Dismemberment By Wendell Berry Summary

In “Dismemberment,” Wendell Berry narrates the struggle of Andy, a disabled ranch hand, adjusting to his new body. After losing his right hand to a harvesting machine, Andy becomes depressed. Andy finds himself hesitating to ask for help out of embarrassment, shame, and taking his suffering out on his family members, who in the end, he realizes, was supporting him all along. Wendell Berry shows how the dynamic character, Andy, resolves his challenge of accepting his body as it is, using third omniscient point of view to suggest that lack of self acceptance can hinder self efficacy and achievement. Andy’s lack of self confidence at the beginning of the story is Berry’s attempt to show that he lost more than just his arm. Andy’s sense of self, determination, and confidence appear to have left with his arm. The reader learns about Andy’s stubbornness when the narrator explains that ‘he would be obliged to think that he had given his hand, or abandoned it, for as he had know better than to do (Barry

In the beginning, the narrator ponders on Andy’s resentment for the ‘rapidly mechanizing world’ that he didn’t presume as a child and hates as man by actively ‘resisting it the best he could for the rest of his life (146).’ This explains Andy’s discomfort when his family and neighbors help him with his errands. Andy struggles inside with being unsure of what he should do, and even questions their wish to help. He ‘forced himself to do what he required of himself,’ pushing himself to do the same, now difficult tasks, that he knows he could used assistance for (148). The narrator explains the transfer of Andy’s internal conflicts becoming external conflicts with his family members by claiming that he knew was acting crazy in their eyes, and purposely isolating himself to a point of being verbally abusive to his blameless wife (151). These conflicts are what hold Andy back from