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Analysis Of The Book ' Angles And Outcasts '

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The book, Angles and Outcasts, is compiled of works by hearing authors from the nineteenth-century and the twentieth-century, as well as a chapter of works by authors who themselves are Deaf. Each of these stories provides a unique perspective on deafness and how the Deaf people are seen by the rest of the world. There is a common theme present through the nineteenth and twentieth-century works; exaggerated qualities of the Deaf person and a misfortune so great, that it overshadows anything good or human about the person. In the nineteenth-century, the Deaf people have exaggerated qualities such as beauty or strength that are built to be something greater than human ability, but their deafness is such a misfortune, that it negates those exaggerated qualities and often shows the deaf people as being something other than human, an object of pity. In the twentieth-century, the main theme of misfortune being so strong that the deaf people are no longer seen as human equivalent, but rather a spectacle to dump pity onto. In both centuries, Deaf people are written about in ways which portray them with traits that could not be possible and shows their deafness as something deserving of such grand pity. This is a form of oppression which we still see today, but it was much more prevalent in years past. In the nineteenth-century stories, the examples of extraordinary qualities is present in the theme of every story. In the first and second story, “Pierre and Camille” and “Doctor

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