Patricia A. Dunn, Column Editor
Disabling
Assumptions
At the 2014 NCTE Annual Convention in Washington, DC, I had
the pleasure of attending a panel
on the topic of deaf characters in
literature, presented by Dynnelle
Fields, Kelly Kim, and Casey
Spencer. I was so impressed with
their panel that I asked them if
they would consider sharing their
research in this column. They graciously agreed.
Inauthentic Deaf
Characters in
Traditional Literature
Dynnelle Fields
The Learning Center for the Deaf
Framingham, Massachusetts
[email protected]
Kelly Kim
The Learning Center for the Deaf
Framingham, Massachusetts
[email protected]
Casey Spencer
The Learning Center for the Deaf
Framingham, Massachusetts
[email protected]
Deaf characters commonly appear
in both canonical and contemporary literature. Some well-­
loved
and often taught novels and short
stories include references to them.
Frequently, the characters are neither memorable nor likeable, however, and the negatively designed
deaf characters often leave readers
94
with inaccurate portrayals of deaf
people. Consequently, the deaf
students we work with do not
feel that these characters represent
them well.
Examples of deafness in some
literature taught in secondary English classes include the
following:
• The Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s
The Canterbury Tales, an
unpleasant woman who
becomes deaf in a fight with
her husband
• Quasimodo in Hugo’s The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, who
is a deformed, unattractive
deaf man, rejected by society
• Jim’s daughter in Twain’s The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
whose deafness caused by scarlet fever is discovered by Jim,
and causes Jim great distress
• The King and the Duke in the
same novel, who cause the narrator to feel disgust when they
try to con the Wilkes family
by pretending to be brothers,
one of whom is deaf, and they
use fake sign language to communicate with each other
• Misses Tutti and Frutti in Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird, who live
in a world of silence while one
of them uses a huge ear trumpet to try to hear and the other
refuses to admit she is deaf at
all, and who have jokes played
upon them by local children
taking advantage of their
inability to hear
• The old man in Hemingway’s
“A Clean Well-­Lighted Place,”
who is a suicidal deaf drunk
wanting to close himself off
from the world
• Salinger’s Holden Caulfield in
The Catcher in the Rye, who
dreams of being deaf so that he
can further cut himself off
from the world and envisions a
world of deafness that is not at
all like the one our deaf students are familiar with
Deaf Readers’ Reactions
to Depictions of Deaf
Characters
How do deaf readers feel when the
deaf characters they encounter in
literature evoke pity, or represent
weakness or deficiency? Or when
the characters are isolated and
even envied for their inability to
interact with the world around
them?
Although deaf students might
be expected to feel angry about
negative portrayals of deafness, we
have found that our students tend
not to identify with these characters at all. Our students believe
that authentic deaf characters
should resemble them: capable,
communicative, social, and intelligent. Deaf characters in literature rarely embody these traits,
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Disabling Assumptions
however. As a result, these characters seem so unlike them and their
idea of deafness that they seem
irrelevant, serving as pointless
symbols in a literary text.
Our students believe that
authentic deaf characters
should resemble them: capable,
communicative, social, and
intelligent. Deaf characters in
literature rarely embody these
traits, however.
To learn about our former students’ reactions to deaf characters
in literature, we sent out a request
for reactions to some excerpts
from texts they had read in the
past. A typical reaction came from
Dynnelle’s former student, JYM,
who, despite having read several
texts with deaf characters in class,
responded: “I confess I have read
very few texts with deaf characters, and I’m not sure I can think
of one off the top of my head. Perhaps, you can refresh my memory?” Similarly, SJ sent a video
of her ASL response. Its English
translation begins: “When Dynnelle contacted me . . . I wondered
if I had ever read anything that
had deaf characters in it. . . . I felt
no connection to them at all.” She
explained that the deaf characters had been depicted as strange,
stupid, or crazy because of their
deafness, while she grew up in a
family that was fluent in ASL,
attended a school for the deaf, and
was a member of the Deaf community. In contrast to the literary
characters, her deafness had never
been treated as an abnormality or
as a disability.
Two students who responded to
the excerpts from The Hunchback
of Notre Dame, JMM and JL,
remarked that they found Quasimodo not only inauthentic but
also offensive. JMM noted that the
deafness and deformity of Quasimodo emphasizes how, “In the
past, society viewed deafness on a
par with mental retardation and
other unwanted disabilities. People pitied them. . . . The old view
is outdated and inaccurate.” Similarly, JL noted that Quasimodo
wasn’t recognized for serving his
community, but is rather seen as
a burden to it. JL commented, “It
makes me uncomfortable when
people see the deaf as a burden
rather than as contributors to society. Is this the message I want to
send to the hearing community?
