Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Summary

1197 Words3 Pages

Nancy Mairs’ “On Being a Cripple” is centered around a teacher/writer with a psychocentric personality that chooses the synonym cripple as the way to define her chronic degenerative disease called multiple sclerosis. Also she takes you on her personal life journey, which is plagued with challenges, depression, realizations, joy, hatred and acceptance of the disease. Mairs’ hates the way society views physical appearance and abnormality. Mairs’ has a distinctive concern about the language used in regards to this disease. She doesn’t like the word disabled, handicapped or differently abled because these euphemisms cause people to view her as something that she isn’t. Mairs’ states that “society is no readier to accept crippled-ness than to accept …show more content…

She was not good at sports, but like to climb, skate and ride her bicycle and sail. She hated sports due to humiliation with field hockey and basketball. The initial symptoms began when she was twenty-eight years old and she started to rip and drop things. A neurologist was contacted and determined that it was a brain tumor. A year in a half later, she developed a blurred spot in one eye. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis is a chronic degenerative disease of the central nervous system, in which the myelin that covers the nerves is somehow eaten away and scar tissue for multiple sclerosis in its place, interrupting the nerve’s signals. This disease has an unpredictable and uncontrollable course which leads to the loss of vision, hearing, speech, the ability to walk, control of bladder and bowels, sensitivity to touch, vibration and pain, potency and coordination of movements. The list of possibilities is lengthy and horrifying. Ten years from her initial diagnosis, she sustains some losses. She has sudden attacks called exacerbations followed by remissions. Her left leg is weak and she walks with the help of a brace and cane. She now uses an electric wheelchair. She no longer has much use of her left hand and her right side is getting weak also. There are some harsh realities that Mairs’ has to face regarding this

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Nancy Mairs Living Under Circe's Spell

    1119 Words  | 3 Pages

    The essays, “On Being a Cripple”, by Nancy Mairs, and “Living Under Circe’s Spell”, by Matthew Soyster are both about how each author deals with multiple sclerosis in their life and their opinions on it. Mairs’ piece is a careful examination of her experience with MS and her perspective towards her future. In contrast, Soyster writes humorously of a particular incident he had with MS and artfully weaves his ideas about the disease in with his story. In both instances, the authors share the purpose of narrating their encounter with MS to the world to raise awareness. Both employ the rhetorical strategies of appeals to pathos and varying sentence structures to achieve this goal, some more effectively than others.

    Read More

  • Of Nancy Mairs And David Sedaris A Plague Of Disabilities

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    Disability they have, but styles to tell are more of difference. Nancy Mairs and David Sedaris use writing to address their disability in different ways. In both Nancy Mairs “On Being a Cripple” and David Sedaris “A Plague of Tics”, both authors describe and live with their disabilities in different ways. Mairs uses her familiarity to address the reader where Sedaris recollects his habits in a somewhat humorous way. Even though both have a disability it’s conveyed in two different ways. Mairs comes straight out the gate as being cripple stating “First, the matter of semantics. I am cripple” (Cohen 259). From this point on she goes on to explain her disease which gives you an idea of what’s to come. Sedaris approach is very different as he jumps into examples throughout his childhood and never states his disability. His habits are explained as “tics” while he uses his childhood experiences to describe his disability.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of On Being A Cripple By Nancy Mair

    1099 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her essay “On Being a Cripple,” Mairs describes her path of acceptance of her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis by declaring that she is a “cripple” in alternative to the more broadly acceptable terms: disabled or handicapped. Her essay is written with humor, satire, an open heart, and open eyes. Mair’s purpose is to describe her acceptances of her condition by using rhetorical elements and appeals, such as ethos and pathos, in order to allure her audience.

    Read More

  • Crippled by Nancy Mairs

    576 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Nancy Mairs Disability Essay

    1024 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Unspeakable Conversations By Harriet Mcbryde Johnson

    561 Words  | 2 Pages

    She told her readers that she has a muscle-wasting disease and she could only move three fingers on her right hand. She wrote that the reactions she got from most people were “Decidedly negative” (Johnson p.98) She wrote that she would hear thing such as “I admire you for being out; most people would give up.” And “You don’t let the pain hold you back do you?” (Johnson p.98) There is often talk about how popular culture teaches people to both see and not see the people with disabilities. Comments such as these are an example of such blindness. When a child sees a disabled person a parent’s first reaction would be to tell them not to stare. We teach children that it is impolite to be curious about people who live life differently than others. We carry the “its-not-polite-to-stare” idea into adult hood therefore when we come across a disabled we try not to make eye contact not as if we are being rude but because we are taught that it would offend them. All curiosity and attempts to understand are shut down at a young age for fear of offending someone. Therefore, any attempt to encourage is met with a deep misunderstanding of how the life of someone with disabilities truly works. Just because a person has a disability does not mean they are incapable of enjoying

    Read More

  • Nancy Mairs, Andre Dubus, Harriet McBryde Johnson: Disability

    1916 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...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.

