A Paraplegics Journey
In the book Cycle of Hope, Tricia Downing went from a competitive cyclist to a paraplegic in a matter of minutes. After spending the summer competing in multiple cycling races, Downing is back home enjoying the sunny autumn day riding her favorite route with her friend, Matt. Together, they go for a bike ride sightseeing and appreciating the beauty of the city. As they reminisce about their enjoyable summer, a car appears out of nowhere, and crashes into her. After landing on her back, Downing recalls that something feels terribly wrong; consequently, this woman becomes paralyzed from the waist down. The author uses the strength, courage, and determination learned as a competitive athlete to overcome her disability.
Downing uses the strength from her competitive athlete days to help her learn to live with paralysis on her own terms. From an early age, the author became involved in sports, competing on the swim team, diving and gymnastics; however, in her early twenties cycling became her beloved sport of choice. During a conversation with her physical therapist, Downing quickly found out the hardest part of her injury is
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This inner strength helps her learn to live life as a paraplegic; as well as, the courage to become a wheelchair racer. The author’s competitive spirit and enthusiasm for life continues as her misfortune turns into opportunity, and finally emerges as an Ironman triathlete. Coupled with her perseverance, Downing transitions from an able-bodied cyclist to an athlete with a disability. Equipped with the true meaning of the words challenge and change, the author becomes the first female paraplegic to compete in an Ironman triathlon. In fact, to overcome her disability, Downing uses the strength, courage and determination learned as an
The essays, “On Being a Cripple”, by Nancy Mairs, and “Living Under Circe’s Spell”, by Matthew Soyster are both about how each author deals with multiple sclerosis in their life and their opinions on it. Mairs’ piece is a careful examination of her experience with MS and her perspective towards her future. In contrast, Soyster writes humorously of a particular incident he had with MS and artfully weaves his ideas about the disease in with his story. In both instances, the authors share the purpose of narrating their encounter with MS to the world to raise awareness. Both employ the rhetorical strategies of appeals to pathos and varying sentence structures to achieve this goal, some more effectively than others.
“I am a Cripple,” when people typically hear these words they tend to feel bad for that person, but that is exactly what Mair does not want. She prefers that people treat her the same as they would if she did not have the disease. Throughout the essay, Mair discuses her disease openly. She uses an optimistic tone, so that the reader will not recoil with sadness when they hear her discuss the disease and how it affects her life. In Nancy Mair’s essay “On Being A Cripple,” Mair uses her personal stories, diction, and syntactical structures to create an optimistic tone throughout the essay, so that the audience can better connect story.
People push being happy on society as a total must in life; sadness is not an option. However, the research that has conducted to the study of happiness speaks otherwise. In this essay Sharon Begley's article "Happiness: Enough Already" critiques and analyzes societies need to be happy and the motivational affects it has on life. Begley believes that individuals do not always have to be happy, and being sad is okay and even good for us. She brings in the research of other professionals to build her claim that extreme constant happiness is not good for people. I strongly agree that we need to experience sadness to build motivation in life and character all around.
Her essay is arranged in such a way that her audience can understand her life - the positives and the negatives. She allows her audience to see both sides of her life, both the harsh realities that she must suffer as well as her average day-to-day life. According to Nancy, multiple sclerosis “...has opened and enriched my life enormously. This sense that my fragility and need must be mirrored in others, that in search for and shaping a stable core in a life wrenched by change and loss, change and loss, I must recognize the same process, under individual conditions, in the lives around me. I do not deprecate such knowledge” (Mairs, 37). Mairs big claim is that she has accepted herself and her condition for what is it, yet she refuses to allow her condition to define her. Through her particular diction, tone, satire, and rhetorical elements, Mairs paints a picture of her life and shows how being a cripple has not prevent her from living her life. She is not embarrassed nor ashamed of what she is, and accepts her condition by making the most of it and wearing the title with
Dylan was born with a tumor wrapped around his spinal cord, which was successfully removed however resulted in him becoming paraplegic. The first fourteen years of his life, Dylan defined himself by his disability. He felt ‘weird and different’ because of his disability and this was why he was excluded from his peers. It was not until Grade 9 that Dylan began to see that his disability did not have the power to dictate his life or set a limit to which he could achieve. Since then, Dylan has moved on to achieve phenomenal feats, namely, winning a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics to becoming the world’s number one paraplegic tennis player. Dylan can be found wheelchair crowd surfing at concerts, advocating for people with disabilities and training for the 2016 Rio Paralympics. Dylan is on a mission to ‘mainstream disabilities’ and shatter negative
I began to wonder where and how therapeutic riding originated. In my research I found that therapeutic riding was not taken seriously until Liz Hartel, a Danish rider who had paralysis from poliomyelitis, advanced to competitive riding. Despite the fact that Liz suffered from poliomyelitis, she “went on to win a silver medal in the Grand Prix Dressage competition at the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games” (Young). After she won this great achievement, an interest around the world in the therapeutic effects of riding emerged; as a result, therapeutic riding programs were established and studies were initiated (Young). I think it is ironic how a person with a disability is so influential in helping other people with disabilities.
