Name:

Instructor:

Course:

Date:

Argument: Mountains beyond Mountains

Mountains beyond mountains is a book that talks about farmer, the beginner of Partnership in Health, which is an institution that battles poverty and diseases among the world’s sickest and poorest in nations such as Rwanda, Peru, and Haiti. The book is very education, engaging and inspiring as it tries to bring out the quest for Farmer to treat patients, improve their living standards and battle for world health equivalence.

Farmer’s work with his organization Partnership In Health showcases that human beings are congenitally good; he is selfless. The author of the book, Tracy Kidder highlights that it was never Paul’s intention to adjust to the founded norms of the society of whom a doctor should heal. While working in Boston, Farmer managed to stand out of his peers. The author of the book witnessed his treatment of a homeless alcoholic with pneumonia and HIV/AIDS. As Tracy puts, Paul never made his aid public. He not only succeeded in treating the patient, but also made sure that he had a place to call home to avoid often falling heal. Further proof of Farmer’s saintliness is highlighted in stories such as his tenacity to handle Father Jack, a person who suffered from drug-immune tuberculosis. Even after, Jack’s death, he furthered his research on the cause of the disease, which eventually leads to his cure of the disease. He serves as an epitome of selfless human beings.

Mountains in this book can signify hardships that arise in life. Therefore, mountains beyond mountains imply that once a person solves an issue, another bigger issue manifests; the hardships of the globe will never end. However, this does not imply that all good acts are useless. From Farmers experiences, one can term his benevolence as a long defeat but not futility. The first mountains of farmer while in Haiti were poor patients with curable and incurable diseases; Aids, ulcers, malaria. He worked on those cases individually and quickly went on to tackle larger and larger mountains; drug-immune tuberculosis. His beliefs on change around the world were very optimistic and went on to establish an institution helping the downtrodden. Therefore, to tackle mountainous problem of inability among the poor to access treatment, leaders must emerge and stand their ground.

Although Farmer never provided best qualities to found himself as a pioneer in anthropology, such big characterization could have happened in the absence of Tracy’s descriptive and simplistic style of writing. Paul knew he could not shape what Tracy would write in his biography and portrayed this by saying that he did had not done much for Tracy to write citing misgivings given by people about his quest. Such a statement shows that he cared less about people’s comments as long as he treaded his path.

As the author accompanies Paul’s travels across the globe, one feels some sense of respect or both the narrator and the doctor, through their dialogues and interactions. Farmer tries to give the most engaging anecdotes of Paul, such as Farmer’s unfortunate experiences. Many exchanges between the two, especially when Tracy says that there was no couch potatoes in the family bring some degree of personalization to the book. Kidder depicts Farmer as a lover of science and medicine as well as interest in patients. When Paul realized that some of his patients had developed a number of drug resistance tuberculosis after improper treatment, he developed a bad taste about his triumph. Like any other real scientist, he is excited by his discoveries, but his excitement is overwhelmed by the discovery that it was unhelpful to his patients.

Instead of just giving stories to show the character of the doctor, the narrator gives extra clue on his actions and decisions. Such a profound analysis of Farmer’s traits provides thee book readers with a cornerstone to draw more conclusions. Placing Paul’s actual words with Tracy’s conclusions established a logical flow of thought. For instance, the doctor says that he had never known the meaning despair and thought he would never will. The narrator follows these words with his though saying that it seemed that in Farmer’s bid to cure suffering among the poor, he was becoming more immune to such issues. This form of writing allows the book to expose duality in genre; it is both a social commentary and a biography.

By using many statements to describe farmer, the narrator builds on his theses that it is not useless to battle a long win and that equivalence in medical treatment is indispensable towards eliminating poverty. Little in the book is fictional as the narrator places both the doctor’s suitable and unsuitable characteristics and does not indicate some level of bias in his character. In fact, the bias that only exists in his book is Paul’s contempt for class bias and the effect it had on the treatment of the poor. Since the narrator does not attacks a specific individual, policy, group of persons or those in authority, it is not possible to paint an image of controversy when speaking about mountains beyond mountains.

The book deserves a lot of respect for Dr. Farmer from its readers. In fact, someone recommended me to read it before I searched for it and sat down to read it. The motivation with which the recommender gave for the book included his change of mind. After the medical school, the book had inspired him to pursue a major in anthropology. This decision astonished me and went ahead to look for and read the book. Reading the book gives someone the chance to compare and contrast medicine and anthropology. The two disciplines enhance each other leading to medical ethnography, a discipline toured by Farmer. The information gotten form this book expands a person’s knowledge of humanities and natural science studies.

The book evokes the notion that in order to preserve humanity, people must start with its populace. Moreover, everyone on this planet is titled to favorable medical care, irrespective of the handiness of a person’s or a nation’s monetary resources. Therefore, people should work together in groups or as individuals towards preserving humanity.

In a conclusion, the book has explored the life of Farmer, a medical ethnographer, who contributed a lot to the lives of the poor in Haiti, Peru, and other parts of the world. The book has highlighted that in order to save this world from the normal beliefs and customs that let us down, leaders must arise and fight for a world that there is equality in treatment notwithstanding financial setbacks. Briefly, the book is very educative, engaging, and above all inspiring.