In Mairs’ essay, is structured more on one issue rather than many issues like in Eighner’s essay, is explaining what the disease is and how its changed her opinion on different things, like how she doesn’t let the disease define who she is. “...I’m not sorry to be a cripple... and I wish I had more of it, I’m glad of what I have”(Par.32). this quote shows that she isn’t like most MS patients, being bitter and resentful, she embraces it in a way that she has seen a new way to look at it. The purpose of this essay is to inform the public that even though she is crippled, she has learned from it. For instance, at the end of the essay she says that if she wouldn't trade anything for it because she gets the hang of being a cripple because she states
These two essays are about two dissimilar disabilities. Nancy Mairs and David Sedaris act as examples of how an author’s writing can change the tone and meaning of a narrative. Mairs message was educational and encouraging as she explained her life with MS and how society sees her. Sedaris use of experience and memories portrays his life with obsessive-compulsive disorder; what he calls “tics”. These two writers take similar topics and pitch them in ways so the reader can see the illustration behind them.
Her essay is arranged in such a way that her audience can understand her life - the positives and the negatives. She allows her audience to see both sides of her life, both the harsh realities that she must suffer as well as her average day-to-day life. According to Nancy, multiple sclerosis “...has opened and enriched my life enormously. This sense that my fragility and need must be mirrored in others, that in search for and shaping a stable core in a life wrenched by change and loss, change and loss, I must recognize the same process, under individual conditions, in the lives around me. I do not deprecate such knowledge” (Mairs, 37). Mairs big claim is that she has accepted herself and her condition for what is it, yet she refuses to allow her condition to define her. Through her particular diction, tone, satire, and rhetorical elements, Mairs paints a picture of her life and shows how being a cripple has not prevent her from living her life. She is not embarrassed nor ashamed of what she is, and accepts her condition by making the most of it and wearing the title with
Mairs describes her condition and how it relates to the actions and responses of other people in any situation. Mairs uses the term cripple loosely, making sure it is not offensive to anyone. By starting her passage with, “I am a cripple,” Mairs doesn’t hide anything. She begins by coming straight out into the open with who she is and how she wants the world to view her. In the first paragraph, Mairs uses the word choose three times to establish her personal decision to be titled a cripple.
These euphemisms for her condition cause people to view her as something she isn't. Mairs believes that these words describe no one because "Society is no readier to accept crippledness than to accept death, war, sweat, or wrinkles." She continues her story of multiple sclerosis and the hardships she endured. Mairs goes into detail about how her life has changed since her diagnosis and how she has coped with the disease. She includes her need for help by the people around her but also delves into the fact that she can still teach and perform arduous tasks. She talks about her dependence on her family and how good her family treated her. She says she is scared. “...that people are kind to me only because I'm a cripple."(Mairs,8) Mairs hates that our society is obsessed with physical appearance and normality. She states that, "anyone who deviates from the norm better find some way to compensate." (Maris)This shows that she believes that American society has lofty expectations. She ends the essay by stating how she is getting used to having MS and how she isn't sorry anymore that she is a cripple. Mairs is thankful for what she has and the people who help her in her life. Overall, she is proud of herself and has recognized that life is what one makes it to be. Now from what you learned what do you
...ive most of their life as a perfectly able-bodied person until a tragic accident one day could rob you of the function of your legs, and you have to learn how to cope with being disabled. Mairs illustrates that being disabled is more common than the media portrays, and it’s hard to deal with feeling alienated for your disabilities. These three authors have evoked a sense of sympathy from the reader, but they also imply that they don’t want non-handicapped people to pity them. The goal these authors have is to reach out to the able-bodied person, and help them understand how to treat a disabled person. The disabled people don’t want to be pitied, but they still need our help sometimes, just like if you saw someone with an arm full of grocery bags having difficulty opening their car door. They want us to accept them not as a different species, but as functional people.
Contrarily, I was born with Congenital Muscular Dystrophy with Merosin Deficiency. I never had the ability to walk, stand or take care of myself. I have been using an electric wheelchair since I was eighteen months old. I attended public school for my entire career and achieved high honor roll every semester of high school. I currently attend the small, Liberal Arts University of Wells College. While Beisser had to deal with great loss, I have only known my life the way it is currently. However, I have often questioned my abilities and my future, similarly to Beisser. Throughout the book, Beiss...
