The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks is a novel composed of tales of some patients he dealt with while working as a neurologist. The title of the book is derived from a case of a man with visual agnosia, which impairs the ability to recognize visually presented objects. Within this book are twenty-four tales akin to this condition. Amongst them is a story of The Disembodied Lady, which describes Catherine’s unique condition: proprioception. The base example in this case is perception, particularly bodily position and proprioception, while the target example is the protagonist’s disembodiment; her inability to sense her body, as if she was receiving no information form the periphery, and had lost her position senses.
Perception
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Sacks mentions that the sense of the body is given by three things: vision, balance organs or the vestibular system (a fluid filled network within the inner ear that helps the body keep oriented and balanced), and proprioception. These constantly work together, in a way that if one fails, the others could compensate or substitute, but only to a degree. Usually, we do not think about having the rights to our own body, because these rights, as Sacks puts, are automatic and familiar. Christina described her condition in the only way she knew how: proprioception is like the eyes of the body, the way the body sees itself. If it is gone, it is like the body is …show more content…
If an individual attempts to lift objects, there would be no feedback on how hard to flex the muscles except from clues the vision can give. Through feedback from proprioception, the brain is able to calculate angles of movement and command limbs to move certain, exact distances (Lee, 2002). Without this sense, humans would be forced to spend a great amount of their conscious energy moving around, or they would not be mobile at all.
Christina loses this sixth sense the day before she was scheduled to go into surgery to remove her gallbladder. She lost tone, muscle, and vocal posture. She was unaware that her body was flailing everywhere. Christina was told that she had to use her eyes to take over for the sense proprioception that was lost. She thus used her vision to control how she moved, talked, and physically held herself. Everything that one does automatically, Christina now has to think about. Christina’s life was made possible, but a great deal of re-learning had to be done so she could conduct
Someone with sight would never perform such an action because they have no need to. The way that she acts helps the reader understand Emma’s conflict better because it is unlike a normal person to feel the need to count body parts the way that she does. Ever since Emma went blind, she's been ashamed of herself, as if she had done something wrong. DeWoskin writes, “Open your eyes, Emma. I thought of myself as ‘Emma’ then, or ‘you,’ or ‘she,’ anyone but me” (DeWoskin 46). Emma perceiving herself as “you” or “she” shows that she is so uncomfortable with herself that she doesn’t want to be herself. She believes that her blindness is her own fault, when it was really fate. From this information, the reader can tell that she is struggling with her self image and therefore, doesn’t want to be “Emma” anymore. In conclusion, the characterization of Emma from Blind by Rachel DeWoskin helps the reader understand Emma’s struggle
Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” opens with a narrator whose wife has invited a blind friend to spend the night. The narrator depersonalizes the man right off the bat and repeatedly throughout the story by referring to him, not by name, but as “the blind man” (Carver 513). He admits that hi...
Within Oliver Sacks, “To See and Not See”, the reader is introduced to Virgil, a blind man who gains the ability to see, but then decides to go back to being blind. Within this story Sacks considers Virgil fortunate due to him being able to go back to the life he once lived. This is contrasted by Dr. P, in “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat”, Sacks states that his condition is “tragic” (Sacks, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat (13) due to the fact that his life will be forever altered by his condition. This thought process can be contributed to the ideas that: it is difficult to link physical objects and conceptualized meanings without prior experience, the cultures surrounding both individuals are different, and how they will carry on with their lives.
In the short story Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, there is a direct contrast between a blind man named Robert, and the narrator. The narrator has full use of his senses, and yet he is limited to the way he sees things, and the way he thinks. Robert however, has a very different outlook on life and how he sees things, as well as the use of his senses. At the end of the story, Robert has the narrator close his eyes to try and get him to experience the world the way he does. The narrator ends up being able to not only see the way Robert does, but he also is able to feel the world in a completely different way. The author suggests that the mind is most important in how people view things, and the judgements we make are based on what we see in our heads, instead of what is really there.
... sight: A case of hemineglect. In J. A. Ogden, Fractured Minds (pp. 113-136). New York: Oxford University Press.
Raymond Carver’s, “The Cathedral” is a short story told by the narrator, whose actual identity remains unknown. The narrator tells of an evening where his wife invites an old friend and former employer, by the name of Robert, over to spend the night. What differentiates Robert from the rest of the group is the fact that he is blind. It is blatantly apparent that the narrator or bub, a nickname coined by Robert, is close-minded and quick to make preconceived notions about circumstances that he is unfamiliar with, especially Robert’s inability to see. Upon deeper analysis, it is discovered that Bub makes ignorant judgments because his experiences are apparently limited and he is dissatisfied with the life that he has lived.
Many people view blindness as a disability, but could these people be blind to their surroundings? Even though the narrator can perfectly see with his eyes, he lacks in understanding awareness. The narrator blindness isn 't physical, like many vision impaired people. His blindness is psychological, and his blindness causes him to become jealous. His blindness blocks his perception of viewing the world in a different way. This only causes him to see the physical attributes of humans, and thus shut off his mindfulness of viewing human personalities. As a result of a closed mind, the narrator doesn 't understand how Robert was able to live with the fact that he was never able to see his wife in the flesh, but the narrator fails to see that Robert vision of his wife was intimate. On the other hand, Robert blindness is physical. This causes Robert to experience the world in a unique manner. Without Robert eyesight, he is able to have a glimpse of a human personality. He uses his disability to paint pictures in his head to experience the world. By putting his psychological blindness aside, the narrator is able to bond with Robert, and he grasps the understanding of opening his eyes for the first time, and this forms a new beginning of a
Visual agnosia is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize familiar objects (Farah, 1990). Object recognition is the ability to place an object in a category of meaning. Most cases of visual agnosia are brought about through cerebral vascular accidents or traumatic brain injury typically inhibiting sufficient amounts of oxygen from reaching vital body tissues (Zoltan, 1996). There are a vast array of impaired abilities and deficits associated with individuals diagnosed with visual agnosia. These impairments vary considerably from individual to individual (Farah, 1990). Some patients cannot recognize pictures of things such as trees and birds, despite being able to describe such objects or recognize them through other senses such as sound and touch. Other patients demonstrate an inability to recognize faces of friends and family members (Goodale, 1995). The functional impairments experienced as a r...
