In her reflection on her essay “Dulce et Decorum Est: COVID-19 Health Workers and the Old Lie,” Jaqueline LeKachman notes that writing multiple drafts allowed her to “adopt a fluid revision process that required weaving diverse sources together.” Below are excerpts from the first and final drafts of LeKachman’s essay that show key transitions from one paragraph to the next. In turn, these transitions negotiate a move from one source to the next.  How, in her final draft, does LeKachman manage to “weave diverse sources” to more clearly and cohesively bridge the gap between paragraphs?  Name at least three important things to consider when making difficult transitions. 

 

Transition 1: First Draft

Captain Sully stated in an ABC News interview when asked if his heroic feat was a miracle, “No, it was hard work on the part of many people and the entire industry over many decades. So it was everyone pulling together to not let anyone die” (“Capt. Sully”). He highlights how his heroism was the product of decades of preparation, teamwork, and good training — all tools that he had to learn over time with support from others who recognized these tools as necessary to survival. 

However, are health workers being provided with these tools for survival — and not just PPE, but mental health services and COVID-19 training — that preserve their wellbeing, or have these needs been erased by their invincible hero designation? Recent tragic events reported by NBC News would indicate they are not receiving these tools, as evidenced by New York E.R. Dr. Lorna Breen’s suicide after contracting COVID-19, actually surviving it, but then taking her own life due to the horrors and “grueling work” for which she was unprepared on the frontlines (“New York”).

Transition 1: Final Draft

When asked if his heroic feat was a miracle, Captain Sully told ABC News, “No, it was hard work on the part of many people and the entire industry over many decades” (“Capt. Sully” 00:06:11-00:06:16). He highlights how his heroism resulted from preparation, teamwork, and training—tools that he developed with support from those who recognized these tools as integral to his survival. Without this support network, we would be talking about the tragedy on the Hudson instead of the miracle, just as we now discuss the tragedies in the hospitals.

Unfortunately, in the case of the current tragedy, designating health workers as invincible heroes erases their needs. As a result, unlike Captain Sully, they are not receiving the tools they need, in this case, PPE, COVID-19 training, mental health services, and more. The term “hero” masks the fact that health workers lack these vital tools with deadly consequences. For example, New York E.R. physician Dr. Lorna Breen tragically died by suicide after experiencing the horrific, “grueling work” of treating virus patients and contracting the virus herself (“New York Doctor” 00:00:45-00:00:46). 

 

Transition 2: First Draft 

Commenting also to NBC News, Dr. Jeff Le of Maimonides Medical Center expressed his understanding of Dr. Breen’s desperation, commenting, “I wish I had known the type of emotional havoc this would have caused on my life, the lives of my colleagues, and my patients” (“New York”). In other words: he wishes he had been prepared instead of unrealistically expected to emerge from the pandemic unscathed–a hero.

In Heroism Science: An Interdisciplinary Journal, researcher James K. Beggan of the University of Louisville analyzes how heroism problematically leads to this belief that heroes are more superhuman than human, noting that “[s]cholars of heroism seem disinclined to focus on the potential downside of providing assistance perhaps in part because the culturally shared prototypical scenario of heroism does not include elements of harm” (15).

Transition 2: Final Draft 

Dr. Jeff Le of Maimonides Medical Center explained to NBC News, “I wish I had known the type of emotional havoc this would have caused on my life, . . . the lives of my colleagues” (“New York Doctor” 00:00:59-00:01:09). In other words, he wishes he had been prepared and supported instead of expected to somehow emerge from the pandemic unscathed—a “hero.” Ominously, the very language that obscured Dr. Breen’s needs and continues to fail to meet Dr. Le’s has now saturated almost all discourse about health care professionals. The omnipresence of words like “hero” and “bravery” reveals that even as doctors are dying, we continue to uncritically accept triumphant narratives that mask the fact that tragic stories like Dr. Breen’s could have been avoided with the appropriate mental health support.

Our at times harmful understanding of heroes comes largely from ingrained literary and cultural depictions of heroism, which are often myths. Sociologist James K. Beggan notes that we “seem disinclined to focus on the potential downside of [heroism] perhaps in part because the culturally shared prototypical scenario of heroism does not include elements of harm” (15).