Analysis of The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

John M. Barry wrote The Great Influenza during the 1918 flu epidemic to illustrate what it takes to be a scientist in order to emphasize the importance of exploring the unknown. He encourages the audience to appreciate the hard work being put in during a time when people were scared for their health. He pushes the reader to realize that being a scientist is more than just book smarts. It takes many characteristics, tools and skills to do well in the industry. 

Barry starts off his passage with repetition or parallel sentence structure to compare and contrast traits. In paragraph one it quotes, “Certainty creates strength…Uncertainty creates weakness.”. Certainty is confidence, the way someone can push through the uncertainty or the feeling that your work is not enough. In paragraph two he uses repetition yet again but this time stipulating the word courage. “It is not the courage to venture into the unknown. It is the courage to accept-indeed, embrace-uncertainty.” Courage can be defined in multiple ways but in this case courage is the way to accept any outcome or result. He also uses literary allusions, for example in lines 30-32 he mentions, “There a single step can take them through the looking glass into a world that seems entirely different.”. The allusion “through the looking glass” is from Alice and Wonderland and symbolizes how a single step can completely change your original hypothesis. But just like Alice, scientists must work with the problems or outcomes and not against it. 

In addition to being courageous and being pushed into another world, Barry uses an extended metaphor throughout his writing. For example in lines 36-37, it opens with, “In the  wilderness the scientist must create…everything.”, the use of “wilderness” in this context is to relate to his argument about scientists research. The key to doing research is the ability to be optimistic, to take the results and use it for a greater purpose. He confirms that being optimistic is truly a part of a good experiment in paragraph 7, when it says, “An investigator must make them work”. In the quote he is referring to scientists creating their experiments and making whatever data they get a positive one. Barry added this to close with another parallel sentence to further contrast what is needed or what is not. 

So do not lose hope because something doesn’t turn out your way. Take that outcome, acknowledge it, learn from it and turn it into something greater.  Scientists have the world on their shoulders and certainly not everyone can handle being on the “frontier”.