The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

One of the goals that O’Rourke names for her book in the beginning is to find language for an experience that “resists description” (21). How does her experience resist description? Use two to three examples from the text to support your thesis.

To narrate her own experience with illness, O’Rourke frequently cites other writers who articulate theirs in great detail. How does this technique relate to her views on the power of declaring one’s own suffering?

The Invisible Kingdom is a memoir that also incorporates in-depth research, interviews, and scientific explanations. How does O’Rourke keep the varying parts of her book connected? How does each support the other?

In Chapter 10, O’Rourke asks: “What does it matter, you might wonder, how we think about the disease we have?” (264). How does O’Rourke’s account of her illness answer this question for us?

Although O’Rourke is the most prominent figure in The Invisible Kingdom, certain figures appear like vivid characters—particularly her husband Jim, Matt Galen, and Dr. C. Discuss the role of one of these characters and explain the purpose(s) they serve within the larger narrative.

O’Rourke relives aspects of her mother’s death throughout the book. Why does it complicate her narrative to speak about her mother’s death in relation to her own experience of illness?

O’Rourke returns often to the perceived connection between autoimmunity and the abstract, philosophical sense of the “self.” How does this metaphor place the burden of healing on the patient alone? Examine two to three specific examples from the text to support your argument.

When O’Rourke finally receives her diagnosis of Lyme disease, her feelings about it are complicated. She states, “After fifteen years in the dark—if I counted from my first bouts of electric shocks and poor health—I at last had a possible name for my remaining problems. Yet instead of feeling relief, I felt I had woken into a nightmare” (305). Explain the conflict that O’Rourke experiences. How does this conflict relate to earlier questions in the book about her initial hope for a “nameable” disease?