Keeping the superstitions that work

By Brian Jacobs

On Mon., Jan. 25, a team of Illinois surgeons gave 37-year-old amputee Matthew Scott the gift of a lifetime. Scott became the first American and only the third person ever to receive a hand transplant. Although Scott's recovery will take years, early signs are good. Scott's surgeons hope the transplant will be a landmark in the field of reconstructive surgery.

But last week, the story took a bizarre turn. Although Scott's donor was supposed to remain anonymous, a tabloid reporter revealed that the new hand had belonged to a convicted murderer who took his own life the day before the historic operation. While Scott remains unfazed by the eerie news, the fact that Scott's new hand was once used to kill naturally bothers many Americans. Reading Scott's story, we are reminded that his hand, just like any other, is made of harmless tissue. Still, we cannot help but grant that tissue a certain symbolic resonance. The hand that killed, a murder weapon, remains forever branded.

Scott's transplant is an example of fiction foreshadowing medical reality. French author Maurice Renard first wrote of such an operation nearly a century ago. In Renard's famous short story "The Hands of Orlac," a plastic surgeon replaces the crushed hands of a pianist with those of an executed murderer. The new hands, at first a godsend for the ruined pianist—here's where the story differs from Scott's—soon take on a murderous life of their own. Renard's story was made into a film in 1925 and re-made several years later.

The Orlac films paved the way for over 100 spin-offs about amputated parts invested with a criminal's psyche. Eric Red's 1991 film "Body Parts," for instance, tells the tale of Bill Chrushank, a doctor who receives an arm transplant from a serial killer. During his recovery, Bill's new limb proves itself an agent of its former owner's ill will and acts out beyond Bill's control. Orlac's influence shows up more famously in the Addams Family movies and in Oliver Stone's early effort The Hand.

While such films may be dismissed as trashy horror flicks, they reveal a significant characteristic of our cultural imagination: the body parts associated with a criminal deed are, in our minds, invested with the human spirit behind the deed. When we see Orlac's hands as a symbol of the murder they committed, we expect them to reveal a bent toward their former occupation.

Many objects in our everyday lives, like Orlac's hands, also become invested with extraordinary symbolic resonance: no chef would chop onions with the Simpson double-murder knife, for example. Such a symbol of death must be locked away out of sight.

Of course, the Simpson knife is like any other knife. This object takes on meaning in our imagination, which can affect even our most analytical moments. If the Simpson knife were the last on earth, the only tool to our survival, we might still be reluctant to use it. The bond between an object and its symbolic resonance is so strong that the two can never be entirely divorced.

But Matthew Scott must divorce them. He must use his new hand without considering its horrifying implications. And soon, medical technology will ask the same of countless other amputees. Orlac's hands have made the transition from literary symbol to medical reality, and we must no longer envision their mythical human spirit, good or evil. If anyone ever meets Scott on the street and greets him by shaking his hand, he or she must disregard the symbolism of the hand.

The symbolism of these objects endows our lives with richer meaning, and we should not forbid ourselves this sentimentalism. At the same time, we must be willing and able to forget it entirely when it becomes silly, a source of unnecessary prejudice or terror. When we go to the ballpark next fall and catch a Mark McGwire's first homerun ball, we can still endow the souvenir with every resonance it deserves. When we see Scott on the street, we can shake his hand without flinching.

Brian Jacobs is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight.

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