Abstract
Arthur Frank introduced the concepts of "the restitution narrative," "the chaos narrative," and "the quest narrative." The last narrative refers to a scenario where the narrator is a wounded person, and there is an implied ethical proposition that a wounded person "should be" the hero/ine who tells the story of his/her suffering.
In this paper, I deal with patients with Parkinson's disease who find it difficult to "restitute" in our society. They suffer not only from motor symptoms such as involuntary stiffening, tremors, and a sense of "shame" (G. Nijhof), but also lack the ability to tell a story, i. e., to create an effective substitute for the restitution narrative.
However, patients with Parkinson's disease undergo rehabilitation and laughter therapy and communicate with each other in self-help groups; they also construct narratives that temporarily soothe their suffering and thus create a substitute for "the restitution narrative," "the rehabilitation narrative." Here, the goal is not to restitute the patient, but to solve a minor problem affecting the body. This narrative and its hardworking protagonist are likely to gain a sympathizer who witnesses and accepts any subtle effect of the protagonist's effort. Moreover, the seemingly comic body narrative radically impeaches our taken-for-granted view that trembling or being stiff is a "bad" or "terrible" thing.
Although the patients soothe their sufferings with these narratives, it must be noted that these narratives do have their weak points. To ignore this fact is to ignore their constant suffering. This paper, as a sociological narrative, would like to encourage a change in the viewpoint of the readers that rather than merely perceiving these storytellers as strong heroes, they should try to display concern for the sufferings of these still-vulnerable storytellers.
