TOW #20- IRB 1

      Jonathan Franzen's, How To Be Alone, is a collection of essays comprised of memories from throughout his lifetime.  However, memories are exactly what is absent in his essay, "My Father's Brain."  Throughout this piece, Franzen includes portions of his mother's letters and scientific fact about the human brain in order to share the story of his father's decline.
     A lack of communication between Jonathan Franzen's parents did  not restrain his mother from stating her opinion.  She voiced her feelings in years of letters that were sent to Franzen in the decades before his father's death.  His decline in health due to Alzheimer's disease was sent in the form of updates from, "he was in the bathroom shaving at 2:30 AM," to an actual copy of the brain autopsy report.  By including these postage excerpts and experiences in his essay, Franzen is able to show his audience the situation through the eyes of his mother.  Their marriage, defined as a failure, set the essay up with an interesting perspective.  His mother's point of view woven in with Franzen's own outlook on his father's disease was able to show the lack of emotional connection in his parents' relationship.  While most people would suffer seeing a loved one die of Alzheimer's, his mother seemed to take it lightly, sending the news along with a Mr. Goodbar and a Valentine.  Since the poor relationship was such a main part of the essay, the absence of her letters would result in a missing element to the essay; the story would be flat, from only one perspective.
     Another perspective that Franzen incorporates is from a scientific standpoint, with facts about the human brain.  He is able to draw parallels between research and personal experience that makes for an enhancement in the essay.  One piece of evidence that he constantly refers back to is that a memory is "a set of sensory images and semantic data" that "are seldom the exclusive property of one particular memory."   Franzen then follows this up with the broken down memory of Valentine's morning, and his association between the words "Mr. Goodbar" and "brain autopsy."  Not only do scientific definitions add a sense of credibility and clarity for the audience, but it allows for a comparison between literal and figurative meaning.  Franzen took these factual statements founded in science and compared his own, which were solely founded through personal experience.  With this inclusion, he is able to truly show the differences between what Alzheimers disease looks like to an outsider, and what it looks like to him.
     In the essay "My Father's Brain" found in How To Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen, he uses portions of his mother's letters and scientific definitions about the brain in order to effectively tell the story about his father's decline.  Franzen gives his audience an inside look on the destruction of Alzheimers disease not only on the human brain that falls victim, but to the surrounding people as well.