And What I Learned
The movie gets to me on so many levels. It has been well-produced with a great cast. At the beginning of the movie, the viewer gets to see an African-American neurosurgeon, investigating wether or not he should perform a really difficult surgery which has never been performed successfully by any surgeon. If the viewers are not shown the title of the movie, there is a chance they won’t recognize the doctor and cannot guess how the movie is going to end. After about seven minutes into the beginning of the movie, there is a flashback to the protagonist’s childhood which has occupied most of the movie duration. In this flashback, the viewers get to know the doctor they have just witnessed being quite successful, from the days of childhood, when he was just a kid having troubles succeeding in school.
According to the movie, one of the most important factors in Dr. Carson’s success in life and career is his mother. The mother is a strong woman despite the fact that she is illiterate and has no significant abilities. She has to clean people’s houses and babysit because “that’s about all [she] can do.” But that doesn’t stand in the way of her raising her sons to be successful people who have major positive impacts on the world. The fact that she restricts the amount of allowed TV-time in the house and demands her sons to read two books a week and hand her a report on them is the greatest thing a mother can do for her children. This is the turning point in Ben Carson’s life. Getting to know how good knowledge feels and how more respected he can be in the society if he knows more, is what takes him out of the society of ordinary people.
Of course, becoming knowledgable has bad sides for Benjamin too. For a period of time he becomes a snob and a hot-headed violent teenager. He even attempts to physically harm two people (his mother and his friend) with weapons twice, which fortunately are both unsuccessful. The fact that he knew a lot, made him think he can treat his mother however he wanted and I consider this stage of his life the worst. But psychologically every teenager goes through some kind of phase - especially with the lack of a father figure around - and I can’t classify this phase in Ben’s life as unnatural or odd. This can also relate to the fact that his 8th grade teacher gave that horrible speech in the end-of-the-year school celebration, telling the students that they should be ashamed that a “colored” student with no father is doing better than them.
The movie has successfully drawn our attention to the way African-Americans have been (and apparently still are) treated by some bigot white people throughout history. Of course, Ben’s 8th grade teacher is the only person depicted in this movie as racist, but she is the representative for the people like her, the number of which definitely has not been little. Bill’s mother removed him from that school and didn’t let these attitudes corrupt his future, but God knows how many African-American children have been disappointed by similar speeches and gave up walking up the path of success forever.
The influence of Ben’s mother on his achievements does not vanish even when he attends Yale University to become a neurosurgeon. There is a chemistry exam which if he fails, leads to him losing his scholarship and thus he will have to forget his lifelong dream: becoming a neurosurgeon. At the exam night, he dreams of his mother telling him “you don’t need the book, the book is inside you.” In the same dream, he sees some chemical reactions on a blackboard which he memorizes. Tomorrow in the exam paper, Ben realizes that those exact chemical reaction have been asked, which he successfully answers.
The influence of the fact that Benjamin Carson is a religious person on his achievements cannot be ignored. Many of his life decisions are made according to his faith. If he did not have faith and had not given the speech about faith and religion to the man in charge of employing, he would not have been accepted as an intern in Johns Hopkins Hospital. Before conducting the most important and critical surgery in his life - which is considered the first surgery that has successfully separated conjoined twins joined in the head - he asks the parents of the twins to pray. Shocked of seeing a religious physician, the mother asks “You pray doctor?” and Carson replies: “Everyday.” According to Carson himself, the number of physicians who still have faith is so little. Because they get to see every single detail in human body concretely and examine them logically, they rarely get to think about what may lie behind all these arrangements.
The matter of wether or not he should conduct the surgeries that have high risks is another important decision he has to make from time to time. As is depicted in the movie, he decides to take action every time; even though he is completely aware of the risks. In the case of the little girl with seizures, he realizes there is the risk of the paralyzation of the girl, or her losing the ability of speech. But he prays to God that none of these would happen and he takes some action: he performs the surgery anyway and hopes for the best. The same thing happens with the conjoined twins. The risks here are even higher: if anything goes wrong, at least one of the babies dies. But again, Ben Carson does not let the babies spend the rest of their lives lying on their backs in bed. He examines the matter for four months, considering every possible outcome, plans the whole surgery process,
and does what he has got to do, which leads to one of the most extraordinary successful surgeries of all time.
The movie was so inspirational; at least to me. These are the two important lessons I learned form Doctor Ben Carson. One: Action is always better than inaction and quiescence, and two: reading goes a long way.
