Senior Home Alarm

"Help! I‘ve fallen and I can‘t get up!” All television viewers are familiar with this older woman’s cry for help as she promotes a medical alert system which will immediately respond to her cry for physical help. But who helps those individuals who have been so wounded emotionally and psychologically that their cried for help appear to be demands to be alone? Ingemar Gustafson, in his poem “Locked-In,” compares the protective shield such individuals create to a coconut which traps the person inside without offering any means of communicating his pain to others. The result is that he lives alone and isolated, actually resisting any interaction with other people. Gustafon poses this question: Can a person who lives in a coconut be saved? Kurt Vonnegut demonstrates that people who have delveloped thick protection against further psychological and emotion pain can be helped ion his stories “The Kid Nobody Could Handle” and “ Who Am I This Time.”

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