Operation Wandering Soul by Richard Powers
"Operation Wandering Soul" by Richard Powers is a novel that delves into the harsh realities faced by children in modern American society, encapsulated within the setting of a pediatric surgical ward at Carver Hospital in California. The narrative follows Richard Kraft, a surgical resident struggling to navigate his emotional detachment as he witnesses the suffering of his young patients, who face various severe health challenges. Among them are Joy, a girl facing amputation, Nicolino, who ages prematurely due to progeria, and others with profound physical disabilities.
Powers intertwines Kraft's story with the character of Linda Espera, a compassionate physical therapist who challenges Kraft’s professional aloofness and aims to document the historical experiences of children through a series of tales. These narratives, ranging from the Children's Army in the Crusades to the story of the Pied Piper, provide a broader context of childhood throughout history, prompting readers to reflect on humanity's lessons from the past. While the novel presents a grim outlook on societal progress, it subtly suggests that hope may still exist in the pursuit of genuine human connections and understanding amidst suffering.
Operation Wandering Soul by Richard Powers
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1993
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The most pessimistic of Powers’s novels, Operation Wandering Soul uses a pediatric surgical ward as the microcosm that exposes what modern American society does to its children. At the same time, the book provides Powers the opportunity to discuss the status of children in society through the ages and to highlight many of the societal dangers of the late twentieth century. Carver Hospital is located in California, near Los Angeles, where many contemporary social and ecological problems are so exaggerated that they erupt there before middle America notices them.
Richard Kraft, thirty-three, is serving a rotation at Carver as part of his surgical residency. A former musician who, at twenty, traded the conservatory for college and then medical school, Kraft passed a peripatetic youth as his family followed its father from one overseas assignment to another.
Readers encounter the sensitive youth as he is being transformed into a ward-savvy physician. He struggles against his deepest human instincts to insulate himself from the horrors he witnesses in his patients. He strives consciously to wall off his emotions so that they will not be torn to shreds by the medical realities that daily assail him.
The children on Kraft’s surgical ward are a badly afflicted lot: Joy, a twelve-year-old Asian girl with a malignant growth above her right ankle, will lose her leg; Nicolino suffers from progeria and, at puberty, is already an old man; Chuck, a preadolescent, has no face; Tony the Tuff, an adolescent, had his ear lopped off; Ben, also an adolescent, is a double amputee. Visiting this ward is not calculated to lift the spirits.
Into this mix, Powers brings Linda Espera, part physical therapist, mostly saint. She loves these children and learns as much about each of them as she can. Kraft remains aloof. Linda, however, will not countenance his professional detachment. After Kraft snares Linda sexually, she changes his outlook, adding him to her list of those she must save.
Linda plans to compose a year’s worth of historical tales relating to the lives of children through the ages; 365 tales in all. Some of these tales provide the fodder for Powers’s riveting interchapters, which deal with such stories as the Children’s Army during the Crusades, the Peter Pan story, Herod’s slaughter of the Innocents, and, as the artistic high point of the novel, the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin.
These stories add to Powers’s tale the historical perspective that makes his story frightening. They ask, “Has humankind learned anything from history?” while Powers’s contemporary account inquires, “Will humankind ever learn anything from history?” The answers readers inevitably reach are bound to be discouraging, which makes Operation Wandering Soul essentially pessimistic, although Powers suggests, however faintly, that hope ultimately may reside in one-on-one human relationships, in human understanding and perseverance.
Sources for Further Study
Boston Globe. July 18, 1993, p. B3.
Chicago Tribune. May 23, 1993, XIV, p.1.
Choice. XXXI, September, 1993, p.122.
Library Journal. CXVIII, May 1, 1993, p.117.
Los Angeles Times. August 23, 1993, p. E2.
The New York Times Book Review. XCVIII, July 18, 1993, p.19.
Publishers Weekly. CCXL, April 5, 1993, p.63.
The Review of Contemporary Fiction. XIII, Fall, 1993, p.208.
Time. CXLII, July 19, 1993, p.62.
The Wall Street Journal. July 13, 1993, p. A14.
The Washington Post Book World. XXIII, June 13, 1993, p.2.