The Most Depressing Metaphors Of Becoming Disabled

In Nancy Mairs short story, “On Being a Cripple”, she reflects on her life handling her disability of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and how it has changed different aspects of her existence. She defines herself as a cripple despite the negative connotations the word may have. Over the past ten years, Mairs has had her MS slowly progress as her body deteriorates. She sees her life as fairly average, but seemingly small tasks have become difficult to her and has required help from her family. Despite their support, Mairs still fears that people's kindness is out of pity. The stigma around physical disfigurement and being crippled causes added suffering to her life. Although the disease dictates much of her existence,

I was truly devastated by the stories that both Henry and Henia Bryer presented. I am able to gain appreciation for the things that appear insignificant in my life. As I picture myself in the shoes of Henry and Henia, I gain a sense of hatred towards the Germans. The images of the pile of naked, bony, and dead bodies within both videos truly impacted me. As I observed these images, I saw a glimpse of the horrendous life that the Jews had while living in the concentration camps.

Most people will never have to endure the things that Irene Zisblatt endured before she was 18. She is a Jew who was 13 during the time of the holocaust. She and her family were taken from their home to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Upon their arrival to Auschwitz, Irene was separated from her father, mother, four-year-old sister, and two-year-old brother. That was the last time she saw her family; they were taken to the gas chambers. Her mother had given her four diamonds to keep with her, which she had to swallow to keep them safe. She survived on her own for many more days and was soon selected to have a horrific experiment done on her. Several days after the experiment, she was taken to the gas chambers to her death. However, with

Looking over this picture it makes me think of how badly the Jews were treated and how bad they wanted to escape. Jews had been beaten, neglected, and starved. They were taken away from their families and some even killed in front of their loved ones. They would not even stay at one place for very long, they would travel from camp to camp because of the war. It is terrible how they could take someone because they were a Jew and not even know anything about them. It is not that the Jew did anything wrong it is simply just because they are Jews.

In the passage "On Being a Cripple", Mairs uses a specific word diction that she repeats to prove her point. She likes to use the word "cripple", "handicapped", and "disabled". These words are repeated over fifteen times each. Mairs pointed out that using the word "cripple" makes people grimace at it unlike other labels for people of that sort. "People – crippled or not – wince at the word 'cripple,' as they do not at 'handicapped' or 'disabled'." (Mairs, 29). She uses this word so much to show that she's comfortable with it. She told the audience that she is comfortable using the following sentence on page 29, "As a cripple, I swagger.". She frequently talks about the words “handicapped” and “disabled”. Mairs discusses

Although they were not the same hardships that the Jews went through, these children still experienced horrific events that left them scarred for life, both physically and emotionally. No child deserves to be oppressed like this, especially when they are already destined to have such a

On her essay entitled ‘’On Being a Cripple, the author Nancy Mairs uses her confident tone and seductive ways of telling details to tell her own story as a person who experienced both conditions of being a healthy attractive woman who becomes over the years someone who depends on a wheel chair in order to help her moving yet independent in her mind accepting her situation and taking advantage of every new day with joy and satisfaction. Mairs Starts her essay with an expressive epigraph that gives the reader a hint about the strong piece of writing that he is about to read. Associating the tittle to Louise Bogan’s quote is a cleaver trigger to hook the reader’s attention, too. The writer, who lives the experience of being crippled for the

On ‘’Being a Cripple ‘’, Mairs usage of bold word choices about being a cripple allows the readers to see Mairs viewpoint of her disability. The modern definition of swagger is someone who walks or behaves in a very confident manner, Mairs comments that ‘’ As a cripple, I swagger ‘’ meaning Mairs is very confident and can handle situations (Mairs 268). Even though Mairs literally can’t swagger as she suggests, Mairs is referring to how she carries herself with confidence as a person with a disability. The way Mairs handles her MS is in a very humane and unapologetic type of way. Mairs understands that even though ‘’society is not ready to accept crippledness than to accept death, war, sweat, or wrinkles’’, Mairs will not allow her disease

