Introduction
“Living under Circe’s Spell” by Matthew Soyster and “On Being a Cripple.” by Nancy Mairs make the reader of this great writings to have a taste of the shoes of a disabled person and feel how they do they fee. The main aim of these two essays is to bring out the mentality that even though people are crippled, they are still people who ought to be respected and related to just like any other person. One describes the sudden change in lifestyle and environment while the latter speaks for general disabled population. Both describe life with MS (Multiple Sclerosis). These essays bring the reader a new, broader way of thinking when it comes to people who need a crutch or are in a wheelchair. The writer encourages the reader with a variety of rhetorical writing techniques to think of someone in a wheelchair as just someone in a wheelchair.
Summary of Mairs’ Essay
In Mairs’ essay her main intentions is to let her audience know that disabled people just like herself and many others deserve fair representation in the same measure as able-bodied humans. The essay begins when she tells us about how it is hard to get fair representation in media and television as she has never found them. She considers herself a normal person just like any other person, but society sees her as completely different from them. Having M.S. has had a major impact on her life; she is fully aware of her condition but can do most of the things she used to do, just like any woman her age. As she states, she “menstruates, so she buys tampons, she worries about smoker’s breath, so she buys mouthwash, she smears her wrinkly skin with lotion, she puts bleach in the washer so her family’s undies won’t be dingy.” She eats pizza, drives a car and talks on the telephone but besides all this society still doesn’t recognize her kind. She wants her kind to be represented publicly. Once she came into a situation with an advertiser and asked him why he didn’t use people with disabilities in his advertisements and he told her he doesn’t want people to think that their products are just for the handicapped. Apparently ordinary people are kept at a distance from those with disabilities.
Summary of Soyster’s Essay
In contrast in “Living under Circe’s Spell” Soyster sees disability differently. He feels as if the world around him has changed and people treat him like he is little. His everyday life renders him to feel useless. Assuming his athletics and accolades as a marathon runner and cyclist, he must be young and is not use to being like this. You can further assume he’s young because he still thought he could compete in the disabled Olympics, which he couldn’t. At the end of each day, he tries, desperately, to just stand up and walk around, to feel like a person again. He desires to feel human again and has a hard time accepting what the cards of life have dealt him.
Differences Between the Articles
Despite the similarities in the articles, there are significant differences as well. Mairs seems to be a peace with which she is now, being 43 years old, midlife, and now knowing and understanding her limits having MS. She wishes that people would stop beating around the bush about a person in a wheelchair and just be straightforward about it. She doesn’t feel sorrow or shame or embarrassment being unable to walk, but in fact brings distinguishing facts to the disabled and claims that, we’re all human. Sooner or later, we will all need to be like this, disabled in some way.
Mairs' Changing Tone
As you continue to read Mairs’ essay, her tone shifts from analytical to angry. In regards to the advertiser who didn’t want to include disabled people, she says, “If you saw me pouring out puppy biscuits, would you think these kibbles were only for the puppies of cripple?” Mairs continues by saying, “If you saw my blind niece ordering a Coke, would you switch to a Pepsi lest you be struck sightless?” Although the advertiser had the choice to not include the disabled, Mairs thinks the advertiser’s excuse hid another reason that people are uncomfortable with representations of the disabled in the media: to depict disabled people doing ordinary activities is to admit that disability is part of ordinary life, that it could strike anybody.
Soyster's Sad Tone
Finally his tone shifts back to sad. Soyster had to give up a lot of activities and passions that define him and as he see it define his manhood. He says for months his friends and family have watched his legs grow weaker. He also states that twice a day he drags his reluctant legs from beneath the steering column of his driver’s seat and inches his way down the roof rail to the rear stowage. At the end of his essay he is still lying in the gutter listening to passing cars or pedestrians waiting to be rescued.
