Genie: A Scientific Tragedy Analysis

Permanently strapped in a chair by her deranged father, Genie has spent her whole life locked in a room with no way to the outside world. She has been deprived of love, nurture and being human. Her father, Clark grew up in foster homes and orphanages in his native Pacific Northwest, Irene who is Genie’s mother, grew up in Altus, Oklahoma. The couple met in Hollywood at a drug store that Irene worked at. They were both a happy couple until marriage; the couple had a baby boy who was slow according to Clark. His mother took the baby in days later was struck by a car. After the death of his mother, Clark had an immense downfall, he became very abusive. They had another child and put him in the Garage, the baby died several days later from

This book is a process of telling the story of a desperate little girl trapped in a world of terror and pain. With a deceased abusive father, and a mother blind both physically and mentally, she had no way out. One major question that both psychologists and reader had was if she would ever be able to speak. Genie was called the “ wild child”. One very important theme would be child abuse, Genie faced a world of hurt and destruction along with her family, when recused she had calluses her bottom due to the long period of time she sat in the potty chair. Genie became a world wide phenomena and everyone wanted to study her. She became a serious case study and Dr. Curtiss was one of the many that had the chance to study Genie, she attempted teaching Genie language and communication. She was able to communicate, but was never able to actually make out a sentence. One quote that was very accurate would be “ Language is a tool…the tool is endlessly useful in the sense that we commonly create and understand sentences that we have never heard before. How do we do it? Language is like a hammer; it can be used in many ways and what it depends on the person using it…it is a system of structure. Anything with structure had to have limits. It must; otherwise, it wouldn’t work. If a hammer were an amorphous blob, it would not be useful.” (Pg 32) This quote is saying that it takes some time to teach a language due to the fact that it needs to be structured, just like a