Research Paper on:
Analysis of Alan Lightman's “The Diagnosis”

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
twenty-first century, it is technology, not man, who reigns supreme. It represents an ever-changing world in which information is to be processed at breakneck speed. Technology rules everything  - communication, socialization, the workplace, education, while wreaking havoc on the human bodies, who are vainly struggling to keep up with its constant evolution. For the average person, it  is comparable to being on a roller coaster that has run amok, with the brain eventually becoming so soaked by the facts, figures, statistics, and graphics supplied by emails, PDF  files, and teleconferencing, that the body rebels. Just as primitive souls were chained through walls in Platos "Allegory of the Cave" analogy in The Republic, so, too, is workaholic  protagonist Bill Chalmers and his contemporaries in Alan Lightmans 2000 insightful satire, The Diagnosis, who are similarly chained down by the demands of technology. Like Platos cave dwellers, who  are ultimately broken in body and spirit during their captivity, so, too, is Bill Chalmers, whose frenetic life has eventually caught up with him and while riding on a train,  rushing to yet another business appointment to troubleshoot one of the major technological breakdowns that occur daily along the information superhighway, he has a serious neurological breakdown of his own.  Bill has a sudden and disturbing memory loss - he is unable to remember the name of the person he was going to meet with, nor specific details about  his work or his life. It begins gradually, at first, until finally wracked by the anxiety caused by his misplaced briefcase, Bill is discovered by police "curled up on  the floor in a fetal position, clasping his phone to his bare chest" (Lightman 20). The battery on his cell phone, which is his personal and professional lifeline, is