ABSTRACT
According to the metanarrative of arthritis, the definition of someone who has the condition is an aged, twisted, painful, moaning figure. The socio-cultural construct is considered in this chapter in relation to three diverse texts published since the mid-twentieth century: Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame was staged in 1957 and remains popular today; Noah Baumbach’s film While We’re Young was released in 2014; and Godfrey Baseley’s radio soap opera The Archers has been broadcast since 1951, although the episodes on which the chapter focuses are far more recent. The texts are considered in this order so as to explore representations of arthritis in the final stages of life, where it is something of an expectation, but also in midlife and youth, where it is unlikely to be featured at all. Autocritical discourse analysis is introduced and applied to explore how these factors all add detail to the metanarrative by which people who have arthritis are often defined.
