Articoli di riviste sul tema "Huckleberry Finn (Fictional character)"

Abstract This article examines how two novels, Phong Nguyen’s The Adventures of Joe Harper (2016) and Robert Coover’s Huck Out West (2017), revisit the controversial ending of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by imagining Tom Sawyer as an embodiment of the savagery of Manifest Destiny. It explores how these novels try to redeem the character of Huckleberry Finn by rejecting Tom and embracing reparative forms of storytelling like Native American and hobo oral narrative, both of which are pacifist and open-ended in comparison to the jingoistic, bombastic, and injurious nationalism of Manifest Destiny. Other topics covered include the cultural politics of the “minor character” novel, adaptation, moral injury, and the representation of race and identity in both novels.

Mark Twain is still widely known for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), but no longer for his writing about science and technology. Yet, Twain’s interest in science and technology, and particularly scientific and technological innovation, was woven into much of his fictional and non-fictional writing throughout his life. Furthermore, not only was Twain an enthusiastic advocate of science and technology, but he was also an enthusiastic advocate of clarity, consistency and conciseness in writing and his writing advice remains timely and relevant to modern writers about science and technology. This paper brings together some of this writing advice and shows its continuing relevance and importance to scientific and technical writers in the twenty-first century.

Abstract. The events of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and its logical successor "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain are scientifically examined in this article using the literary studies idea of the unity of space and time. The piece examines the author's distinctive narrating style and distinct method of character movement. The heroes' significant role in the unification of space and time and their essential purpose are detailed in the work's plot.

In their close ties to a folkloric past, and in a conscientious effort to dialogue with a far-reaching literary inheritance, the Brazilian Ariano Suassuna (1927-2014) and the U.S.’s Mark Twain (1835-1910) present regional protagonists who negotiate roles as heroes of artifice. As they feed off models of the Trickster and pícaro, an analysis based on cognitive and psychosocial theory reveals a João Grilo and Huck Finn that model valued skills as socioeconomically marginalized figures on the outskirts of civilization. In Auto da Compadecida (1955) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), both Suassuna and Twain manage to highlight these skills by creating character duos that mimic the cognitive counterpointing between Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote and Sancho Panza.

The present paper consists of some orienting reflections of the archetypal American quest for identity in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The novel tends to be a matter of its language overcoming problems despite the fact that it is considered the archetypal American tradition. It could also face up to most problematic cases because of its complicated history and controversial diction. It seeks a great deal of a new social identity of America, thus it is so important for understanding the ambiguous relationship as well as its understatements among fictional personas. It weaves and understate a complicated plot, diction and theme. The main goal of the novel is particularly interesting for constructing identity. It is not an attempt to force racial identity because of a regardless of skin colour. The fact that this novel may read is a damning indictment of racial identity of America. It is stunning, and for a long time engrossing all valuable charisma

Abstract Mark Twain is best known in popular culture as the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is somewhat less widely known that he wrote on the leading edge of the writing genre we now know as Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF). He stands with Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells as one of the early developers of basic themes that are with us still: time travel, political dystopia, alternative history, future history, ESP, alien/demonic visitation, travel to alien worlds, and world-altering inventions. Twain likewise had fictional alignments with Latter-day Saint theology, including the theme of reconciliation through transcendence. Transcendent reconciliation is thus the driving force behind the general plot strategy of the most successful examples of Latter-day Saint fantasy/sci-fi and Twain’s writings as well.

Mark Twain is one of the most prolific writers of literary dialect, and his works have long been studied not only for their content but also for the structure of the language found within. In this tradition, this article analyzes the speech of the character of Huck Finn in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. However, this article moves beyond traditional studies which focus on cataloguing dialect features or discussing the writer's dialect accuracy, and instead questions whether or not Twain was consistent in his use of literary dialect intertextually. Using the LinguaLinks program, a representative sample of Huck's speech from each text was examined for non-standard features and dialect spellings, and these forms were analyzed for consistency of use. This study reveals that while Twain is consistent in some of the dialect features analyzed, variation does in fact occur within his representation of Huck's speech.

