I just wanted to start off by saying that this required my full attention when reading. Last week when we did a passage ananlysis, we read a part of the text and it made no sense. But after reading it from the beginning everything comes together.
I was reading through the reading questions and number 3 (How does she describe torture (18)? Does her definition differ from your own understanding?) seemed interesting, it was something I noted when I was reading. She describes torture not being so much about how much pain the person feels, but how the pain is being put upon the person that is more important. Kluger gives the experience of childbirth for an example. Childbirth is all about pain as is any other kind of torture, however childbirth can be a lot more tolerable because the mother is looking forward to time with her child, it is a "wanted" pain because it comes with a significant outcome.
The line that sums up Kluger's idea of torture is: "What matters is not just what we endure, but also what kind of misery it is, where it comes from." (18) This is a lot different than my understanding of torture because I never thought to compare childbirth to torture. She makes a good argument and her examples help me see her point of view. Kluger also states that the worse kind of torture is "the kind that's imposed by others with malicious intent" because it's the most traumatic.
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