Agency

Dying: A Memoir subtly highlights how terminal illness affects the patient’s feeling of agency in order to demonstrate the way that ordinary, healthy people may take their own agency for granted. Cory Taylor begins her book by discussing the euthanasia drug she purchased from China, a choice which shocks the reader immediately and forces them to consider her motivation for purchasing such a drug.

Euthanasia is the physical manifestation of Taylor’s search for agency and control. Since she was first diagnosed, the path of her life no longer seemed as open or free as it may seem to a healthy person for whom an illness does not present this sort of looming finality. From going to doctor’s appointments, enduring treatments, and experiencing limitations in bodily endurance and motion, Taylor’s life was turned upside down with her diagnosis, yet the one thing she can control...