To Dream No More of Hell: Marina’s Quest in State of Wonder, Outline Example

Topic: Marina in State of Wonder as an example of Ruiz’s argument in The Four Agreements that we create a hell out of our lives, our own dream-narratives, by listening to our fears and self-recriminations.
Specific Purpose: To examine how Marina in State of Wonders creates a hell out of her life by dwelling on past failures and fears, and how she is able to reclaim herself.
Thesis Statement: In Ann Patchett’s novel State of Wonder, the character Marina lives out precisely this tragedy: by allowing her own fears, doubts, and self-recriminations to rule her own personal dream-narrative of self, she makes of her life a living hell.
Attention Materials: These fears and doubts become our belief system, and as such rule our personal dreams, i.e. our narrative about our own lives. We punish ourselves repeatedly for the same mistakes, drawing out our own suffering. This state of affairs is tragic and needless, but there is hope: all we have to do is stop allowing fear to rule us.
Preview: In The Four Agreements, author Don Miguel Ruiz argues that by listening to our fears and self-recriminations, we create a hell out of our own lives, and do everything in our power to do the same for others. Marina in State of Wonders is a good example of this: she dwells on past failures and fears, and by so doing creates a hell of her life. Hers is an Orpheus-like journey to escape hell and reclaim herself.
Transition: Marina is defined by her losses and her feelings about them; fittingly enough, it is the death of a colleague that serves as the denouement of the story.

Body

i. First main point: Anders’s death forces Marina to confront her formidable former mentor, Dr. Swenson.
b. Sub point or supporting material: This is difficult for Marina because her memories of the demanding Dr. Swenson are still very painful.

Sub point or supporting material: Dr. Swenson was very demanding, and was especially hard on the women because of her own experiences breaking the gender barrier in medical school (Patchett 62). 

i. Sub point or supporting material: Marina “had just wanted to see if she was capable of spending five years of her life living up to Dr. Swenson’s standards, and she wasn’t” (62).
ii. Sub point or supporting material: Marina caused the tragic death of a baby by performing a caesarean section without Dr. Swenson and against her orders (62).
Transition: All of these memories still haunt Marina, and she continues to revisit them. By so doing, she makes a hell of her life.
ii. Second main point: Her quest to retrieve Anders’s remains is a symbolic reification of her own personal journey.
a. Sub point or supporting material: The quest to retrieve Anders is likened by Marina to Orpheus’ journey into hell (124).
b. Sub point or supporting material: Imagery of Orpheus linked to Marina’s fears of failing in her quest to retrieve Anders, having to face his widow (125).
i. Sub point or supporting material: This quest is also her quest to find herself, retrieve her own ‘remains’.
ii. Sub point or supporting material: Thus her own physical journey serves to reify her emotional and personal journey.
Transition: This is important, because Marina’s life has been marked by one loss after another, and these losses still haunt her.
iii. Three main point: Marina has lost a great deal in life.
a. Sub point or supporting material: She has lost a promising career in medicine, failing to live up to Dr. Swenson’s expectations.
b. Sub point or supporting material: She lost her father in college, a loss that still haunts her (34-38).
i. Sub point or supporting material: She lost her marriage (54).
ii. Sub point or supporting material: She lost her colleague, Anders Eckman, the basis of the plot for the whole story.
Transition to conclusion: These losses all contribute to her personal hell, because she continues to relive them again and again. However, the analogy to Orpheus’ quest for Euridice that Marina draws with her own quest for Anders’s remains is apt in another way: like Orpheus, Marina returns from hell (Patchett 345). In finding Dr. Swenson and retrieving Anders’s remains, Marina is able to finally confront and lay to rest her own ghosts, specters that have dogged her past for so very long.
Summary Statement: By confronting these ghosts, these painful memories, Marina is able to stop reliving them, and by doing that, she is able to stop creating a hell out of her own life. The secret to leaving hell turns out, in the end, to be a matter of simply refusing to accept it.   
Concluding Remarks: Marina is dogged by her losses because she punishes herself. In order to advance and heal, Marina must confront her losses, her fears, her doubts, and she must overcome them and move on, so that they no longer make a hell of her life. Like Orpheus she must travel into hell, but unlike Orpheus it is herself that she must save. And by so doing, she is able to do what Ruiz suggests we all can do: that is, stop dreaming the nightmare of hell, and start dreaming a pleasant dream.

Works Cited

Patchett, Ann. State of Wonder. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. Print.

Ruiz, Don M. The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book. San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc., 1997. Print.