer, I began to feel that altruism was plausible after all, indeed maybe even normal. But the sacrifices he’s made aren’t usual, and I knew that readers of my book would need an everyman, someone a lot less virtuous than Farmer, to interpret him and to make him believable. Someone to testify, in effect, that this guy is for real, and someone who could register the occasional discomfort that anyone would feel in such a person’s company.”
So, what he said.