What comes into one’s mind when they are asked to consider physical disabilities? Pity and embarrassment, or hope and encouragement? Perhaps a mix between the two contrasting emotions? The average, able-bodied person must have a different perspective than a handicapped person, on the quality of life of a physically disabled person. Nancy Mairs, Andre Dubus, and Harriet McBryde Johnson are three authors who shared their experiences as physically handicapped adults. Although the three authors wrote different pieces, all three essays demonstrate the frustrations, struggles, contemplations, and triumphs from a disabled person’s point of view and are aimed at a reader with no physical disability.
Author Christine Mitchell’s “When Living is a Fate Worse Than Death” told the story of a girl Haitian named Charlotte. Charlotte was born with her brain partially positioned outside of her cranium which had to be removed or she would have not survived. Her skull had to be concealed by a wrap in order not to cause further damage. Charlotte was born with less brain cells which allowed her only to breath and not feel much of the pain. Charlotte’s parents thought that the doctor’s in Haiti did not know what was best for their daughter. The doctors in Haiti thought Charlotte should not be resuscitated, undergo anymore horrible treatments and die peacefully. Charlotte’s parents were not happy with the doctor’s guidelines and thought the United States medical care would have better technology and could save their daughter. Charlotte’s parents bought her a doll which
This article is a good example of how life would be like for a foreigner in a different country. Because the author talks about the Chinese culture, living space and funeral. The author uses a humorous tone to talk about her living in China. This story has great balance between humor and emotions. “The Old Man Isn’t There Anymore”, by Kellie Schmitt tells a beautiful tale of her experience of life in China.
The purpose of this study was to find out the positive and negative experiences of physical activity from people with disabilities. They used a qualitative approach of research through semi structured interviews with 20 people with disabilities who have personal experience of participating in physical activity. Each interview lasted 70-110 minutes and was audio-taped and transcribed. They chose the participants through a sampling strategy of 6 physical and 6 verbal disabled people, at least 8 males and 8 females, at least 5 from each age group of 18-23, 24-40 and 41-60 years of age and lastly at least 5 from each category of congenital disability, acquired abruptly or gradually.
Nancy Mairs - Crippled and Strong Throughout this passage , Nancy Mairs uses the word cripple to describe who she is and the beliefs of her condition. She does this by describing her condition in a few different ways: the opinion of others and the opinion of herself. As anyone should, she decides what her title as a person should be and she doesn’t listen or care for anyone’s opinion outside of her own. Her tone is very straightforward throughout the passage.
In the novel Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, the protagonist, Christopher McCandless, displays isolation and independence almost to the point of narcissism but it was not until he set out on his journey into the wild that those closest to him realized the true height of his individualism. In McCandless’s eyes, people in his society have forgotten about the value in the pursuit of personal knowledge, the chase of individual happiness, and the existence without materialistic objects. On his journey, McCandless takes drastic measures to uncover, find and discover who he is and what he is capable of, isolating himself physically and mentally, driven by the idea that society urges men to conform.
I have chosen to write my book report on an autobiography. Dr. Arnold Beisser’s Flying Without Wings discusses his battle against polio and how he overcame innumerable obstacles. Born in 1925, he contracted paralytic polio at age 24. While our situations are vastly different, I found that we were actually quite similar. His insights into the life of an individual with a disability are accurate. Although the autobiography is not financially focused, many of his ideas and life lessons directly relate to financial goals and ultimately financial independence.
A few days later, she and Doris begin their ride to Santa Barbara. The bike route is beautiful, but bicycling on unfamiliar terrain scares her and grueling on her body. She vows never to do anything like this again. Half-way to their destination, they take a short break and a second wind kicks in, but it doesn’t last. Her stamina caves, and at a critical point, she nearly faints and fears she may die, like her brother. Except for her, a serendipitous upshot occurs. With the other cyclists in sight, she finds support and the courage to bicycle to the finish line, just in
On July 27, 2004, Barack Obama made arguably his most important speech, “The Audacity of Hope”, at the Democratic National Convention Keynote Address. These conventions are for political parties to announce a winner for nomination. All the way through his piece, Obama focuses on connecting Americans and himself to the audience. In fact, at the time, Barack Obama was a US Senate candidate for the United States president, and in making this speech, was offered a window for raising his popularity. Throughout “The Audacity of Hope” speech, Barack Obama implements three main devices to raise his political popularity: repetition, abstract language, and structure.