Alexandra Saenz
Katherine McMullen
American Sign Language
December 14, 2014 And Your Name is Jonah tells us the story of a young boy named Jonah. In the movie a couple has a son who is diagnosed as mentally retarded, and placed into an institution. They are later shocked to discover that the doctor’s diagnosis, is wrong, their son is deaf, not retarded. Throughout the movie Jonah’s parent’s undergo a lot of stress and a few times they give up on him. His father even leaves his mother because he can’t handle everyone talking about how much of a “freak” Jonah is. His parent’s had him attending speech therapy classes to teach him how to talk. Throughout the movie we see Jonah struggle and even have a few breakdowns. One day on his way to a speech therapy class his mom stopped a deaf family and talked to them. The family invited her to come to a deaf club because Jonah’s mom had asked about meeting more deaf people. This opened a whole new world up for Jonah. Jonah started going out with a deaf man and a translator and he started to learn sign language. His mom pulled him from speech therapy and placed him in a school for the Deaf. In the movie you can feel the isolation that Jonah has and his inability to speak to everyone around him. You feel so much emotion throughout the movie, from the parent’s frustration because they don’t know what to do to his grandfather’s love and accepts Jonah just the way he is. The last few scenes are extremely touching as you see Jonah learns that there is a way to communicate and that he is not alone in the world and there are other’s like him. One quote that stood out to me the most was, “We live in a hearing world…” this was said by his speech therapist teacher who believed sign language was making a kid lazy and taking away from him ever having the ability to speak. The movie came out in 1979 and it has an amazing portrayal on how the deaf were viewed in the 70’s and sometimes even now. The movie really helped me to have an insight of what a deaf person might go through when they are surrounded by hearing people. It is so easy for us to take our hearing for granted, but Deaf people do not have that ability. They can’t hear if there is a car coming up behind them. The movie showed Deaf people to be some of the nicest people in the movie, they were understanding of what Jonah’s mother was going through and they invited her to their Deaf club so she could be surrounded by other Deaf people. The Deaf were so welcoming to a hearing person and they worked and taught her and Jonah signs.