Free Essay

On Being Cripple

In:

Submitted By think
Words 299
Pages 2
Mairs, Nancy. "On Being Cripple". The Norton Reader. Ed. Linda

Peterson and John C. Breteon. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008. 59-68

In this well written essay, Nancy Mairs, a feminist writer who has

multiple sclerosis, defines the terms in which she will interact with the

world. She will name herself--a cripple--and not be named by others. She will choose a word that represents her reality.

Nancy Mairs, talks about her disease "multiple sclerosis", she is well

aware of her disadvantage, although she did not choose the disease

the disease chose her. Mairs still has an positive attitude about life,

despite all her limitaions she continues to make a good thing out of a

bad situation. Mairs is aware she is not the only person who had this

type of disease will experience some sort of mental and physical

breakdown. Mairs has a goal, she would like to continue with her daily actiivies,

as far as teaching, writing, raising children, speaking publicly about MS

and depression.

The author grabs my attention, in a positive way, knowing we are

all human, with some type of disease , by way of mental or physical

no matter what the problem is , we could all fall into a depression state

at any given time for any given reason. But if we continue to keep

positive thoughts we could all relate to Mairs.

Mairs describes the diagnosis early on, the kind of person she was

before, and how that has changed and not changed since her illness. She discusses her need for assistance, but balances that by saying

that there are many people around her willing to help; she describes

her dependence on her family and how lucky she was to have a

husband and children before she was taken ill. .

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

On Being A Cripple Analysis

...CRAMS Essay In the essays, “Living Under Circe’s Spell” by Matthew Soyster and “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs the authors describe what it is like to have Multiple Sclerosis or MS. Multiple Sclerosis is a nervous system disease that is incurable. Although they are discussing the same subject the authors display different attitudes towards it. Soyster seems to with an attitude of longing for the past while Mairs approaches the subject with a more positive attitude about her disability. Both of the writers use diction, appeals to pathos, and allusion to effectively describe their lives with this disease. The use of diction in these essays plays an instrumental role in establishing the tone and ideas that the authors present. Both the writers...

Words: 816 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Summary

...object whether it is generalized or applied in a concise, accurate terms. These terms can also apply to multiple subjects and may take several forms. Nonetheless, their connotation which contain emotion and indirect association, can have a greater impact towards a work or a person. In “On Being a Cripple”, Nancy Mairs explores the idea of self defining by attempting to understand the purpose and effects towards herself. Mairs’ physical and emotional struggles are apparent and her situation leads her to fight for the control of people's perceptions in the way they identified her. Cripple, the label she adopted, defined her as a person. The word becomes synonymous with “weakness and clumsiness”(31). Likewise, soft toned terms, such as “differently abled”, gave Mairs’ a syntactic variety while averting from the realities of her condition (29). The power to define who she is and her condition provided her a method to share a personal rather than generic experience with Multiple sclerosis (MS). Mairs’ ability to choose the way she is classified and the way people perceived her lent Mairs an opportunity to present her own, unique term: cripple. Words have connotations,...

Words: 570 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Summary

...In Nancy Mairs’ “On Being a Cripple” she lends us to the extensive view of the life of a person living with MS, and the day to day basis on how her life has changed. According the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the most common disabling neurological disease of young adults. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neuroinflammatory disease that affects myelin , a substance that makes up the membrane (called the myelin sheath) that wraps around nerve fibers (axons). Mrs. Mairs’ life has been changed to the point where her daily life is impacted by her disease, but not to the point where she allows the disease to define her life. She still tries to do daily activities and has adjusted her disability. She herself doesn’t say that her life is nothing but worry-free. but she does say that if anyone should be well adjusted to having MS, it’d be her. Her essay brings up a lot of points about being disabled, from the linguistics of identifying disabled people to how...

Words: 1553 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Analysis

...Being a cripple sounds horrible to most able-bodied people, but not to Nancy Mairs, author of “On Being a Cripple.” Being an able-bodied person once herself, she grew up to have multiple sclerosis, an incurable disease that attacks the nervous system, making some of, if not all, the affected person’s limbs become useless, making them “crippled.” Mairs is however glad that she has this disease, as it allows her to see life more clearly. This belief can be extended to other people with same or different disabilities. In most cases, Mairs would be right in assuming that having a disability would allow a person to see life clearly. One such case would be the one of Eleanor Longden. Longden battled through the disorder known as schizophrenia....

