to the friend who did not save my life

to the friend who did not save my life

Although typically used to describe an aversion to or dislike of foreigners, the term xenophobia refers to a fear of that which is unknown or different to oneself.   It is because of this supposed difference that Xenophobic individuals believe that their target is worthy of discrimination. One main object of this phobia is a population group present within a society. Although they are often immigrants, xenophobia may also be targeted to a group that has been present for centuries.   When the AIDS virus broke out in the early 1980’s, misconceptions and fears regarding the illness became an epidemic as well. Due to a lack of general knowledge, personal attitudes toward the infected groups became hostile. In essence, the world became a xenophobic battleground. Offering a testament to this environment, author Herve Guibert   presents to the friend who did not save my life, a heroic first-person account of the remaining days of his life as an AIDS victim.   In one section, the narrator tells of his encounters with similarly fated patients both within the sanction of their Day hospital and outside on the streets of Italy. Through his mastery of the elements of tone, narrative, and simile, Guibert ruthlessly exposes the nature of society for AIDS victims as an isolated realm of secrecy, degradation, and neglect.
As the narrator takes in the scene within the waiting room at Spallanzani Day Hospital, he describes “a living corpse, who hasn’t any family to accompany him, who’s now reduced to shuttling back and forth between hospitalization and homelessness with a big suitcase he’s too weak to carry anymore”(215). His tone here is lonesome. By describing a man without family and without a home, he paints a picture of societal neglect and purposeful isolation of those infected by the virus.   Readers are able to gather a sense of desperation by the man that is “too weak” to carry even his own suitcase. The idea of a man shuttling between “hospitalization and...