You're eating for me

Chris Jones’ profile of the late Roger Ebert serves an incredibly wide array of emotions to the reader. What amazed me the most was Jones’ ability to contrast the very intimate, personal details of Ebert’s last few years with his use of third person. Starting at “Ebert can’t remember the last thing he ate,” Chris delves into the horrifying description of Ebert’s medical problems as though he is witnessing it from afar, yet in the mind of Ebert. This contrast gives you an understanding of how Ebert must have actually felt. To only be able to convey ones feelings and thoughts through generic computer voicing’s and notepads seems to be a very difficult existence. This existence nearly seems out of body, a disconnected way of life, like a smoke filled room with clear windows, wherein one can see and feel the world around them but can only relay it through one outlet. Words are incredibly powerful, however, and through this profile Jones establishes the feeling of Ebert’s rollercoasting life while also offering that disconnect that Roger himself must have felt, like when he states “The last thing he said? Ebert thinks about it for a few moments, and then his eyes go wide behind his glasses, and he looks out into space in case the answer is floating in the air somewhere. It isn’t.” This account nearly gives a dual third person account of Ebert’s contemplation, almost a dream within a dream, where you are watching Roger’s look back at himself, unable to recall a thing. The line that spoke the most to me was when Roger writes down “You’re eating for me” to a friend at the dinner table. This bring it all full circle, showing that though he felt this disconnect even from himself, he was able to find happiness in his words and his companions who respected him very much.