Healing Narratives and Becoming Doctor: A Medical Humanities Reading of Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone

The medical humanities field has emerged as an essential interdisciplinary tool that bridges the gap between clinical practice and humanistic inquiry. By blending literature, philosophy, ethics, and cultural studies into medical discourse, it cultivates physicians who are not only medically competent but also attuned to the lived experiences of their patients. It is within this field that Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone stands as a seminal text, offering a nuanced exploration of doctor identity and medical professionalism. Marion Stone’s search for belonging and identity in a disenchanted world forms the crux of this paper. Doctor identity, in the context of medical humanities, is not a static professional category but an evolving narrative shaped by lived experience, suffering, and interpersonal engagement. Marion’s trajectory from an abandoned child to a reflective surgeon demonstrates that the physician’s identity is constructed through encounters with illness, mentorship, and self-reflection. As the novel suggests, becoming a doctor is inseparable from becoming a certain kind of person. This article analyses Cutting for Stone as a narrative of professional becoming, emphasising how doctor identity is formed and shaped through relational, ethical, and narrative dimensions rather than practical training alone. The discussion also highlights how Verghese critiques the depersonalization of modern medicine while advancing a humanistic paradigm deeply embedded in empathy, narrative competence, and compassion.