Mairs’s inferiority complex which made her question other people’s attitude towards her. In “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs. She kept believe the way how
This tone is also used to establish an appeal to pathos which he hopes to convince the audience of the fact that handicapped people are still people and not less than anyone else. A very prominent example of Peace’s emotion is displayed when he says, “Like many disabled people, I embrace an identity that is tied to my body. I have been made to feel different, inferior, since I began using a wheelchair thirty years ago and by claiming that I am disabled and proud, I am empowered,” (para. 15). This declaration demonstrates to his audience that Peace is honored by who he is and what disabled people can do and that he is tired of being oppressed by the media. Peace also makes this claim to support his thesis in the first paragraph that states, “The negative portrayal of disabled people is not only oppressive but also confirms that nondisabled people set the terms of the debate about the meaning of disability,” (para. 1). This is Peace’s central argument for the whole article and explains his frustration with society’s generalization of handicapped people and the preconceived limitations set on them. Peace’s appeal to pathos and tone throughout are extremely effective in displaying to his audience (society) that those who have disabilities are fed up with the limits that have been placed in the
In his story “Village 113” Anthony Doerr argues that pain is inevitable over time. A couple of examples that over time pain becomes inevitable are: Teacher Ke and the relationship between Li Qing and the seed keeper. Teacher Ke notices what is becoming of their village by noting: “They spread a truckload of soil in the desert and call it farmland? They take our river and give us bus tickets” (126)? Teacher Ke has a background with “the winter of weeds” where he only could eat weeds for sustenance for that winter (126). Doerr implies that with the culmination of their “world” being destroyed becomes a reality; desperate measures need to be taken to sanctify relations and belongings. As the construction of the dam continues, there is a sense of painful emotion to the fact that they are making villages migrate out of their homes and into the city where they are thrown with the little money they are given for their land. From the accounts of teacher Ke,
In 1987, Nancy Mairs argued that physical disabilities are not represented correctly in the media and television. And recently, Rosie Anaya disagrees by explaining that mental disability is suffering worse representation than physical disability. People with mental disabilities are not realistically portrayed on television. Thus, this unrealistic portrayal results in a negative stigma on mental disability and can further isolate those with disabilities.
The disabled are dealing with problems every day of their lives that cannot be fixed. Although Shriver understood that, she did not understand why society would even think to treat the disabled differently, even if they had issues. They had no control over that. She finally came to the conclusion that she needed to make a difference. Shriver tremendously wanted people to look at the disabled differently; they are humans too.
In an attempt to both keep her knowledge of her disease as up to date as possible as well as to interact with the global community of MS sufferers, my mother subscribes to a handful of MS newsletters and magazines. These periodicals always include testimonials from patients and doctors alike, exemplifying the idea of storytelling as the “privileged medium of the dyadic body” (36). Through sharing their experiences with MS, this community “both offers its own pain and receives the reassurance that others recognize what afflicts [them]” (36). In a small way as a reader, my mother recognizes that the bodies of other people afflicted with her condition “[have] to do with [her], and [she] with [them]” (35). My mother’s body acts as a dyadic and communicative body on a more significant level in her relationships with other patients (37).
Feminist perspectives began to enter the discipline of international relations since the end of the Cold War, gaining increasing recognition. However, the voice of women is still scarce within the discipline, especially in the US and the West where mainstream international relations theories such as neorealism and neoliberalism still dominate. This essay will postulate that Tickner’s aim is not to make classical realism into a straw man, but instead that her critique of Morgenthau is apt because what she strives to do is to offer a feminist perspective to the field of IR to make it more accessible to women practitioners and scholars. Moreover, Tickner’s main contention throughout is that she does not view Morgenthau’s political realism as incorrect and invalid through the way in which he depicts the international system, but believes that he only offers a partial account of international politics because its assumptions of human nature favours the male perspective. A female perspective is required to make this account whole. To do so, this essay will discuss why international politics is male-dominated. Furthermore, it will analyse how Tickner critiques Morgenthau’s political realism and discuss briefly why she chooses to use Morgenthau to highlight the relative lack of feminist approaches within the discipline. This essay will come to the conclusion that Tickner’s critique of Morgenthau is useful and apt because it promotes the incorporation of feminist approaches, allowing for multiple perspectives especially within the dominant fields of international relations and consequently, allows us to have a better understanding of the international system. Her critique hardly invalidates or defeats Morgenthau’s teachings but merely ...
In the text, "The Book of Margery Kempe”, transcribed by an anonymous priest and translated by Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe incited a notion that she was a part of something greater than herself through the transformation of her identify by her performance after her first childbirth, how she dealt with the scared through her crying performances, and how she taught and persuaded those around her to follow God through her religious performances. Firstly, Kempe’s identity transformed after the birth of her first child, representing that she was a part of something greater than herself because of her ability to transform herself into a devote woman of God. Kempe had found herself attacked by illness after her first child was conceived, and the devil began to appear in her life and convinced her to betray her devotion to religion. She was able to transform this mindset, however, after she had a vision of Jesus.
In the essay “Disability,” Nancy Mairs discusses the lack of media attention for the disabled, writing: “To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may enter anyone’s life.” An ordinary person has very little exposure to the disabled, and therefore can only draw conclusions from what is seen in the media. As soon as people can picture the disabled as regular people with a debilitating condition, they can begin to respect them and see to their needs without it seeming like an afterthought or a burden. As Mairs wrote: “The fact is that ours is the only minority you can join involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” Looking at the issue from this angle, it is easy to see that many disabled people were ordinary people prior to some sort of accident. Mairs develops this po...