In “A Plague of Tics” (1997), David Sedaris exemplifies that some habits and behaviors people find queer are permanent and irrepressible by others; you cannot judge every person on the same scale of normality. Sedaris accentuates this subconscious act by interlacing his childhood “’special problems’” of “obsessive” rocking, counting, and touching (363) with experiences reaching his college discoveries of “drugs, drinking, and smoking” (370) as well as deliberately adding excerpts of his father “attempting to cure [him] with a series of threats” (365). The author vividly illustrates an extreme case of OCD, commonly associated with tics, and adult demeanors in order to show the horrific side-effects both the person and surrounding friends and
Nancy Mairs, a feminist writer who has Multiple Sclerosis, defines the terms in which she interest the most with the world. Nancy Mairs will name herself a cripple and not be by others. She will choose a word that represents her reality for example in the beginning of her story she mentioned about her being in the bathroom trying to come up with a story about cripples. She was in the handicap bathroom and when she tried to open the door she fell, landing fully clothed on the toilet seat with her legs splayed in front of her and she said “the old beetle -on-it’s back routine.”
Being in the Congo forces Adah to look at her disability in a different way—almost like reading a book backward. "Nobody cares that she 's bad on one whole side," she says, "because they 've all got their own handicap" (1.7.11). People in Kilanga are missing arms, legs, and eyes, and they go on about their daily business like it 's no big thing. We have a feeling she has the same view of her body as many people in Kilanga do: it 's just a tool, a vessel to carry her through this life.
Murphy lacks mobility and sensation in his lower body other than the feeling of occasional muscle spasms, and has limited movement in his upper body below the neck including his arms. Murphy writes the story as it recounts events throughout his entire life, from childhood onwards. He was sixty-two when he wrote the novel. The story provides Murphy’s anthropological commentary on the life of a person with a disability and how society views and treats people with disabilities (Murphy, 1990). Murphy’s performance patterns both support and inhibit his occupational engagement.
“Only 50 years ago persons with intellectual disabilities were scorned, isolated and neglected. Today, they are able to attend school, become employed and assimilate into their local community” (Nelson Mandela). Prior to the later part of the 20th century people with intellectual disabilities were often ridiculed, treated unfairly, feared, and locked away in institutions. According to Rhonda Nauhaus and Cindy Smith in their article Disability Rights through the Mid-20th Century, The laws of any nation reflect its societal values. The real life issue of discrimination towards people with intellectual disabilities in the United States and Australia is demonstrated in the novel, Of Mice and Men by showing how this issue affects one of the main characters, Lennie Smalls.
During the Vietnam War the soldiers, whether or not they wanted to be there, many of them developed mental illnesses. The things they would experience would cause burdens on them for the rest of their lives. “Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April.” (The Things They Carried) Lavender carried tranquilizers until he died, because he was scared.
This is ironic as many say that there is no right or wrong in this world but by categorizing them into right and wrong shows inconsistency action. This shows us that how the world wants the disables to fit the standard to become part of the society. Because as no one would accept him with his disability, Autism, the true himself. This shows the reason why the writer used these to connect with the theme of suffering due to
This dialogue directly shows how the narrator, with a mental illness that confines her logic, imagined many women “creeping” around her private front
The Religion of Disability: How Flannery O’Connor Uses the Concept of Disability in “The Lame Shall Enter First” In her short story, “The Lame Shall Enter First” Flannery O’Connor shares the tale of a self-righteous reformatory counselor, Sheppard, who forgoes the raising of his own son to embark on a quest to improve the life of a young miscreant, Rufus Johnson, who has a clubbed foot. Eventually after devoting all his time and effort to the saving of this young boy, Sheppard realizes the selfish nature of his actions, but it is too late to save to save his own son. O’Connor employs disability perceptions through the contrasting ideas of confinement and freedom as well as the idea of moral superiority.
People with disabilities and their caretakers are stigmatized for not being able to keep up, but they are not viewed as not having a “real” disability if they are too productive. Instead of viewing this as a symptom for their disease or disability, Hillyer believes this is a healthier way of living, and she encourages her readers to adopt similar techniques for managing their responsibilities. She especially criticizes the unrealistic, fast-paced speed that women are expected to maintain, despite personal obstacles. Hillyer, having lived in the intersection between the feminist and disability communities for most of her life, emphasizes the importance of allowing women to abandon the traditional concept of a highly productive “superwoman” and instead replace it with the knowledge that every woman dealing with a disease or disability, in themselves or loved ones, is a
When people hear handicap they think not able to care for themselves. Nancy wants to be known as a tough individual able to take care of herself. The reader can feel the agony of what Nancy is feeling. The tone of this passage is determination and agony. Nancy feels that cripple is more stronger word than “handicap” or ‘disabled.”
In the essay, “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs uses humorous diction and a positive tone to educate people about life as a cripple and struggles of people with disabilities. She does this to show how hard it is to be disabled and how it differs from the life of someone without a disability. She talks about the struggles and the fears that disabled people must deal with on a daily basis. Mairs use of rhetoric creates a strong sense of connection and understanding for the reader. Nancy Mairs is successful in using detailed imagery, diction, and tone to educate her readers about the difficulties of living with a disability.
My poem, “a rest,” explores autistic sensory sensations, the naming of autism, eugenics, and autistic communication. Performing allistic (non-autistic) communication styles is a constant process of interpreting, measuring, responding, and assessing whether a response was appropriate, so engaging in autistic sensations feels, in its literal and metaphorical meanings, like a rest. Before writing the poem, I read Jasbir Puar’s piece “Coda: The Cost of Getting Better Suicide, Sensation, Switchpoints.” Puar engages with disability studies and argues for rethinking debility in terms of diverse switchpoints, surveillance of the assemblage of a body, and briefly mentions language as a measured form of capacity. She writes that “the inability ‘to communicate’ functions as the single determinant of mental or cognitive impairment.”
As an individual who developed a serious case of multiple sclerosis, Nancy Mairs begins to see herself in a different way, not as a normal person but as a “cripple”. As she opens with “I am a cripple.”. The disease ripped away her ability to walk. The disease allowed her to realize the deeper meaning of derogatory terms, such as “disabled” or “handicapped, especially the term “cripple”.
Mental and physical disabilities are shown through how the different characters interact with their environment. Disabilities can create obstacles in a person's life but they also allow for other people to create an identity for them. Steinbeck shows that disabilities can create a political statement. They all had dreams to be something better than what they were but the tag that society gave them they were unable to pursue their thoughts and ideas. All these characters possed the same characteristic of being hopeless but in reality if they were given hope they may have been able to achieve their ambitions, prospects, and
