Paper # 1 – Giovanni Corte’s Journey Down Seven Floors
The story “Seven Floors” written by Dino Buzatti is about a man named Giovanni Corte who was suffering from a mild case of an illness who goes to live in a sanatorium nursing home that was famous for treating his particular illness. On his first night there he talks to his neighbor who explained to him how the nursing home worked. They were on the seventh floor, where the most mild cases were, each floor going down the residents were in more serious conditions until they go to the first floor where they were deemed helpless so they were kept comfortable until their death. On the first night, the doctor told him he would probably be cured in three weeks. Ten days later, he was asked to move to the sixth floor to do a woman a favor, he agreed on the terms that it would only be temporary. However, as the time went on, under various circumstances he was asked to move down floors for reasons other than his medical condition until he made it down to the first floor, where he passed away.
One concept discussed was optimism bias, which is the unrealistic belief that a person does not believe that they are at an equal risk of experiencing negative events compared to others. Giovanni showed this behavior when he makes his first move to the sixth floor, he kept reminding himself that he was only there to do that woman a favor, and he was much healthier than the other people on that floor. He experienced this throughout the entire story, with each move to a lower floor, he believed it was not that he was becoming sicker, but for other reasons and he always thought he was in the best health compared to the people around him.
Another topic discussed is the social comparison theory, which explains that we compare ourselves to others to determine our own social and personal worth. Giovanni showed this in the story when he decided to take the doctor’s advice and move down to the fourth floor where he could get the...