Reader's Response to 'Pain'

The essay Pain by Diane Ackerman is an essay that defines both emotional and physical pain, and how different cultures react to it. She uses examples to back up her ideas. The essay is also about how pain is so hard to grasp in ones hand; the description usually drifts away when you have it at the tip of your tongue: "... let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry"(Ackerman 362). In addition, Ackerman talks of how pain can be numb to religious people, people who have deep beliefs or people who are totally absorbed in something. She gives the example of a soccer player who has just experienced pain during a game, but he only feels the piercing pain after the game. In culture, circumcision can be perceived as a holy event. Pain is a very hard subject to define, but Diane Ackerman uses specific examples in her essay Pain to describe the feeling in a shortened way. I think that it was interesting, but she could have expanded more on the idea of emotional pain and connect the essay closer to the theme instead of just giving examples.