Definitely not!” Inauthentic characters such as Quasimodo caused
these readers from the Deaf community to feel poorly represented
and concerned that readers unfamiliar with their community
would get the wrong impression
of deafness.
Another student, JP, reacted
to the deafness portrayed in The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
When JP read the section in which
Jim negatively reacts to his discovery of his daughter’s deafness,
it evoked the memory of her parents’ discovery that she was deaf.
Her parents initially grieved as
Twain’s Jim did, but they learned
to cope with her deafness by learning sign language to communicate with her. As JP remarked,
“My parents learned that being
deaf is not a bad thing—­it is identifying with a culture—­which is a
good thing, not a negative thing.
It is not something to pity.” The
portrayal in the novel, however,
gives the impression that deafness
is nothing more than a tragedy.
CL also reacted to Twain’s
novel. When the con artists, the
Duke and King, pretend to be a
deaf man and his brother by using
hand gestures that do not resemble real sign language, CL says
that it shows how in the past,
“ASL was looked down on and
seen as animal-­like or low class.”
While CL feels offended by this,
he is also pleased by Twain’s use
of Huck to express dismay at the
con artists’ behavior. CL points
out that Twain was ahead of his
time in acknowledging a difference between unintelligible signs
and actual sign language, adding,
“Twain was clearly against [a negative] perspective of deaf people. . . .
I thought it was really cool and
rare to see criticism of that kind
of behavior against deaf people in
that time.”
Pairing Texts to Counter
Misrepresented Deaf
Characters in Classic Texts
Since we cannot (and should not)
abandon classic texts with misrepresented deaf characters, we must
consider how to address them
more appropriately. We suggest
taking a 21st-­
century approach
framed by an understanding of the
effects of inauthentic texts. To us
this means pairing these classic,
inauthentic texts with texts that
contain authentic deaf individuals. Our preference is to find pairings (see Figure 1) from the same
time period as the traditional text
so the two texts can be viewed
through lenses shaped by time
and perspective. We have chosen
a mix of fiction, nonfiction, poetic,
and artistic materials that students can use to provide context
and contrast.
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Inauthentic Deaf Characters in Traditional Literature
Figure 1. Examples of Literature
Pairings
1. “The Wife of Bath” (deafness as
punishment) and I. King Jordan’s
Speech to the National Press Club
in 2006 (deafness changing his
life for the better)
2. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(deafness as isolating and degrading) and Desloge’s “I Must Be
Believed” (the value of signing,
the deaf community, and education for the deaf)
3. Jim’s negative comments about
his daughter’s deafness in The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
and Dorothy Mile’s poem, “To a
Deaf Child” (admiring the beauty
of a deaf child’s expression
through sign language)
4. The use of fake sign language by
the Duke and King in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and
Marlee Matlin’s interview on Out
Front with Erin Burnett (December 11, 2013) after Nelson Mandela’s funeral service
5. Carson McCuller’s The Heart Is a
Lonely Hunter (showing negative
experiences of deaf characters)
and the memoir No Sound by
Julius Wiggins (telling of the benefits of living in a deaf environment) as well as “Reflections of a
Late Deafened Adult” (a commentary written for an ASL Website) by Rob Abbott
6. Chapter 25 of Salinger’s The
Catcher in the Rye (promoting
deafness as an ideal way to isolate oneself) and the artwork of
Deaf artist Chuck Baird, which
celebrates deafness, sign language, and the Deaf community
One example of this pairing
is to compare the behavior of the
Duke and King in The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn with a similar
modern situation by reading this
section of the novel alongside
deaf poet Donna Williams’s “We
Never Meant Any Disrespect.”
This poem is a reaction to the
fake sign language at the funeral
of Nelson Mandela in December
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2013. Williams writes, “OK,
so the interpreter was a fake, /
But you have to admit it’s pretty
funny, right? / Hilarious.” The
poem then goes on to remind us
that the funeral was meant to be
all-­inclusive to honor a man who
fought exclusion, but that the fake
interpreter turned the event into a
farce. The poem demonstrates the
absurdity and the belittling of a
language and culture that follows.
The poet’s reaction to the situation continues for many stanzas
and provides an excellent resource
for comparing Twain’s situation
with a recent event.
For characters to juxtapose
with Miss Tutti and Frutti in
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird,
we look to “Miss Hester of Sunset Valley” by Guie Leo Deliglio.
In this piece, Miss Hester says, “I
have kept a boarding house in the
city for ten years. I sold it only last
month to a friend of mine, and am
out here to open a new one on a
smaller scale just to show that it
is much pleasanter for us deaf to
board together than living apart
in town.” Unlike Lee’s sisters,
Miss Hester, a full member of
both the Deaf and hearing communities, wants to support and be
around others who are Deaf; she
is competent, admired, and well-­
respected by all.
