Hospital Sketches

Content Warning: The section of the guide includes discussion of racism, gender-discrimination, illness, and death.

“I want something to do.

This remark being addressed to the world in general, no one in particular felt it their duty to reply; so I repeated it to the smaller world about me, received the following suggestions, and settled the matter by answering my own inquiry, as people are apt to do when very in earnest.”

Alcott’s opening passage establishes the mood of her book, demonstrating how she combines a playful tone with her earnest desire to serve her community, introducing The Value of Humor in Stressful Times. Her opening statement that she wants “something to do” is received by her family as a generalization, but given her decision to become a nurse, it seems to reflect her desire to act on her convictions about the Abolitionist movement (See: Background).

“As boys going to sea immediately become nautical in speech, walk as if they already had the ‘sea’ legs on, and shiver their timbers on all possible occasions, so I turned military at once, calling my dinner rations, saluted all new comers, and ordered a dress parade that very afternoon.”

The above passage exemplifies Alcott’s wittiness, one of the qualities that won Hospital Sketches praise. One characteristic of her humor is that it is often self-deprecating, as in this passage. She pokes fun at herself immediately adopting a military demeanor, using examples that escalate in their absurdity.

“Much of the Roman matron’s courage had gone into the Yankee matron’s composition, and, in spite of her tears, she would have sent ten sons to the war, had she possessed them, as freely as she sent one daughter, smiling and flapping on the door-step till I vanished, though the eyes that followed me were very dim, and the handkerchief she waved was very wet.”

Here, Alcott describes parting with her mother, Abigail May Alcott, an Abolitionist and suffragist. The passage illustrates two characteristic features of Alcott’s writing. One is her facility in weaving in allusions to the Bible, Roman history and mythology, and more, as she here compares her mother to a “Roman matron” to illustrate her stalwart demeanor. The second is her ability to acknowledge and express deep emotion with a light touch, such as when she describes her mother’s handkerchief as being “very wet,” suggestive of weeping.