Con Dolor

T. Coraghessan Boyle, whose short story "Sin Dolor" was published in the Oct. 15th 2007 edition of the New Yorker, has devoted many years to teaching. He taught at the high school level after graduating from college and has gone on to be a professor of English at the University of Southern California.

The relationship between Damaso, the boy who feels no pain, and his doctor seems at first to be modeled after a relationship between a teacher and student, a relationship that Boyle is presumably very familiar with. This relationship is juxtaposed with the relationship between the boy and his father, who shamelessly exploits his son's genetic mutation for profit. Despite the subjectivity of the narration (the story is told by the doctor), it became clear to me that the doctor is just as guilty of exploitation as Damaso's father.

Although the narrator does not see it this way, his determination to present Damaso's DNA to the scientific community to "make [his] mark as one of the giants of [his] profession" is even more despicable than the actions of the boy's father. While Damaso views his public displays of his lack of feeling as "[his] duty" to serve his family, there is absolutely no justification for being the doctor's genetically mutated guinea pig.

Damaso spends his entire life surrounded by people who see him as nothing more than a vehicle of profit. Although the boy cannot feel physical pain, it is my impression that he lives the entirety of his short life in a constant state of a more profound pain, the pain he describes as being in his heart.