41 pages • 1 hour read
Ben Carson, Cecil MurpheyGifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Prejudice
Carson encounters prejudice periodically through his youth and his career. There are situations in which the prejudice is clearly racial, such as when Carson and his brother are warned away from the football league, when Carson is warned about going to the white school, and when the teacher who bestows the academic award to Carson berates his white classmates for allowing a Black student to win it. Other situations, however show different types of prejudice. The taunting of his classmates over his low grades are prejudice against the differently abled (although Carson proves himself, ultimately, not to fit this category). The in-crowd’s refusal to accept anyone who does not dress as they do reflects prejudice against the “other” and against the poor; this sense of being a target leads Carson to wish not to be seen using food stamps. As a neurosurgeon, he is protected from the prejudice of some patients, but he hears about it after the fact. And it may be that some of the opposition he faces to complex and risky surgeries stemmed from professional jealousy. In addition, Sonya Carson faced “stigma” both for her divorce and for seeking mental health treatment (21).
On the whole, however, Carson does not focus on race; perhaps that can be considered a gift from his mother, who said, “Bennie, it doesn’t really matter what color you are. If you’re good, you’ll be recognized. Because people, even if they’re prejudiced, are going to want the best. You just have to make being the best your goal in life” (91).
Faith
From his first religious experience at age eight leading to his baptism, to his role as a church elder at the close of the memoir, faith, church attendance at various Seventh-day Adventist Churches, and prayer to God form a key part of Carson’s life and focus. Carson not only attributes his general well-being to God, but points to a set of times that God “saved him” – from the moral trials of his “terrible temper”; from academic failure when he failed to study for his freshman chemistry class at Yale; and from financial straits, when Carson, during his years at Yale, had no money. Carson believes that God will never let him get into a situation that God cannot get him out of, and he prays to him before and during surgery.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church, in particular, plays a role in bringing Carson and Candy closer together and provides a “family” of support when they arrive in Western Australia, knowing no one and with Candy pregnant with their first son. Carson’s role as an elder in the church figures in his assessment of his obligations and commitments in chapter 21.
Educational Achievement
The theme of educational achievement, whether in school, through reading library books, or through purchasing the lecture notes of others, is strong in this memoir. Sonya Carson is intent on her sons’ educations as a means to allow them to reach their full potential, although she herself has only a third-grade education. She constantly encourages their dedication to their own educations, as well as models by focusing on her reading skills as an adult learner to allow her to read the Bible with greater understanding. Dissatisfied with Carson’s improvement from an F to a D in math, she institutes a full-blown education program in their home, requiring him to memorize multiplication tables, watch only three television programs per week, and read two library books per week. Though reluctant at first, Carson finds ways to adapt the program to his own designs, using College Bowl as a spur to general knowledge in areas that he did not know well, like the arts—knowledge that serves him well in his Johns Hopkins interview and forms an early bond between him and his future wife, a violinist.
Carson not only learns, he learns how to learn. The methods that are successful in high school do not work at Yale, so he has to redefine his approach. He adopts new strategies in medical school. And in both medical school and in Australia, he uses the possibility of enormous amounts of work (whether from lazy colleagues, or from being the most expert surgeon around) to further his knowledge of neurosurgery. In his THINK BIG program, he aims to share both his love of education and his understanding of its importance in the lives of bright young people with few resources.
“I did it my way.”
“I did it my way” is the key lyric in the song “My Way,” made famous by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., which Carson refers to as a “principle in my life. It’s like the popular song of a few years ago that says ‘I did it my way.’ Not because I oppose rules—it would be crazy to do surgery without obeying certain rules — but sometimes regulations hinder and need to be broken or ignored” (84).
Carson’s sometimes innovative, sometimes questionable, flouting of the rules of workplaces, academic communities, and collegial relations is a strong theme, closely connected to his belief in his own capabilities and discernment about how to apply his gifts and talents. From getting more effort out of the highway clean-up crew he supervises, to skipping all his lectures at Yale, to opining that the criticism of his colleagues is not worth listening to since he is the best judge of what he can do, Carson is intent on going his own way.
