Sara Levine claims that when encountering an essay, the main goal should be “the hope of confronting a particular person,”(159). Levine specifically focuses on the author’s use of language to create a vivid image of the person who is writing. In Jamison’s “Empathy Exams,” the use of her language gives an idea of what her attitude towards medical procedures are. She give her fellow patients sarcastic names such as “blackout buddy,” a car accident patient, or “little pneumonic baby Doug,” a plastic baby that the actors “pass like a relay baton” (3-4). Here, the language is dripping with sarcasm. Is she trying to make fun of the use of actors for medical students or is she trying to use her sarcasms as a defense mechanism? The reader learns that she had once had an abortion and a heart surgery. As Levine states, ” Essayists do not have “more” style than any one else, but as a group, when compared to other groups of prose writers they tend to be more interested in style- as- deviance(162). Jamison’s language is precise to show that there is something wrong, or something deeper that she would like to discuss. We see this also in how she repeats words and ideas in short sentences; “Your broken jaw and your broken nose don’t have anything to do with your pregnancy except they were both times you got broken into… Getting your heart fixed will be another burglary… Maybe every time you get into a paper gown you summon the ghosts of all the other times you got into a paper gown; maybe every time you slip down into that anesthetised dark it’s the same dark you slipped into before,”(15). Her dark, blunt, and sarcastic language lends familiarity but also alienates the reader. From this, we know she is hurt.