Mairs in the reading “On Being a Cripple”, talks about her multiple sclerosis that she discovered at the age of twenty eight, however she does not want to gain sympathies from the other people, instead she starts calling herself as a “cripple” and this she states in her reading as “a cripple. She wants society to "wince". Mairs believes that the people in the society have been brainwashed and therefore they end up having their own judgment and findings. She believes she is strong enough to face the bitter reality of her condition and due to this he does not want anyone to feel sorry for her condition of multiple sclerosis. She portrays herself as a tough soul and believes that it is her destiny that she is created in such a way. She further

The words used “On being a Cripple” reflects the way she sees herself and also the way she shows herself to the world. Being a cripple or being called a Cripple, has an odd distinction, of being clean. Further than being clean, as if nothing had change on her, now that she has lost use of her limbs. The tumor precisely is making her weaker, but is not seriously attacking her sense of humor from where she called, herself a cripple. Her calling her own self a name such as Cripple, or crippled help her overcome what she may hear from anyone else.

At the end of the Civil War, Andrew Johnson alleged our nation 's supposed investment in our veterans by claiming that “ a grateful people will not hesitate to sanction any measures having for their relief of soldiers mutilated...in an effort to preserve our national existence.” Since then, our changing perception of disabled veterans of military service has affected the success and practice of their rehabilitation. Historians and social scientists have found it difficult to understand the process of identity formation among disabled veterans. This difficulty is rooted in historian’s inability to make sense of the disabled veteran’s history, social position, and representation in culture and discourse. Historian Paul Lawrie, who argues one of many interpretations of how these veterans are represented, believes that the conflation of disability and blackness denied African-American veterans basic human rights in the time after World War II. However, as racial prejudices slowly improved over the course of the century, historians interpreted other social, political, and cultural forces as main influences of the formation of representation of these veterans. Historians have suggested that, in addition to race, social welfare policy, film, and gender have all worked in cohesion, or in conflict at times, to determine these representations.

This shows the amount of fear that the Nazis Soldiers instilled into the Jews that even when they were going to shower that they thought they were going to be gassed because they didn’t know any better than that. This would affect their lives after the Jews were free of the concentration camps because the Nazis instilled so much fear into their lives that they wouldn’t know if they would see tomorrow. This amount of fear would certainly make it hard for them when they returned back to their normal lives of who they thought they could trust. The Nazis’s made them feel like they were nothing and treated them as if they were not human. The things they did to them were so cruel and terrible. It probably took a long time for the Jews that were placed in those concentration camps to return back to there normal selfs after seeing and enduring many horrible things that the Nazis Soldiers made them suffer

Michael Norlen, who seemed to be a normal person having two daughters, a wife, and a successful law degree. Looking deep into his past few months and years Mr. Norlen has a serious “disease” which has been describe as a “faceless thing.” This disease has kept him going to work and overall keeping him from a normal functioning life. Slowly, this disease progressed and stopped him from going to work.

Dead bodies laid EVERYWHERE. They showed us the gas chambers and the showers. The conditions in which these Jewish people were placed in, only assured death. My heart sunk, how could one have so much hate for a particular religion or culture? How could ones ideology cause a whole nation to allow something like this to happen? It was unimaginable horror, skeletons of victims were stacked in piles of hundreds and thousands, living skeletons showed unspeakable brutality and atrocity. This

This is not just a disadvantage to disabled people in the United States, it is a problem world wide. In the United Kingdom, only 6 percent of young disabled people are employed (O'mahony). All this leaving the United Kingdom with just “less than one in 20 people with a mental or physical disability are in paid employment”(O’mahony). Disabled people around the world in different nations are taken away the feeling of usefulness and the feeling of accomplishment. Affecting the disabled both financially but also emotionally.