The Mental Impact of Physical Disabilities

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Recommended: Narrative for disability

The Mental Impact of Physical Disabilities
Not everyone in the world is perfect and many people face life changing disabilities that seriously limit their physical capabilities. Disabilities have the power to change the lives of people and these individuals can ultimately decide whether this is for the better or the worse. The fictional stories “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, and “ Cathedral” by Raymond Carver paint parallels of the difficulties caused by physical handicaps and how these difficulties are applied to everyday life. While disabilities typically create hardships for individuals, they can oftentimes give them greater insight to how the world around them works and affect their opinions towards overall outlook on life, which will ultimately create different outcomes in certain situations.
Both stories illustrate disabilities in numerous different ways and show how these disabilities greatly have negative physical effects on people. In “Cathedral,” Robert is described as a blind man who cannot physically see the world around him. Robert is truly physically limited from his blindness and requires assistance from people other than himself to do minimal tasks such as dressing, reading and writing. At the same time, Hulga from “Good Country People” has a wooden prosthetic leg that severely affects her mobility. She gained this after a tragic hunting accident, where her father mistakenly shot her when she was only ten years old (O’Connor 119). Not only does Hulga have a wooden leg, she is also unfortunate enough to have a severe heart condition. She is limited by this condition because of the fact that it causes her to be very dependent on her mother, which does not allow her to travel far from her house very of...

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...ls through various physical handicaps and personal limitations. The disabilities change the life of the ones affected but to what extent is determined by the individual. The stories “Good Country People” and “Cathedral” portray these limitations and how they can exhibit many different effects. Though disabilities do oftentimes create many hardships for individuals, they also fabricate creative insight on life very different from our own and create different outcome to different situations.

Works Cited

Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” Mercury Reader. Compiled by Marisa Carlson. Ed.
Jancie Neuleib, Kathleen Shine Cain, and Stephen Ruffus. Boston: Pearson,
2014. 100-114. Print.
O’Connor, Flannery. “Good Country People.” Mercury Reader. Compiled by Marisa
Carlson. Ed. Jancie Neuleib, Kathleen Shine Cain, and Stephen Ruffus. Boston: Pearson, 2014. 116-137. Print.

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