The Capgras Delusion is one of the rarest and colorful syndromes in neurology. The patient fails to recognise the faces of close acquaintances and calls them as an ‘imposter’. They claim that the person ‘looks like’ or is ‘identical to’ someone they know, while continuing to believe that they are two different individuals. The delusional belief is strongest when the putative imposter is present [2]. Capgras delusion is classified as a delusional misidentification syndrome, a class of beliefs where the patients have delusional beliefs that involves misidentification of people, places or objects.
A narrative is constructed to elicit a particular response from its audience. In the form of a written story, authors use specific narrative strategies to position the ‘ideal reader’ to attain the intended understanding of the meanings in the text. Oliver Sacks’ short story The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is an unusual short story because it does not display conventional plot development; the story does not contain conflict or resolution of conflict. The genre of the story is also difficult to define because it reads as an autobiographical account of an experience Sacks had with a patient while working as a neurologist. Although it is arguable that the narrative is a work of non-fiction, it is nevertheless a representation, distinct from a reflection of the real events. It is a construction, Sacks chose the elements that were included and omitted in the narrative and used narrative strategies to position readers to process the signs in the text and produce reach the dominant understanding. This blurring of truth and fiction is similar to that in the genre of ‘new journalism’. Although, rather than being a journalist writing a fictional piece of journalism, Sacks is a doctor writing a fictional medical analysis. To influence readers’ comprehension of the narrative, Sacks utilised the point of view strategy of subjective narration, atypical in this short story in that a characterisation or representation of Oliver Sacks is the narrator and Oliver Sacks the person is the real author. The story is character-driven rather than plot-driven and regardless of how accurate a depiction of the real people the characters are, they are constructions. Sacks gave the characters of Doctor P. and his namesake admirable and sympathetic trait...
For instance, the narrator realizes that whenever he and his wife are alone, she becomes sheltered in her own sphere. This comes to mind, though with uncertainty, where he questions “whether the person I saw tinkering at the window was opening the latches or sealing the cracks” (32). What he doesn’t realize, and is oblivious to, is that the person she’s shutting herself away from was not just any person but himself. What’s more, the narrator is unaware of the changes happening to the world around him as the “ceiling” becomes visible upon his town. Even though he goes out day by day, as several months passed by, he was not conscious of the fact that the birds and insects had disappeared. He even claims that, “I did not notice they were gone though…until I read Joshua’s essay” (34). He’s blind to the world changing beneath his eyes, so how would he be aware of the status of his relationship if he can’t see what’s right in front of him? Even while getting his hair trimmed, and Wesson the barber asks him, “How’s the pretty lady?” the narrator replies, “‘She hasn’t been feeling to well,’ I said. ‘But I think she’s coming out of it” (34). He assumes that her abnormal behaviour lately is only a sort of phase that will simply pass by on its own, as time goes by. As a result, his incapability to recognize not only his wife’s change of demeanour but also
Many readers believe this piece of fiction to be a ghost story, but it is one that is about a woman with acute psychological delusion, portrayed through the use of characterization and occasion. Bowen begins her dramatization by defining the woman’s psychological delusion through the characterization of her anxiety and isolation. She establishes the woman’s anxiety in the beginning and closing of the third paragraph when she subtly narrates how, “she was anxious to see how the house was”(Bowen 160) and “she was anxious to keep an eye”(Bowen 160). To believe that it is impossible to imagine a letter, is someone who does not know the mind of a person plagued with psychological delusion.
Freud, Sigumund. "The Uncanny." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. New York: Blackwell, 1998.
In literature, blindness serves a general significant meaning of the absence of knowledge and insight. In life, physical blindness usually represents an inability or handicap, and those people afflicted with it are pitied. The act of being blind can set limitations on the human mind, thus causing their perception of reality to dramatically change in ways that can cause fear, personal insecurities, and eternal isolation. However, “Cathedral” utilizes blindness as an opportunity to expand outside those limits and exceed boundaries that can produce a compelling, internal change within an individual’s life. Those who have the ability of sight are able to examine and interpret their surroundings differently than those who are physically unable to see. Carver suggests an idea that sight and blindness offer two different perceptions of reality that can challenge and ultimately teach an individual to appreciate the powerful significance of truly seeing without seeing. Therefore, Raymond Carver passionately emphasizes a message that introduces blindness as not a setback, but a valuable gift that can offer a lesson of appreciation and acceptance toward viewing the world in a more open-minded perspective.
In the essay, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self,” Alice Walker writes about how she lost her eyesight in one eye due to a childhood accident. Alice communicates to the reader how, when losing an eye, she cared much less about the loss of her eyesight and more about how she appeared to others. In the story, Alice recalls different points where the accident affected her life. To her, the loss of her eye was not just a physical impediment, but a mental one as well. Once she had a surgery to remove the “glob of whitish scar tissue,” she felt like a new person, even though she still could not see. Alice says, “Now that I’ve raised my head,” and can stop holding herself back from being the greatest she can be. Just as Alice is affected by