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The poetics of suffering

 Suffering is a deeply subjective issue that questions the structure and theoretical objectivity of the legal system. The law seeks to classify and to draw defined boundaries around concepts as intangible as suffering, and it inevitably falters. It is here that literature can enter the stage, not as an antagonist to the law but as a companion, fluent in ambiguity where law demands clarity. If one considers how the law approaches the problem of suffering in the context of assisted dying, it appears that the courts mainly question how much suffering is too much, or what threshold must be crossed before the law permits a person to seek release. Judges are obviously constrained by precedent, language, and the fear of misstep, and the tools at their disposal, such as medical reports, philosophical arguments, and the cautious wisdom of case law, are far from straightforward. Courts must seek evidence, rationality, proof, but suffering is none of these things. It is a shadow, known only to the ones who endure it. Literature, in contrast, asks no such questions of thresholds or proofs. It does not measure suffering, but it rather evokes it. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, for instance, explores suffering not as acute pain but as a slow and inevitable decline. The cloned protagonists, bred for their organs, move toward their “completion” with a quiet resignation. Their suffering is bound up with questions of agency, dignity, and the value of a life constrained by rules they had no hand in creating. This portrayal is as much about legality as it is about empathy: suffering is not a problem to be solved, but simply a condition to be witnessed.
I have argued multiple times that the courtroom is a stage for storytelling. In cases of assisted dying, the stories obviously hinge on suffering. A claimant’s testimony of anguish or witness’s account of deterioration are not so different from the monologues of a tragic character in a novel. Where literature excels, however, is in giving suffering a voice beyond the procedural. The law must balance suffering against competing interests like the sanctity of life, the potential for coercion, the slippery slope to abuse. Literature is unburdened by such constraints and can imagine suffering in its fullness. If one looks at Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, suffering is stripped down to its existential core: the relentless absurdity of life and the struggle to find meaning in a world that offers none. Suffering in Camus is universal and inherent in the human condition. His metaphor of Sisyphus, condemned to roll a boulder uphill for eternity only to watch it tumble back down, captures the futility many feel when confronted with prolonged or terminal suffering. In the context of assisted dying, Sisyphus’ plight becomes more than a philosophical abstraction, as it mirrors the agony of individuals who endure pain with no hope of reprieve. Camus, however, also dares the reader to imagine Sisyphus happy, finding agency and defiance even in the midst of torment. This act of rebellion against suffering and absurdity - choosing how to face it, even when the ultimate outcome is beyond one’s control - is profoundly resonant with the arguments for assisted dying. It is not about escaping suffering so much as reclaiming autonomy and asserting a measure of control over a process that seems cruelly indifferent to human dignity. Camus’ insistence on individual agency has deep implications for legal narratives around assisted dying. Suffering is not a failure to be corrected, but a reality to be acknowledged; and the value of a life is not negated by the choice to end it when suffering becomes unbearable. That choice can itself be an act of meaning, a final assertion of humanity in the face of the absurd.
From this standpoint, the debate on the laws on assisted dying appears woefully inadequate. Courts and legislators attempt to reduce suffering to quantifiable terms, but - if I may repeat myself - suffering is inherently subjective, and its contours are to be defined solely by the individual. No two Sisyphean boulders are alike, and the law’s failure to account for this individuality risks alienating those it seeks to protect. I believe this leads to seeing what the law cannot say: the language of statutes and case-law is necessarily abstract, as it must apply to the many, not the few. Literature, on the other hand, looks at the particular. A dying man in a hospice bed, a woman whose mind has slipped into the fog of dementia, a family torn between love and exhaustion: these are not abstractions, but rather characters insisting that their pain be acknowledged. Perhaps the law might learn something from this insistence: not that it should abandon its caution and abstract character, but that it might recognise the limits of its own vocabulary. For in the silence where legal language falters, literature speaks, and points out that suffering is first a human question and only secondarily a legal one; and it is in the human that the most profound truths about assisted dying may be found.