Cochlear Implants In Sound And Fury

The movie Sound and Fury focused on two brothers, Peter who is deaf and Chris who is hearing, who both have at least one deaf child. Each family is considering whether they should get cochlear implants for their deaf children. Peter and Nita, Heather’s parents, are both deaf and heavily involved in Deaf culture. Being Deaf is a major part of Peter and Nita’s identities. They both do a lot of research about cochlear implants, tour schools, and talk to hearing and Deaf families who have had children that received cochlear implants. The role of Peter and Nita’s identities as Deaf people played the biggest role in their decision to wait to allow Heather to receive cochlear implants. This was surprising to me as I thought that educational opportunities, accessibility, ability to communicate with a greater number and variety of people, among other factors would have played a larger role in their decision. It was clear that Peter and Nita wanted to do what they thought was best for

This decision further immerses the family in Deaf culture and the Deaf community. In Sound and Fury: Six Years Later, we revisit Heather and her family. They moved back to New York and moved in with Peter’s parents, as being away from family and their support system with Peter going back to New York each weekend for work was too much of a strain and caused Nita to have a breakdown. In this follow-up film, we find out that Heather ended up receiving the cochlear implants and now goes to a hearing school. I wonder if Peter and Nita had not had the pressure from Peter’s parents to get Heather the cochlear implant, if they would have made the same decision. Based on Sound and Fury: Six Years Later, the family has been able to merge the Deaf and Hearing worlds more and advocate for greater support and understanding across both Deaf and Hearing