Status Updates From The Wounded Storyteller: Bo...

expectations are institutionalized in such matters as sick
leave from work and medical care; they are validated by social
norms; they are functional for society as a whole; and they are
internalized, meaning that individuals regard their expectations around sickness as normal and natural.

'Ethics seems to begin in a similar sense of ownership of situations;
responsibility as an ethical person involves making a good story
of the situation that self and other find themselves in and must
come to own.'

Broyard concludes that it may not be dying we fear so
much, but the diminished self (25).