Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Essay

In the passage Nancy Mairs calls herself cripple. She uses different rhetorical mode and devices such as similes to the reader an emotional appeal. In the passage cripple is used to symbolize handicap and disabled. This gives the reader an emotional appeal to how she’s feeling. Nancy Mairs being called handicap lowers confidence, making her feel weak. When people hear handicap they think not able to care for themselves. Nancy wants to be known as a tough individual able to take care of herself. The reader can feel the agony of what Nancy is feeling. The tone of this passage is determination and agony. Nancy feels that cripple is more stronger word than “handicap” or ‘disabled.” The word word cripple gives Nancy hope and strength and makes her a strong individual. But her having to go through agony and pain of being called handicap or disabled, doesn’t give her the confidence she needs. Even though Nancy calls herself cripple to give hope and strength. Cripple symbolizes weak, meaning not being able to take care of herself but in this passage cripple symbolizes confidence and strength.

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

A life of severe disability, is not a life worth living. Therefore, an infant born with a severe physical or cognitive impairment should not be allowed to live. Or any person for that matter, regardless of age who suffers from a severe cognitive disability should be lawfully killed. At least that is a belief held by a certain professor at Princeton University. Harriet McBryde Johnson, a disability advocate and lawyer had the opportunity to debate these beliefs with Professor Peter Singer. In “Unspeakable Conversations” she details her experience. Harriet McBryde Johnson effectively uses the rhetorical appeals of ethos and pathos, along with her uses of first-person narrative and descriptive language, to support her argument that contrary to stereotypes, a person living with a severe disability can live a happy and fulfilling life.

At the end of her chapter, “Body in Trouble”, Nancy Mairs notes that all too often individuals with physical disabilities are excluded from moral life. In her words, she says “people don’t generally expect much of a cripple’s character” and describes the difficulty of helping in normal charitable activities (such as serving at a soup kitchen). Mairs is realistic about her ability to contribute to certain charitable activities—she cannot chop vegetables or scrub dishes. If a life of service is a Christian calling, like the church affirms, how can we expand our idea of what “service” is so that all people can engage with it? What ways can those with disabilities provide care for non-disabled people, so that the direction does not strictly flow

In this essay Nancy Mairs presents herself as someone who is crippled. Out of many others possibilities of names to be called Mairs states that she prefers being called "crippled" because it is more straightforward and precise. In addition she states that she would like to be seen as a tough person whom fate/gods have not been kind to. The word "crippled" also evokes emotion from people which is also what she would like.

Nancy Mairs, a feminist writer who has Multiple Sclerosis, defines the terms in which she interest the most with the world. Nancy Mairs will name herself a cripple and not be by others. She will choose a word that represents her reality for example in the beginning of her story she mentioned about her being in the bathroom trying to come up with a story about cripples. She was in the handicap bathroom and when she tried to open the door she fell, landing fully clothed on the toilet seat with her legs splayed in front of her and she said “the old beetle -on-it’s back routine.” not only does she make fun of herself, but she also has a great sense of humor. The little details she puts on her stories will make you picture it in your mind. She just doesn't want her readers to see her as a handicap person, but a person who wants the world to see her as a tough woman. One whom the fates, gods, viruses have not been kind, but who can face the brutal truth of her disabilities.

n Nancy Mairs essay, “Disability”, she illustrates the lack of representation of people with disabilities in the media. While disability plays a major role in Mairs’ life, she points out the various ways her everyday life is ordinary and even mundane. Despite the normalcy of the lives of citizens with disabilities Mairs argues the media’s effacement of this population, is fear driven. She claims, “To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of daily life is to admit that there is something ordinary about the disability itself, that it may enter anybody’s life” (Mairs 14). Able bodied people worry about the prospect of eventually becoming physically impaired. The reason why it is a rarity to see disabled people in advertisements is

“2.2 million people in the United States depend on a wheelchair for day-to-day tasks and mobility. 6.5 million people use a cane, a walker, or crutches to assist with their mobility”. Every single day, people varying in ages, struggle to live their lives due to conditions out of their control. Whether it be life threatening or not, it can have effects that are both socially and emotionally harming. Although some of them may change appearances on the outside, other people cannot forget that all people, not matter the disability, have brains and personalities of their own that may not be seen to the human eye. The book Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper, shares the story of Melody, a girl who is much more than her cerebral palsy: she is brilliant.