Words: 488 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Analysis

...On Being a Cripple Nancy Mairs’ essay, “On Being a Cripple”, has an emotional view on how she must cope with the life and struggles of being handicapped. Mairs strongly disliked her condition because it left her fragile and vulnerable toward her skills. After Mairs was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she was opened up to a new life that she had to adapt to. Her ability to perform tasks and to engage in various activities were limited by the declined use of her body parts. In the reader’s perspective, one can conclude that Mairs wants to give the reader a brief depiction of how his or her life would be like as a handicap. Mairs’ use of the word “cripple” is compelling because she adds a spontaneous description of what she had to cope with as a handicap individual. She defines “cripple” as a person who has difficult time adjusting to the struggles and situations that he or she must face in life, such as moving around and daily routines (putting on clothes or getting ready for work). She also finds the words “disabled” and “handicapped” to be ambiguous and different. These words were unclear to Mairs and she stated that disabled is resulted by a real injury or mindful matter while handicapped means to lose mobility in body parts. The reader...

Words: 689 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Essay

...but what can be even more devastating is never moving on. Nancy Mairs, in her essay “On Being a Cripple”, writes to encourage those that read her essay to not allow tragedy to overtake them but rather to continue living life with all hope, autonomy, bravery and optimism for the future. To convey this message Mairs balances and a somber, serious tone, a humorous tone and a strong, bold tone. Nancy Mairs is an...

Words: 448 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Nancy Mairs Cripple Analysis

...Out of seven possibilities, the most common ones are “ Handicapped, Disabled, or Cripple.” Which one did Mairs choose? In this passage Nancy Mairs, a dear woman who has multiple sclerosis openly identifies herself as a “ cripple”, instead of handicapped or disabled. Mairs presents herself in a specific way to show why she made that word choice of “ cripple” to name herself. Upon doing that Mairs uses rhetorical features such as tone, word choice, and rhetorical structure to further her reason. In this passage, Mairs presents herself at the outset having a candid and elegy tone. The first sentence states: “ I am cripple; and that right there without no further details shows the candidness of this passage. As she brings out that “ Cripple...

Words: 264 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Death of a Salesman

...wanting to be independent while not being able to and having a fear of failure. Miller’s use of language portrays Willy to be desperate for the job which is moving. Willy tells Howard that he’s ‘got to’ have his job, which sounds like Willy is trying to seem innocent – as if he cannot survive without it. It also sounds like he is demanding Howard to give him his job, which is not very professional and shows how Willy does not suit the business world. This is moving. As well as this, Willy, after having been denied a job which allows him to go to Boston responds by saying ‘Why can’t I go?’ Miller’s choice of words relates to those of a child who really wants to go somewhere, and is sulking. This reflects his desperateness to be able to go to Boston, and the relation to children adds to the moving effect of the quote, as children are associated with innocence. It also makes it sounds like Willy doesn’t understand what is going on, again like a child, which is moving. Miller emphasises on the fact that Willy loves the idea of being able to work and be independent but subtly underlines that Willy is unable to do so. This emphasis and subtlety is used when Howard suggests that Willy stops working and lives off his sons, to which he responds by saying that he is ‘not a cripple!’ The exclamation mark indicates to the actor that the line must be said with desperation and urgency, which reflects that Willy thinks that being ‘a cripple’ and not being able to be independent and provide...

Words: 711 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Analysis Of Nancy Mairs Feared Word Cripple

...Have you ever seen someone with crutches and called them a cripple just to be shushed by your mother and told it’s rude and the correct term is handicapped? Well for many, they prefer the term, handicapped, because it makes them feel still of use versus deformed or broken, but for Nancy Mairs, she proudly uses the negative term, cripple, quite affirmatively. Handicapped infers restrictions to one’s ability to function physically, mentally, or socially, but Nancy indulgences the wincing of others and her ability to “face the brutal truth of her existence squarely.” Within Nancy Mairs’ passage, she explains her reasoning for repeatedly using the feared word “cripple” through interesting rhetorical features such as tone, word choice, and rhetorical...

Words: 361 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

The Story of a Boy Named John

...them names. One day, when John was strolling around his village, he saw a group of 5 disabled persons. One is a cripple, two are blinds and two are deaf and mute. He keeps laughing while pointing at them. "HAHAHAHAHA! You're the reason why our country's economy dont go up. You five cant do anything good for the country" then he left. The cripple heard everything and whispered "From now on, you will experience how it is like to be one of us. You will be blind, deaf, mute, and cripple" The next day, John tried to call his mom but no voice came out. He cant speak becuase no voice is coming out of his mouth. He endured the day in his room thinking that maybe he just overdrink cold water but he realized how hard is being unable to speak is. The next day came, John had his voice back but he cant walk. His legs cant stand up. There, he realized how hard it is not to walk but he still didn't realize yet what wrong doings he had done. The 3rd day came, John can now walk, can now speak but he cant hear his own voice and the others. He stayed in his room the entire day because he cant communicate with others well. There, he realized how hard it is not to hear anything. The 4th day came, John can now speak, can now walk, can now hear, but cant see anything. He stayed on his bed because he is unable to see a thing. This time, he realized how hard is being unable to see is. He realized that he should not make fun of the disabled persons because it is not easy for them to...

