Rhetorical Analysis Of On Being A Cripple By Nancy Mair

1099 Words3 Pages

In her essay “On Being a Cripple,” Mairs describes her path of acceptance of her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis by declaring that she is a “cripple” in alternative to the more broadly acceptable terms: disabled or handicapped. Her essay is written with humor, satire, an open heart, and open eyes. Mair’s purpose is to describe her acceptances of her condition by using rhetorical elements and appeals, such as ethos and pathos, in order to allure her audience. “I am a cripple” - this succinct and precise declaration by Nancy Mairs manages to elicit unpleasant emotions. Cripple - the connotation behind this word hasn’t always been so negative; cripple has long been known for it’s use in referring to a person who is unable to walk due to some …show more content…

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

Show More
Related

  • Of Nancy Mairs And David Sedaris A Plague Of Disabilities

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    These two essays are about two dissimilar disabilities. Nancy Mairs and David Sedaris act as examples of how an author’s writing can change the tone and meaning of a narrative. Mairs message was educational and encouraging as she explained her life with MS and how society sees her. Sedaris use of experience and memories portrays his life with obsessive-compulsive disorder; what he calls “tics”. These two writers take similar topics and pitch them in ways so the reader can see the illustration behind them.

    Read More

  • On Being a Cripple by Nancy Mair

    588 Words  | 2 Pages

    “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.

    Read More

  • Impact of Mindset on Health and Social Interactions

    1016 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mairs’s inferiority complex which made her question other people’s attitude towards her. In “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs. She kept believe the way how

    Read More

  • Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Analysis

    210 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the essay “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs, Mairs talks about her struggle with multiple sclerosis, or MS, which is a disease that affects the spinal cord, brain and optic nerves in your eyes causing to lose muscle control, balance and vision problems. Throughout the essay Mairs talks about why she lets the word “cripple” be the word that defines her condition. Mairs believes “cripple,” unlike other words, targets her reality. Throughout the essay Mairs presents herself as honest through her exquisite use of language, and very realistic outlook on life.

    Read More

  • Challenges In My Body Politic, By Simi Linton

    984 Words  | 2 Pages

    The memoir My Body Politic is an inspirational first person framework by Simi Linton. Her powerful stories give the reader a strong understanding on disability studies as well as the challenges Simi endured as she lived through a difficult time period for someone having a disability. When she became disabled in the 70’s, Simi’s life drastically changed. After spending months in the hospital and rehabilitation centers, Simi decided to take the opportunity to move to New York and attend college there. While living in Berkeley, she discovered that her neighborhood was more accommodating for people with wheelchairs, making it a welcoming space to live in. It was there where she discovered the political disability movement which inspired her to go back to university to get her bachelor’s degree in psychology.

    Read More

  • What Did You Just Call Me?

    1184 Words  | 3 Pages

    "On Being a Cripple" is an autobiographical essay by Nancy Mairs. The author was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in her late twenties, and has since then lost full use of several limbs. Despite the stigma around the use of the word, Mairs refers to herself as a "cripple". With the use of this word she attempts to accept the reality of her situation without feeling sorry for herself. The author also demands the same of her readers and the people that she meets in her life. Mairs writes to those who wish to learn more about what it is like to live with this debilitating disease and how people react to it. She uses this essay to make a point about how society labels people while telling her story in a manner which cites examples from her life. She describes her life through everyday situations that occur when living with MS. Mairs does not have the same physical abilities that most of us don't think twice about, but she carries on with her life without the need for pity or a new vocabulary that attempts to make her condition seem less severe.

    Read More

  • Mark Mossman By Mark Mossman

    868 Words  | 2 Pages

    As mentioned previously, the chances of becoming disabled over one’s lifetime are high, yet disabled people remain stigmatized, ostracized, and often stared upon. Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University, Mark Mossman shares his personal experience as a kidney transplant patient and single-leg amputee through a written narrative which he hopes will “constitute the groundwork through which disabled persons attempt to make themselves, to claim personhood or humanity” while simultaneously exploiting the “palpable tension that surrounds the visibly disabled body” (646). While he identifies the need for those with limitations to “make themselves” or “claim personhood or humanity,” Siebers describes their desires in greater detail. He suggests people with

    Read More

  • Nancy Mairs, Andre Dubus, Harriet McBryde Johnson: Disability

    1916 Words  | 4 Pages

    Nancy Mairs, born in 1943, described herself as a radical feminist, pacifist, and cripple. She is crippled because she has multiple sclerosis (MS), which is a chronic disease involving damage to the nerve cells and spinal cord. In her essay Disability, Mairs’ focus is on how disabled people are portrayed, or rather un-portrayed in the media. There is more than one audience that Mairs could have been trying to reach out to with this piece. The less-obvious audience would be disabled people who can connect to her writing because they can relate to it. The more obvious audience would be physically-able people who have yet to notice the lack of disabled people being portrayed by the media. Her purpose is to persuade the audience that disabled people should be shown in the media more often, to help society better cope with and realize the presence of handicapped people. Mairs starts off by saying “For months now I’ve been consciously searching for representation of myself in the media, especially television. I know I’d recognize this self becaus...

