"The Pain Scale" by Eula Biss

"The Pain Scale" by Eula Biss is a very interesting and complex piece of writing where Biss attempts to establish a scale to measure her pain. However, Biss soon realizes that the task of associating pain with a number and measurement is much harder than it appears due to the fact that it is unsure what it really means to "measure things". A scale can be established to reference the pain, but in the long run the numbers do not really mean much if there is nothing to compare them too. In addition, everybody's pain is in reference to themselves, which means no two people should have the same exact pain scale. For example, a chronic headache for me may be the same caliber pain someone else feels when they have the stomach flu.
  At some points during the article I had a hard time following Biss's thoughts because they did not seem to connect in my mind. The allusion to Dante's Inferno on page 172  especially threw me off because I was not really sure how it related to the article. To me, the allusion seemed akward. But after some careful consideration and some background research on Dante's Inferno I managed to visualize its relevance to "The Pain Scale". While Dante describes Hell as being vile in his poem, once again as a reader you have to remember this is only from his point of view. Biss realizes this and says that "[i]n the second circle of Dante's Inferno, the adulterous lovers cling to each other.......[m]y next door neighbor, who loves Chagall, does not think this sounds like Hell" (Biss, 174). This brings up the point that pain is measured differently by every person, while some people are completely terrified by the idea of Hell, others are perfectly content with it. On the very last page of Biss's essay, Inferno is mentioned again by saying that Dante describes Hell by saying that it does not have a tenth circle. How can the most painful place in the universe not have a tenth circle, the number which supposedly represents the most pain imaginable?

Works Citied

         Biss, Eula. "The Pain Scale". Ways of Reading An Anthology for Writers. Ed. John E. Sullivan III.     Boston, New York: Bedford/ St. Martin, 2011. 171-182. Print