Jarom's Analysis of "When Life Begins"

The title of the essay “When Life Begins” is a highly charged query, and Spencer perhaps senses that she cannot answer such a complicated question with a traditional "yes" or "no." Rather, through the tools of logos, pathos, and narrative organization, she successfully shares her sorrow in grappling with the unanswerable question: “When does life begin?”

Spencer reminds us of death at the very beginning of the essay. The scene is opened with a gravestone that is "old and covered with some sort of green fungus." Death is provides a powerful link of empathy between humans, and Spencer uses it to forge sympathy with her audience as she shares her pain in pondering the question "When does life begin?"

Spencer acquaints us with her story through paragraph two, explaining the process of in vitro fertilization, but yet she frames the narrative with her question, "At what point does life begin? It's something I've thought about since the day that we found out in vitro fertilization was the only way to have a baby." Spencer's question invites the audience to ponder this question along with her, and the audience sympathizes with her plight, introducing pathos.

Spencer includes a paragraph describing her uncomfortable state in the graveyard. "I push my way through grass that hasn't been mowed in months. I think I can feel insects creeping across my arms and legs as I push through. The sun glares to my left, and I am squinting against a massive headache." Physical discomfort is common to all human beings, and Spencer uses this description to appeal to our sense of pathos and increase our sympathy for her. She is suffering both physically from the heat, and mentally from the question, "When does life begin? Is life really full of death and pain?" As Spencer stands with potential life inside of her gut, and a spent life under the gravestone, she delivers the following emotional dialogue: "I don't want life to begin at the moment of conception. Because that means that life is just too full of death. There would be just too much to mourn."

Having emotionally connected to her audience, Spencer drops the narrative and shares some of the things she has pondered regarding when life begins. These facts will later become appeal powerfully to her audiences’ emotions, but for now they are presented in a dry, logical manner. "Janet Shibley Hyde and John D. DeLamater argue that as many as forty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage...in God's way, statistically speaking, it takes several embryos to create one human life…2 blastocysts= 0.5 human beings."

These simple facts, delivered calmly and factually, let the audience see what Spencer has been thinking, and allows them to more fully understand her sorrow which comes at the end of the essay upon learning that another two of her blastocysts have perished.

These logical musings are interrupted by a familiar sound...the sound of a lawn mower. "A man with a lawn mower fastidiously mows and re-mows the newer plots at the edge of the cemetery." By reminding the audience of the physical world outside of Spencer's pondering, we see the scene as she must see it; floating between sorrowful preoccupation and the ordinary bustle of the real world. We experience this juxtaposition between life, which is so often taken for granted, and the awful contemplation of death that Spencer privately entertains. Spencer again manages to connect to the audience through narrative organization, concluding the factual section of the essay with a reminder (the lawn mower) that Spencer is a real person in a real situation.

Having firmly captured her audiences' sympathies through scenic detail, shared with them her thoughts regarding the question, and brought them back to the scene, Spencer moves forward with the narrative, yet even as we receive physical descriptions of her actions, "[Steve] has taken out the camera and is taking pictures of the inscriptions on the small, rose-colored tomb of an ancestor," Spencer shares even more information regarding her pondering on the question, "when does life begin" by inserting such abstract thoughts as “the embryos in my gut have a fifty percent chance of death. Or life." This rhetorical device of contrast between the actions of life, and Spencer's musings on death, allow Spencer to share the pain she is feeling by reminding the audience that this question haunts her, even through such mundane activities as genealogy.

The narrative then moves forward to the emotional climax of the piece.

"It is when we get home to our one-room, overheated, London flat that we get the messages."

"The fertility clinic has been trying to call us over and over."

Spencer has successfully established enough rapport with the audience that we feel a surge of anxiety--pathos if you will-- when we hear this statement. Spencer has shared her pain and suffering, and now it is our pain as well. The audience, having seen Spencer's thoughts and watched Spencer's actions, anticipates what comes next with nearly as much dread as Spencer herself. Spencer has connected with the audience, and managed to share her emotions.

"Your embryos," they say when we finally get ahold of them. "We thought two of them were dead, but they weren't. They started dividing again. But now it's too late."

The narrative switches from the phone message to Spencer's thought of horror:

“Too late?”

The audiences’ heart churns along with Spencer's, and we listen numbly to the rest of the message.

"They're too big to be frozen now; they won't survive."

Spencer again reminds us of the logic that has caused her so much pain:

"Two blastocysts in my gut.”
“Two blastocysts dying in the lab.”
“4 blastocysts = 1 human being.”

But now it's too late. I am crying before I am off the phone.”

The audience, having been shown Spencer's thoughts, and pictured her in sympathy in their minds, is caught up in Spencer's suffering. Through logos, pathos, and a careful pattern of narrative and inner pondering, Spencer has successfully shared her experience, and consequent suffering in pondering the question, "When does life begin?"