The Absence of the Rational Economic Man: A Textual Analysis of Ethics, Emotions, and Economic Choices in Sheeba E.K.’s “The Surgeon” (2022)

Fictional Narratives aid in studying human behaviour, the interconnectedness of disciplines, and their contributions to each other, as these plots are intertwined with real life. Of them, Medical Humanities represents the biological aspects of life and death through the lens of human emotions, thereby bridging the gap between the humanities and science through the arts. Medical Maladies: Stories of Disease and Cure from Indian Languages (2022), an anthology of 19 short stories, represents the heroic and anti-heroic plots that deal with medicine, patients, doctors, hospitals, and healthcare units from various parts of India. In this article, Sheeba E.K.’s “The Surgeon” (2022), a Malayalam short story published in the collection Kanalezhuthu (2017), later translated by Shwetha Anthony and included in Medical Maladies (2022), is chosen to study the influence of human emotions in economic decisions and vice versa. Through textual analysis, the study focuses on human emotions, greed, and desperation, and how fear and faith subsume logical economic reasoning in life-and-death situations. The study examines the tension between economic rationality and ethical considerations, scrutinising the complexity of human decision-making in extreme circumstances. This analysis underscores the significance of examining Medical Humanities from an economic perspective.