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Abstract

This study is a critical attempt of reading Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room in the light of medical humanities in postmodern American drama, arguing that the play does not deal with illness as merely a medical case. Instead, it shows that illness becomes a human condition that changes the patients' bodies, their behaviors, families, homes and even the meaning of care. The study throws light on Bessie's leukemia, Marvin's chronic illness, Lee's return and the confined domestic space as related signs of suffering, responsibility, fear and possible reunion among the members of the family. Medical humanities is highly relevant to this study since it becomes a bridge that intersects medicine with literature, ethics, family feeling and the situation of the patient and caregiver. The study is an interdisciplinary approach: it adopts medical humanities, narrative medicine, illness studies, symbolic criticism and spatial theory, concentrating on the theories of Anne Whitehead and Angela Woods, Victoria Bates and Sam Goodman.
The paper concludes that Marvin's Room is a medical humanities play for it uncovers how people experience illness, how they express their pain, how they care for one another and become either a functional or dysfunctional family due to sickness. Therefore, the play is highly relevant to medical humanities because it turns disease into a case of dignity, care, and human connection.

Keywords

Care, Domestic illness, Marvin's Room, Medical humanities, Medical space

Article Type

Article

First Page

174

Last Page

182

Publication Date

9-15-2026

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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