Words: 407 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Challenges and Security Issues

...Unit 5 IP – Challenges and Security Issues American InterContinental University Abstract In this assignment, review of three different case studies will be discussed. Topics will include when an antivirus software cripples your computer, determining how secure cloud computing is, and electronic medical records systems. After the review of each case study, a set of questions will be answered to provide details on each study as to what was reviewed. Challenges and Security Issues (Case Studies) Introduction In this assignment, review of three different case studies will be discussed. Topics will include when an antivirus software cripples your computer, determining how secure cloud computing is, and electronic medical records systems. Case Study #1 When Antivirus Software Cripples Your Computers On April 21, 2010, McAfee crippled hundreds of thousands of McAfee equipped machines, by mistakenly sending an update to its users reclassifying svchost.exe as being a malicious file which was known as W32/wecorl.a virus (Humphries, 2010, para 1-2). The factors that were responsible for this software problem was that McAfee failed to send users a warning notifying them that svchost.exe was going to be either deleted or quarantined; instead they deleted the file completely. On the other hand, failure to detect this error was at the fault of McAfee’s automated quality assurance. Another reason this spread so quickly is because of the high demand for faster antivirus updates....

Words: 1227 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Annotated Bibliography

...Annotated Bibliography Kristine B. right To Work vs. Employment at Will: What’s the Difference? 2009. Kristine argues that those who embrace the right-to-work laws are of the opinion that the laws offer the employees with a full mandate on choosing whether to belong to a workers’ union or not. She also outlines that those who oppose the right-to-work laws argue that the laws cripple the efficiency of the workers’ unions, thus rendering them incapable of negotiating on behalf of the employees. Kristine effectively outlines that the right-to-work laws act as the genesis of employment at will. This means that the employers can terminate their employee's contracts at their own leisure. The retention of an employee in a certain workstation is thus...

Words: 2073 - Pages: 9

Free Essay

Paper

...left him and his mom when he was at a very little age. Instead of letting his past bother him and making that his identity, he set out to create his own identity by using his past as how not to treat his family. He talked to us about how he found Jesus Christ and made him his savior and accepted him at the center of his life, and now he goes from city to city talking about God and how he has created his own identity for himself with the help of God. The speaker told us about how through all of those things that have happened in his past have caused him to become a strong person, but how anyone can make their own identity regardless of their background or the actions that they have done in the past. In the essay “On Being a Cripple”, Nancy Mairs talks about being crippled and what it is like. She says “I made the choice” of whether to be called handicapped, disabled, crippled, or another term used for physically disabled people. (Mairs, 231) She goes onto to talk about how she doesn’t let her disability bother her as much, and how she has become the person she is today. When people let their disabilities or other problems affect them it changes the way they think, and the way they act towards other people, hence creating a poor identity for themselves. Mairs tells about how she has created her own...

Words: 682 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Maslow

...needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, all of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow studied what he called exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy." Maslow studied the healthiest 1% of the college student population. Maslow's theory was fully expressed in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality. Maslow is a humanistic psychologist. Humanists do not believe that human beings are pushed and pulled by mechanical forces, either of stimuli and reinforcements or of unconscious instinctual impulses. Humanists focus upon potentials. They believe that humans strive for an upper level of capabilities. Humans seek the frontiers of creativity, the highest reaches of consciousness and wisdom. This has been labeled "fully functioning person", "healthy personality", or as Maslow calls this level, "self-actualizing person." Maslow has set up a hierarchic theory of needs. All of his basic needs are instinctual, equivalent of instincts in animals. Humans start with a very weak disposition that...

Words: 623 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Waslow

...Abraham Maslow is known for establishing the theory of a hierarchy of needs, writing that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that certain lower needs need to be satisfied before higher needs can be satisfied. Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglas rather than mentally ill or neurotic people. This was a radical departure from two of the chief schools of psychology of his day: Freud and B.F. Skinner. Freud saw little difference between the motivations of humans and animals. We are supposedly rational beings; however, we do not act that way. Such pessimism, Maslow believed, was the result of Freud's study of mentally ill people. "The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy" (Motivation and Personality). Skinner, on the other hand, studied how pigeons and white rats learn. His motivational models were based on simple rewards such as food and water, sex, and avoidance of pain. Say "sit" to your dog and give the dog a treat when it sits, and-after several repetitions--the dog will sit when you command it to do so. Maslow thought that psychologists should instead study the playfulness, affection, etc., of animals. He also believed that Skinner discounted things that make humans different from each other. Instead, Skinner relied on statistical descriptions of people. Maslow's hierarchy of needs was an alternative...

Words: 600 - Pages: 3