    Read More

  • Positive Psychological Concepts Of Hidden Disability

    1054 Words  | 3 Pages

    Disability is like a bruise on an apple; sometimes it is evident, sometimes it is hidden. Consider Claire Hovey; she has arthritis – a hidden disability affecting one’s joints. Claire used to think of “pain as a hurdle” (Hovey, 2015); thus when diagnosed, she expected to tackle pain “with grace and poise” (Hovey, 2015) managing it silently (Hovey, 2015). However, self-doubt and fictional comparison brought negative psychological effects (Hovey, 2015) and she soon realized that neither were beneficial for her daily rehabilitation (Hovey, 2015). In contrast, Robert Ward lives with learning disabilities and a speech impediment – also hidden. For him, there was no diagnostic point; instead the learning curve came as he realized

    Read More

  • William Peace Speech

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    This tone is also used to establish an appeal to pathos which he hopes to convince the audience of the fact that handicapped people are still people and not less than anyone else. A very prominent example of Peace’s emotion is displayed when he says, “Like many disabled people, I embrace an identity that is tied to my body. I have been made to feel different, inferior, since I began using a wheelchair thirty years ago and by claiming that I am disabled and proud, I am empowered,” (para. 15). This declaration demonstrates to his audience that Peace is honored by who he is and what disabled people can do and that he is tired of being oppressed by the media. Peace also makes this claim to support his thesis in the first paragraph that states, “The negative portrayal of disabled people is not only oppressive but also confirms that nondisabled people set the terms of the debate about the meaning of disability,” (para. 1). This is Peace’s central argument for the whole article and explains his frustration with society’s generalization of handicapped people and the preconceived limitations set on them. Peace’s appeal to pathos and tone throughout are extremely effective in displaying to his audience (society) that those who have disabilities are fed up with the limits that have been placed in the

    Read More

  • Crippled by Nancy Mairs

    576 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mairs describes her condition and how it relates to the actions and responses of other people in any situation. Mairs uses the term cripple loosely, making sure it is not offensive to anyone. By starting her passage with, “I am a cripple,” Mairs doesn’t hide anything. She begins by coming straight out into the open with who she is and how she wants the world to view her. In the first paragraph, Mairs uses the word choose three times to establish her personal decision to be titled a cripple.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Nancy Mairs Cripple

    542 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this work Nancy Mairs, a woman with multiple sclerosis, discusses why she calls herself a cripple as opposed to the other names used by society to describe people with disabilities. She prefers the word “cripple” over the words “disabled” and “handicapped”. Nancy Mairs presents herself as a cripple using a straightforward tone, negative diction, repetition, and logical/ethical appeal.

    Read More

  • Women With Disabilities In Good Kings Bad Kings By Susan Nussbaum

    1245 Words  | 3 Pages

    Women with disabilities are seldom represented in popular culture. Movies, television shows ,and novels that attempt to represent people within the disability community fall short because people that are not disabled are writing the stories. Susan Nussbaum has a disability. She advocates for people with disabilities and writes stories about characters with disabilities . She works to debunk some of the stereotypes about women with disabilities in popular culture. Women with disabilities are stereotyped as being sexually undesirable individuals , that are not capable of living normal lives, that can only be burdens to mainstream society, and often sacrifice themselves.Through examining different female characters with disabilities, Nussbaum 's novel Good Kings Bad Kings illustrates how the stereotypes in popular culture about women with disabilities are not true.

    Read More

  • Physical Posability: Understanding The Inequality Of Physical Disabilities

    1513 Words  | 4 Pages

    People who have physical disabilities often experience negative situations and connotations that they must overcome to thrive in society. People who offer narratives about their disabilities often give the most accurate representation about the challenges those with disabilities face. Ms. Marenge, reported that one of the hardest things about leaving the rehabilitation center after becoming paralyzed was living in a house that was inaccessible, and having to rely on her family to carry her up and down the house (Casey Marenge, 2011). Similarly, a student with muscular dystrophy, says that she wishes more places were wheelchair accessible, because when they aren’t she feels that society is holding her back, and she can’t reach her full potential. Alisha also reported that t making friends is hard because some kids would ignore her at school because of her situation and she is often separated from the mainstream students at school. Alisha, doesn’t want to be defined by her disability, however, she believes that many people who look at her only see her wheelchair (Alisha Lee, 2011). Despite the many negative ways people who suffer from physical disabilities are affected, it is important to note that they don’t always feel bad for themselves, and that having a disability doesn’t stop them from loving

    Read More

  • Medical and Social Models of Disability

    1847 Words  | 4 Pages

    It could be said that in modern industrial society, Disability is still widely regarded as tragic individual failing, in which its “victims” require care, sympathy and medical diagnosis. Whilst medical science has served to improve and enhance the quality of life for many it could be argued that it has also led to further segregation and separation of many individuals. This could be caused by its insistence on labelling one as “sick”, “abnormal” or “mental”. Consequently, what this act of labelling and diagnosing has done, is enforce the societal view that a disability is an abnormality that requires treatment and that any of its “victims” should do what is required to be able to function in society as an able bodied individual.

    Read More

More about Rhetorical Analysis Of On Being A Cripple By Nancy Mair

Open Document