Waist High In the World is a novel that focuses on the importance of accepting everyone with dignity and respect despite their disabilities and differences. The author of the book, Nancy Mairs purpose when writing the book was to create awareness and share her experience as a “cripple” in order to create consciousness and understanding of those who are going through the same process. Mairs uses different persuasive strategies to convince readers to want a world with people like her in it, this includes the use of pathos, logos and ethos.

In the passage Nancy Maria prefers to call herself “cripple”. She finds “disabled” and “handicapped” to be inaccurate of her condition. Nancy Mairs uses tone, word choice, and rhetorical structure to convey feelings on the term “cripple”.

In “The Social Construction of Disability,” Susan Wendell briefly discusses how the fast pace of American life impacts the social construction of disability through an inability for people with “disabilities” to maintain expectations of a high-performance level. Wendell also claims that the pace of life causes disability in many people’s lives, but quickly moves on to another topic, referencing chapter four of Barbara Hillyer’s Feminism and Disability in the footnotes as a place for more information on this argument. In Hillyer’s chapter “Productivity and Pace,” she writes to the feminist and disability communities, analyzing how the pace of life affects them both in similar ways. Through an analysis of how people with disabilities are forced to set their own daily pace, Hillyer hopes to encourage others to learn about the necessity of slowing down.

“Alzheimer’s” by Kelly Cherry was published in 1997 during a time of personal struggle for Cherry and her dad. This short, free verse poem consists of twenty nine perplexing lines. The poet’s nontraditional placement of line breaks cause some ideas to fall off in mid-sentence, while others never complete the thought. This creates enjambments which mimic the disease’s confusing nature. The speaker of this poem is the author, who is also the daughter of whom she writes about. Ideally, the writer narrates the poem in order to genuinely explain the turmoil loved ones face on a daily basis while dealing with this disease. The beginning of the poem creatively uses a simile to introduce us to “a crazy old man back

The novel Flowers for Algernon written by Daniel Keyes effectively explores the complex human experiences of disability and the impact that it has on individuals and society through its three major themes; Self-realisation , Alienation and loneliness and treatment of the mentally disabled by society. Through these themes this response will highlight the difficulties experienced by people with disabilities and the people in their lives.

Scott Hamilton once stated, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” Disability is only an obstacle in a person's life, but it does not set the identity of that person. John Steinbeck's novel shows how disabled people are treated differently by writing about their heartbreak and sorrow. Many individuals with disabilities feel that a disability is a wall blocking them from achieving their goals. In our society, people are told what to be and what to do with their disability, but one should have the choice to carve their pathway to success. In John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck portrayed a political statement by looking at mental and physical disabilities through different characters such as Curley's Wife, Crooks, and Lennie.

The Body Silent, by Robert Murphy, was published in 1987. The story is about Murphy’s personal account of the physical and social changes he underwent after becoming a quadriplegic. Robert Murphy was an anthropologist at Columbia University. In his early career, he spent a year observing indigenous tribes in the Amazon with his wife. In 1972, Murphy experienced a muscle spasm that was later realized to be a symptom of a growing tumor in his spinal column stretching from the C2 vertebra to the T8 vertebra, leading to partial paralysis; he underwent a few surgeries to reduce the size of the tumor, but eventually his paralysis spread until he was fully quadriplegic in 1986. Injuries and growths in the high cervical region of the spine, including the C2, have limited or no movement from the neck down, though a person