Characterization

Throughout the course of Bitter Medicine, Clem characterizes some minor faces and names, but primarily focus on characterizing a few key people to the memoir, those being his youngest brother Ben, his second eldest brother Olivier, and their father.

Ben was considered the smartest and best looking of the four siblings (Bitter Medicine, pg. 16-17). Shortly after graduating high school, Ben’s condition began to deteriorate, becoming more irritable, hallucinating other-dimensional interactions, and becoming increasingly paranoid (Bitter Medicine, pg. 21-25). Ben was later diagnosed with Schizophrenia, however despite attempts at treatment and reclaiming some semblance of normalcy, Ben’s struggle resulted in his suicide, much to the shock of his family and friends. His suicide marked a point in the Martini family’s life that they would never really recover from, his death forever changing the dynamic of their family.

Olivier is the second eldest brother in the family. Clem had always pictured as a child that Olivier would become an paleontologist, and described his physical appearance as being the same as himself and his eldest brother, Nic, “The rest of us tended toward being too bony, too gangly, and we were cursed with dad’s long, aquiline nose” (Bitter Medicine, pg. 15-17). Once Olivier began showing the same sort of hallucinations as their brother Ben (Bitter Medicine, pg. 59), Clem took immediate action in helping his brother seek what they thought would be the proper care. After spending years on the antipsychotic Stelazine (Trifluoperazine), Clem developed Tardive Dyskinesia and Akathisia.

Mr. Martini, the father of the four brothers, was described by Clem as being a man who held a lot of regrets about his past decisions (Bitter Medicine, pg. 83). Their father had immigrated to Canada and lived a hard life through the Great Depression, becoming a very frugal and paranoid man, “…saved scraps of every useless kind – rubber bands, paper clips, old shoes of any size or disrepair, paper bags – preparing for the next economic downturn” (Bitter Medicine, og. 83). Clem goes on to detail that his father was a fatalist, numerologist, and a pessimist, frequently saying the phrase, “Tout est perdu au Canada” (All is lost in Canada) (Bitter Medicine, pg. 84-85). Lastly, Clem remarks how the differences and struggles between their father and mother finally came to a head after Ben’s death, resulting in their divorce and their father’s subsequent and self-appointed eviction from their family home (Bitter Medicine, pg. 87).


 * Mark Philips