“Insignificant Gestures”

“Insignificant Gestures” is a short story written by Jo Cannon in 2007. The story deals with the narrator’s experiences as a young expatriate doctor in Africa and how they have influenced him and his life. The conditions in Africa when the narrator worked there where very rough and characterised by poverty. The only consolation in his otherwise gloomy everyday life was Celia, the native servant working for him. Celia shared his passion for drawing and lit up his existence. When she by an unfortunately accident dies, the narrator is crushed and filled with guilt. To forget about the events in Africa he retrains as psychiatrist since he cannot bear to witness another death.

The narrator of the story is a first person non-omniscient speaker who tells the story in past tense. The story is composed of a series of flashbacks which the narrator is looking back upon from the “present” where he is now working as a psychiatrist. All the flashbacks take place in Africa and are memories of Celia and his life living there.
Celia Dimba, the narrator’s housekeeper, is a native African. Even though the narrator is against having a servant, based on the immoral symbolism associated with them, he is convinced by the argument, that Celia’s family’s wellbeing depends on her. Celia is never in any kind of hard labour which is partly because of the narrator’s simple life and long working hours but also because of the fact that, he feels ashamed of the conservative way of living in Africa. In the light of this, he is very friendly towards Celia and treats her with respect. He grows accustomed to her and slowly starts to enjoy her presence when he discovers that she shares his passion for drawing. “For an hour she was completely engrossed. And so it went on, month after month, with no words exchanged between us, no judgements or calculations.” (page 3, lines 44-45). Celia reminds him of the little freedom he is granted every evening when she is drawing next to him, this is the time where he is able free his mind from the horrible things he witnesses at work. Their relationship never becomes physical, it is strictly based on mutual respect for each other, and no words are needed to reflect this, the presence of the of each other is enough and sufficient. Celia is his companion. The relationship between them gets even stronger when Celia one day starts to protect the narrator from cockroaches. “The carnage appalled me, but I was secretly touched.” (page 3 lines 69-70).
When The narrator fails to safe Celia, the passion and freedom he felt when drawing, dies away with her. On the one hand, he feels sorry for the loss of his beloved Celia and their relationship, because she was his source of happiness. On the other hand, he blames himself for her death, because he knows that his relationship with Celia was what in the end killed her. In other words, if the narrator instead of reacting emotionally, on the fact that, she had been beaten up by her boyfriend, he would have been able to examine her like a professional. Then he would have discovered the meningitis symptoms in time and then given her the proper treatment to safe her life. On top of that, he also caused the imprisonment of a young and innocent boy. His error of judgement destroyed two lives and now he has to live with it.

The specific information received about the narrator is very limited, although, there is an overflow of adjectives and verbs, which make some descriptions very detailed. The reader has to put the information and meaning together by themselves based on the narrator’s respective thoughts and actions. Whilst, in Africa the narrator believes that he can make a difference despite of the horrible conditions. You get the impression that he is an upright man, who follows the principles of right and wrong, he wants what is best for others, but after the unfortunately accident with Celia he becomes emotionally enclosed and filled with guilt. “I would do things differently. But you don’t get second chances.” (page 2 lines 11-12). To avoid the same error of judgement, he ironically retrains as a psychiatrist with the preference of examining other people’s mental health instead of his own. However, the error in Africa was not at all the narrator’s fault due to the extreme circumstances he was exposed to. The system did not work optimally and on account of this, terrible things happened. These things still hunt the narrator in the form of post-traumatic stress. Furthermore, could these experiences also have been contributory to his mental enclosure, it was too much for him to endure.

A sort of error like this, would never have happened in industrialised countries like Britain and in the story there is a constant contrast between the two places; Africa and Britain. The environments are totally different from each other and to stress that, Jo Cannon describes the patients’ conditions respectively in Africa and Britain in the beginning of the text. About the conditions in Africa Cannon uses descriptions as: “to smell blood” (page 2, line 1), “odour of starvation” (page 2, line 2) “human suffering” (page 2, lines 2-3) and “another death” (page 2, line 3) on the contrary to this, she uses these descriptions of the conditions in Britain:” die quietly” (page 2, line 4), “family besides them and a syringe driver” (page 2, line 4), “float in opium dreams” (page 2, line 5). These contrasts are nearly absurd, but despite of the awful conditions in Africa the narrator managed to find a source of happiness, Celia, however, when she dies he loses himself.

In the end the narrator finally opens up after years of supressing important emotions and feelings and everything come bursting out, but at the end of the day, you get the impression that it happens at the right place at the right time. A woman’s hand at the back of a chair and both Celia’s and the African nurse’s gesture of crushing a cockroach, makes the narrator realize that all these small insignificant gestures actually are beginnings of something much more important and precious.