    Read More

  • Disabilities in The Short Bus by Jonathan Mooney

    1259 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the book, The Short Bus, Jonathan Mooney’s thesis is that there is more to people than their disabilities, it is not restricting nor is it shameful but infact it is beautiful in its own way. With a plan to travel the United States, Mooney decides to travel in a Short bus with intentions of collecting experiences from people who have overcome--or not overcome--being labeled disabled or abnormal. In this Mooney reinvents this concept that normal people suck; that a simple small message of “you’re not normal” could have a destructive and deteriorating effect. With an idea of what disabilities are, Mooney’s trip gives light to disabilities even he was not prepared to face, that he feared.

    Read More

  • On Being a Cripple by Nancy Mair

    588 Words  | 2 Pages

    “I am a Cripple,” when people typically hear these words they tend to feel bad for that person, but that is exactly what Mair does not want. She prefers that people treat her the same as they would if she did not have the disease. Throughout the essay, Mair discuses her disease openly. She uses an optimistic tone, so that the reader will not recoil with sadness when they hear her discuss the disease and how it affects her life. In Nancy Mair’s essay “On Being A Cripple,” Mair uses her personal stories, diction, and syntactical structures to create an optimistic tone throughout the essay, so that the audience can better connect story.

    Read More

  • Connie Panzarino: The Gendered Experience Of Disability

    355 Words  | 1 Pages

    As for this concern Connie Panzarino was born in 1947. She was writer, activist and artist with the rare disease Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type III, formerly called Amytonia Congenita. From her early stage filled with joy and pain in her every step in her life. Finally, she strove to define herself: "I knew I was different. She didn’t understand if that meant that I would never walk. She didn’t know that most children with this disease die before they're five years old." In this deeply moving and articulate memoir, Connie Panzarino gives explanations her decades of struggle and triumph. She filled with spirit, passion and insolence, The Me in the Mirror reveals the story of a remarkable life. How she affected name of gender and she affected the name of disability. How she strives for the identity in the patriarchal and discriminated world. I am going to explore the all this issues through this

    Read More

  • Impact of Mindset on Health and Social Interactions

    1016 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs. She hates to call her handicapped because she believes that hold her back. The author writes, “I certainly don’t like “handicapped,” which implies that I have deliberately been put at a disadvantage, by whom I can’t imagine (my god is not a handicapper general), in order to equalize chances in the great race of life” (21). In other words, she doesn’t want to call her handicapped, because she wants to live her life with equal chances even she’s not. Her positive attitude makes her more active. She’s trying to live a normal life with her disability. She hates being crippled, but she’s trying to get over it. If she had a negative attitude, she wouldn’t write about her own story. She wouldn’t do anything. I believe her positive mindset affects somehow to get rid of something that hold her back. She overcame the effects of her illness through positive attitude. Mairs and Jamison’s thoughts they have shaped their lives either positive way or negative

    Read More

  • What Did You Just Call Me?

    1184 Words  | 3 Pages

    "On Being a Cripple" is an autobiographical essay by Nancy Mairs. The author was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in her late twenties, and has since then lost full use of several limbs. Despite the stigma around the use of the word, Mairs refers to herself as a "cripple". With the use of this word she attempts to accept the reality of her situation without feeling sorry for herself. The author also demands the same of her readers and the people that she meets in her life. Mairs writes to those who wish to learn more about what it is like to live with this debilitating disease and how people react to it. She uses this essay to make a point about how society labels people while telling her story in a manner which cites examples from her life. She describes her life through everyday situations that occur when living with MS. Mairs does not have the same physical abilities that most of us don't think twice about, but she carries on with her life without the need for pity or a new vocabulary that attempts to make her condition seem less severe.

    Read More

  • On Being A Cripple And A Plague Of Tics

    1139 Words  | 3 Pages

    Due to this disease the body is slowly broken down by affecting the central nervous system of a person’s body. The children depicted in the essay are probably an example how fellow human beings should be around a disabled person. They just view the disabled person as another human being and respect them the same way. The children are proud to associate themselves with Mairs and do not shy away from introducing her to the general public. This is what a disabled person requires: that all those around him or her should respect them for what they are and give them unconditional regard

    Read More

  • Exploring Multiple Sclerosis: An Overview and History

    1626 Words  | 4 Pages

    Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is one of the most common diseases of the Central Nervous System (CNS) which affects all ages and gender. MS is currently the leading cause of disability in young adults and found to be more prevalent in women and affects 2.5 million people worldwide. “Multiple Sclerosis is a progressive chronic immune - mediated disease characterized by disseminated demyelination of nerve fibers of the brain and spinal cord” (Mahan, Escott-Stump, 2008).

    Read More

  • Understanding the Disabled

    1223 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 point with heavy emotional appeals, arguing that the media, and therefore the population, do not see the disabled as ordinary people.... ... middle of paper ...

    Read More

More about Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Summary

Open Document