[NFBWATLK] Portrayal of Blindness in All the Light We Cannot See
Marci Carpenter
mjc59 at comcast.net
Thu Jul 6 16:39:04 UTC 2017
It’s in the July, 2017 Braille Monitor.
Marci
> On Jul 6, 2017, at 9:11 AM, Arielle Silverman via NFBWATLK <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> Where did this article come from? I'd like to share.
> Thanks, Arielle
>
> On 7/6/17, Nightingale, Noel via NFBWATLK <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>> From: Olson, Toby (ESD) [mailto:TOlson2 at ESD.WA.GOV]
>> Sent: Wednesday, July 5, 2017 9:56 AM
>> To: GCDE-INFO at LISTSERV.WA.GOV
>> Subject: Portrayal of Blindness in All the Light We Cannot See
>>
>>
>> Sheri Wells-Jensen]
>>
>> Anthony Don't: On Blindness and the Portrayal of Marie-Laure
>>
>> in All the Light We Cannot See
>>
>> by Sheri Wells-Jensen
>>
>>
>>
>> From the Editor: Sheri Wells-Jensen is a professor of linguistics at
>>
>> Bowling Green State University. She wrote this book review for Interpoint,
>>
>> the blog of the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind. It is gratefully
>>
>> reprinted with the permission of the author and the Lighthouse. Here is
>>
>> what she has to say about the novel: From the Braille Monitor, July, 2017
>>
>>
>>
>> When I think of All the Light We Cannot See, the latest, most popular
>>
>> portrayal of blindness, there are many scenes that run through my head.
>>
>> Here are two, summarized, for your consideration:
>>
>> In 1940, under the imminent threat of German invasion, a middle-aged
>>
>> locksmith and his twelve-year-old blind daughter are fleeing Paris.
>>
>> Everything happens quickly, and their escape is urgent. The locksmith is
>>
>> working furiously, but, short of running her hands over a toy model of the
>>
>> city, the blind daughter does nothing. Her father asks nothing of her
>>
>> except that she use the bathroom, and so she waits, passive as an
>>
>> upholstered chair, while he assembles their possessions, packs their food,
>>
>> then buttons her into her coat, and leads her out the door.
>>
>> Why isn't this adolescent girl participating in her own escape?
>>
>> Four years later, the locksmith is drawing his now-sixteen-year-old
>>
>> daughter a bath, despite the fact that there is a decidedly maternal female
>>
>> character just downstairs. The locksmith washes his daughter's hair, and
>>
>> she is docile as he explains that he is leaving. At the end of the bath he
>>
>> hands her a towel and helps her climb onto the tile.
>>
>> Why is a middle-aged man bathing his sixteen-year-old daughter, even
>>
>> if he does step outside while she puts on her nightgown? Who is this girl?
>>
>> Is she the heroine or the victim of the story? Does she get to be both?
>>
>> This helpless, sexless child is the blind girl who is one of the main
>>
>> characters of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, a book which
>>
>> first enraged me, then began to haunt me and fill me with a kind of
>>
>> appalled despair. The book has raised neither widespread outrage nor
>>
>> offense in most readers. People love it. It won a Pulitzer [in 2015]. Book
>>
>> clubs are gobbling it up. Every morning, on my way to work, I hear ads for
>>
>> it on my local NPR station. And every morning, I feel the same gut-deep
>>
>> sense of despair, a kind of a mental nausea, as Marie-Laure begins to slide
>>
>> into her place in the public consciousness as a reasonable representation
>>
>> of what it's like to be blind.
