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Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Analysis

575 Words3 Pages

Words are very powerful. They have enormous power to convey with a purpose of insult which may have a devastating impact. The most astonishing characteristics about words is they can mean completely different from one person to another person. In Nancy Mairs, "On Being a Cripple" she uses the words cripple to describe herself. Nancy is a powerful women who insist that this word is her choice and a way of accepting the fact of her disables. She has multiple sclerosis. In the essay she describes the struggles of her condition and knows that it causes her to have limitation in everyday societal procedures. She blunt choice of word to describe only herself and no other. After reading her essay, the word "Cripple" is neither informal, accurate, nor realistic. It is derived from the Old English word cripple, to crawl, and is considered offensive. I define the term for being …show more content…

In her essay Nancy gracefully articulated her perception of her situation and chooses to label her as “Crippled”. The struggles that she goes through to in a day to day bases, for example when she starts off the essay by describing her experience in a bathroom stall and how she laughs at her own situation. She insightfully defines her being crippled in the way she pursues and interacts with the world. As I defined the word in a sense of being incompetent in day to day societal procedures which is exactly proven in the essay. She is slow and struggles in her day to rituals and she accepts it. The words has been brought for ages as an insult it is often referred to someone who is slow and weak. Throughout history it has a negative connotation and Mairs has many comments to make about how disability does not fit well in our youth-oriented, physical-fitness-obsessed culture, and on how social expectations influence whether she adapts or fails to adapt. It simples represents Mairs

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