Cultural representations of
Alzheimer’s disease typically focus on the social and emotional burdens felt by
family and friends, diluting or excluding the experience of the sufferer. This
article demonstrates how narrative
fiction may help us to engage with the experiences of individuals with
Alzheimer’s disease by imagining what it might be like to suffer from the
disease ourselves. Demonstrating the humanized and subjective understanding of
Alzheimer’s disease articulated in Olivia Rosenthal’s On n’est pas là pour disparaître
(2007) (We’re not here to Disappear,
2015), this article also exposes the limitations of narrative fiction as a
means of highlighting our own ignorance
in the face of others’ experiences.