>>
>> Marie really doesn't do much for herself in the novel, and when she
>>
>> does, her methods are decidedly strange, the reception she receives even
>>
>> stranger. She doesn't put on her own shoes, button her own coat, or help
>>
>> out around the house. Her ability to find her way around her own
>>
>> neighborhood is constructed and controlled by her father, who builds
>>
>> obsessively detailed models, accurate down to the last park bench, for her
>>
>> to use in navigation. Until the model is complete, she does not leave the
>>
>> house alone. He watches over her as if she were made of spun glass and
>>
>> sugar. When, one evening, she dances in the attic with her agoraphobic
>>
>> uncle, we are told that "her two eyes, which hang unmoving like the egg
>>
>> cases of spiders, seem almost to see into a separate deeper place, a world
>>
>> that consists only of music ... though how she knows what dancing is he can
>>
>> never guess."
>>
>> In case you don't know, not a single blind person I have ever met
>>
>> would count thirty-eight storm drains on a walk downtown. We walk to work,
>>
>> to the bakery, and back home again and manage this without the benefit of a
>>
>> single 3D model of the park benches we pass. We can also tell night from
>>
>> day. We carry our own luggage. We don't need to use a rope tied from the
>>
>> kitchen table to the bathroom to navigate the inside of a house. And all of
>>
>> us know what dancing is.
>>
>> But I am not here to complain about misrepresentations of adaptive
>>
>> techniques or tired blindness stereotypes. I honestly don't care if Marie-
>>
>> Laure counts her steps, reads Braille with her thumbs, hears the ocean from
>>
>> her sixth-floor window, or can detect the scent of cedars from a quarter-
>>
>> mile away. The assault on the dignity of blind people is not that this
>>
>> character has strange adaptive techniques, or even that there are so many
>>
>> things she does not do for herself; it is that she is utterly without
>>
>> agency as a character.
>>
>> Marie does not even pack her clothes, not because she can't find her
>>
>> bedroom or doesn't know her socks from her pantaloons, but because she is
>>
>> simply not expected to do that sort of thing. She's not especially timid or
>>
>> excessively shy. She is, in fact, intelligent and reasonably charming. But
>>
>> she is not the agent of her own life. Isolated, apparently friendless, she
>>
>> is led through her life by the hand and accepts everything that happens to
>>
>> her with dystopian magnanimity. She is moved about, remarked over, and
>>
>> admired, and she spends the majority of the novel in the apparently
>>
>> courageous and all-involving activity of simply staying alive while blind.
>>
>> She expects nothing-not praise, not condemnation, not challenge-and the
>>
>> people around her are glad enough to oblige. Even when she does manage to
>>
>> do something-to cast away a particular gemstone, or run an unsupervised
>>
>> errand downtown for the French Resistance-it changes nothing in her life,
>>
>> except that she eventually asks permission to go to school. Nothing really
>>
>> changes. She resists nothing. She asks for little.
>>
>> She is my nightmare.
>>
>> All the Light We Cannot See is historical fiction, and Mr. Doerr says
>>
>> in his numerous interviews that he did endless research while writing. You
>>
>> can tell he did read about blindness: He read about Jacques Lusseyran, a
>>
>> blind man who took part in the French Resistance in World War II; and
>>
>> apparently also about Geerat Vermeij, a blind evolutionary biologist now at
>>
>> UC Davis. You should take the time to learn about these two men; their
>>
>> stories are about active, joyful, curious, hard-working blind people,
>> quick-
>>
>> witted and ready for a challenge. After reading their memoirs, you might
>>
>> think Mr. Doerr would create an engaged, vibrant main character who is
>>
>> blind.
>>
>> In what feels very much like a betrayal of the lively spirit that
>>
>> inspired and motivated M. Lusseyran and Dr. Vermeij, all Marie inherited
>>
>> from these successful men was a degree of composure and an innocuous
>>
>> predilection for mollusks. Blindness is Mr. Doerr's metaphor. Real living
>>
>> human beings-caring, active, blind human beings who are parents and
>>
>> teachers and artists and scientists-are not relevant in his story. And I
>>
>> can't tell from his prose if he cares about that or not. [Editor's note:
>>
>> Doerr first achieved notoriety with his portrayal of a mythical blind
>>
>> character in "The Shell Collector."]