Researcher and Gallaudet University professor Sharon Pajka-­
West has found that portrayals
of deaf characters in literature
have become more realistic and
positively received by deaf readers in the last decade. She credits this change to more writers
researching the Deaf community and/or having connections
to it. As teachers, we need to
take advantage of these texts
and ensure that the characters
we present to our students are
authentic. If they are not, we need
to show them what the authentic
version of such a character looks
like and to discuss the differences.
We hope that by using our paired
readings, teachers will be able to
present more authentic illustrations of deafness, portrayals that
both hearing and deaf students
can understand and relate to.
Works Cited
Abbott, Rob. “Reflections of a Late
Deafened Adult.” Web log comment. ASL University. ASL University, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2014.
Batson, Trent, and Eugene Bergman.
Angels and Outcasts: An Anthology of
Deaf Characters in Literature. Washington: Gallaudet UP, 1985. Project
MUSE. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
Deliglio, Guie Leo. “Miss Hester of
Sunset Valley.” The Silent Worker.
Oct. 1922, Volume 35 ed., No.
1 sec.: 2–­
5. Gallaudet University
Archives. Gallaudet Univ. Web. 8
Oct. 2014.
Desloges, Pierre. “Observations of a
Deaf Mute on an Elementary Course
of Education for Deaf Mutes.”
1779. The Deaf Experience: Classics
in Language and Education. Ed. Harlan L. Lane. Trans. Franklin Philip.
Washington: Gallaudet UP, 1984.
Durr, Patricia. Website Curator. “Chuck
Baird.” RIT | NTID | International
Archive of Deaf Art/Deaf Artists. RIT/
NTID, n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2014.
Jordan, I. King, PhD. “Deaf President
Now (DPN): The Protest Heard
Around the World in 1988 Continues to Change the World.”www.
gallaudet.edu. Gallaudet University,
n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.
Lane, Harlan, ed. The Deaf Experience:
Classics in Language and Education.
Trans. Franklin Philip. Washington:
Gallaudet UP, 2006. Print.
Miles, Dorothy. “To a Deaf Child.”
The Heart of Deaf Culture. RIT, n.d.
Web. 8 Oct. 2014.
“OutFront with Erin Burnett.” OutFront with Erin Burnett. CNN. New
York City, New York, 11 Dec. 2013.
Television. Transcript.
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Pajka-­
West, Sharon. “Representations
of Deafness and Deaf People in
Young Adult Fiction.” A Journal of
Media and Culture 13.3 (2010): n.p.
June 2010. Web. July 2014.
Terry, Alice T. “Reconstructing Cleider
Rodman.” The Silent Worker. May
1921, Volume 33 ed., No. 8 sec.:
262–­
64. Gallaudet University Ar­
chives. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.
Wiggins, Julius. “With My Own Kind
from No Sound.” 1970. Angels and
Outcasts: An Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature. By Trent Batson
and Eugene Bergman. Washington:
Gallaudet UP, 1985. 1–­15. Project
MUSE. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
Williams, Donna. “‘We Never Meant
Any Disrespect’—­Poem and Background.” DeafFireflys Blog. N.p., 21
May 2014. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.
Dynnelle Fields (hearing), Kelly Kim (deaf), and Casey Spencer (hearing) are English teachers in the Secondary Department at The Learning Center for the Deaf in Framingham, Massachusetts. They have worked together to address the negative
messages about deafness that traditional literature often imparts to their students and to all readers of these works.
PARCC Test Prep
The teacher tapes black paper over words
in her classroom. Auschwitz blacked out
with Shakespeare, Whitman, Hughes, and Twain.
Classroom guidelines covered up, Emily
Dickinson’s mouth sealed. Test week, and nothing
can appear that might help the children.
No words. She, who had allowed students
to play with words like dolls, dressing
and undressing them, revealing in them secrets,
symbols, layers of meaning, must now make
words disappear. Pictures, too, which might prompt
writing ideas. She peels from the walls
Anne Frank, an African mask, Ziggy.
Surely the room is test-ready now.
But won’t pines and grass and birds and clouds
spark ideas too? So she measures black paper
over the windows. Fluorescent bulbs
provide the only source of color now.
Shut off, she cannot see desks, the door,
her hands before her face, like a spelunker
without a flashlight, a child without words.
—Joe Countryman
© 2016 by Joseph Countryman
Joe Countryman ([email protected]), a teacher for 29 years, currently instructs eighth graders in English language
arts at Winslow Township Middle School in New Jersey. His publications include an instructional unit for the Walt Whitman
House in Camden, New Jersey, as well as poems in The Green Mountain Journal. He has been a member of NCTE since 1999.
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