>>
>> His defenders might object that Mr. Doerr's depiction has nothing to
>>
>> do with modern blind people-he was creating a historically real picture of
>>
>> a young blind girl seventy-five years ago in a European war zone when
>>
>> circumstances were different and women of any sort had less power and less
>>
>> autonomy than we do now. Similarly, you could argue-and friends of mine
>>
>> have-that Mr. Doerr, as an artist, can and should create as his muse
>>
>> prescribes. I'll happily grant that, too.
>>
>> But art, whatever its genesis or intent, flourishes or fails in a
>>
>> social context. We decide-by what we read, what we watch, and what we buy-
>>
>> if the muse is worth it. And the fact that this book and its blind heroine
>>
>> won the Pulitzer says something not just about Mr. Doerr's knack as a
>>
>> storyteller, but also about what sighted people expect from blind people.
>>
>> The fact that most people do not notice any problems at all with the
>>
>> depiction of Marie is sad to me.
>>
>> Many a friend, perhaps in an effort to redeem something from the
>>
>> uncomfortable hour of discussing this book with me, has implored, "Yes, but
>>
>> other than Marie-Laure, didn't you like the book?" I think they must want
>>
>> to preserve something of the glow they felt while reading. It was a pretty
>>
>> story, well told, right?
>>
>> Well, no. Not at all. Asking if I liked the book in spite of the
>>
>> portrayal of the blind character is like asking, "Except for the dog turd,
>>
>> didn't you enjoy that piece of cake?"
>>
>> So why, you might ask, did I read this book? I have started and
>>
>> discarded dozens of books-some slightly better, some worse-because of their
>>
>> depictions of blind characters. It just isn't generally worth my time to
>>
>> read insulting or stupid depictions of blind people. All things being
>>
>> equal, I'd rather clean the catbox. But I made myself finish this one,
>>
>> hoping for some resolution. I kept reading because this one will not
>>
>> quietly go away.
>>
>> I am an associate professor of linguistics in the English Department
>>
>> at Bowling Green State University, where Anthony Doerr received his
>>
>> Master's degree in creative writing in 1999, the year before I arrived on
>>
>> campus. I understand that he was quite well regarded at BGSU, and has since
>>
>> been named among our 100 top alumni. Although we have never met, he is
>>
>> respected by my colleagues and liked by many of my friends. And because of
>>
>> this book, he will most likely return to BGSU someday, probably to give the
>>
>> commencement speech, and then I'll have to decide what to do. (My choices
>>
>> range from confronting him angrily in the East Hall lounge to hiding under
>>
>> my desk for the duration of his stay. Both options have their appeal!)
>>
>> Would meeting a real, competent, employed blind person change his approach
>>
>> to writing blind characters? Would that make a difference? Or are the
>>
>> cultural stereotypes-and the permission to use them-just too powerful?
>>
>> The answers to those questions, although fascinating to me on both a
>>
>> personal and a professional level, don't matter. And my inclination to spit
>>
>> fire or curl up under my desk is not as important as the conversation we,
>>
>> as a society, should be having about what matters to us and how what we see
>>
>> in the media impacts our lives. Art is important. It is an echo of the real
>>
>> world, capturing our perceptions and reflecting them back to us. And what
>>
>> do we discover reflected in the story of Marie-Laure? A well-crafted homage
>>
>> to destructive stereotypes about blindness, softened and made pretty by
>>
>> artful prose.
>>
>> There's nothing pretty about the reality of prejudice, and there's
>>
>> nothing soft about the lives of disabled people who have been taught that
>>
>> they have neither the right nor the power to run their own lives. Art does
>>
>> matter because it not only reflects what we believe, it also helps
>>
>> establish those beliefs. And if an artist is unsure how to authentically
>>
>> portray blind people, then it falls to the community to begin the
>>
>> conversation, because we do not have "eyes like the egg cases of spiders,"
>>
>> we can put on our own shoes, and we do, in fact, have reason to know what
>>
>> dancing is.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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