Abstrak: The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn merupakan sebuah novel yang menceritakan pengalaman seorang anak dalam berinteraksi dengan lingkungan. Yang memotivasi peneliti adalah untuk menganalisis sisi psikologi dalam novel ini. Fokus dari penelitian ini yang pertama adalah apakah pengaruh kepribadian Huck terhadap lingkungan, kedua bagaimana pengaruh lingkungan pada perkembangan psikologi Huck, ketiga bagaimana hubungan antara Huck dan lingkungan ditinjau dari teori Reciprocal. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah mengekplor bagaimana kepribadian Huck terhadap lingkungannya, untuk menggambarkan pengaruh lingkungan pada kepribadian Huck, dan untuk menggambarkan hubungan antara Huck dan lingkungannya dilihat dari teori reciprocal. Desain dari penelitian ini adalah diskriptif qualitatif. Pendekatan dari analisis karya sastra adalah pendekatan Psikologi. Data-datanya diambil dari novel dan beberapa referensi yang berhubungan. Untuk pengumpulan data menggunakan dokumentasi dan observasi. Proses menganalisis data dimulai dari pengurangan data, menampilan data, dan menyimpulkan data. Untuk mengetahui kevalidan data, peneliti menggunakan tehnik uraian. Hasil dari penelitian ini, peneliti menemukan beberapa bukti yang menunjukkan bahwa Huck sebagai karakter utama termasuk didalam reciprocal, Ini membuktikan bahwa beberapa pengaruh yang dialami oleh Huck Finn dapat dianalisa. Kata Kunci: Psikologi, Kepribadian, Tingkah laku Abstract: The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn is a novel which tells adventure of a child in interacting with environment. These motivated the researcher to analyze psychological side in current novel. Besides, the researcher has been interesting in novel aspect since was studying Literature in lecturing. Focus of the research are the first is what is the influence of Huck’s personality on his environment, the second is how is the influence of environment to Huck’s psychology development, and the last one how is the interrelation between Huck and his environment viewed by reciprocal theory. The objectives of study are: exploring how Huck's personality influences on his environment, to describe the influence of environment to Huck’s personality development and to describe the interrelation between Huck and his environment viewed by reciprocal theory. The design of the research is descriptive Analysis. The approach of analysis literature work is Psychological Approach. The data are taken from the novel and some references related to. For collecting data uses documents and observation. The processes of analyzing the data started from data reduction, data display, and conclusion. To know the validity of data, the researcher uses thick description technique. As the result in the research, researcher finds some proves that show Huck as the main character includes in the reciprocal. It proves that some influences which are gotten by Huckleberry Finn could be analyzed. Key Words: Psychological, Personality, Behavior

This study aims to describe the struggles experienced by the two main characters in the novel in getting their freedom and also to elaborate the important of freedom for the main characters as human rights. The research method used was a qualitative descriptive method with the sociology of literature approach. The primary data were collected from descriptions and utterances of the main characters and narrators in the novel. The supporting data were obtained from the library, internet, journals, and articles. The results of this research indicate that there is struggle of the main characters in obtaining their freedom as a human in this novel. Huckleberry Finn as the main character fought for his freedom from a drunk and abusive father, while Jim, as the second main character fought for his freedom from slavery. The two figures then met and made an adventure together to get their own freedom.

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) contains the materials for a wide-ranging analysis of the different and competing understandings of American manhood in the nineteenth century and the ways in which men might interact with each other and love each other. In order to understand better the sexual and emotional dynamics of the novel, we must understand the other kinds of writings about men alone and together that Twain was responding to. In this essay I place Twain's classic novel in two nineteenth-century discursive contexts that have been obscured in the existing criticism: the fiction of romantic friendship and the public debate on the homeless man. Huckleberry Finn may be seen as the reverse of the medal of normative, middle-class masculinity in Victorian America and as a counterpoint to the more conventional, idealized accounts of romantic friendship in the works of several of Twain's contemporaries and rivals. I suggest that while Huck and Jim negotiate an uncommon type of romantic friendship across barriers of race and generation, the duke and the dauphin appear as a grotesque parody of high-minded "brotherly love." By co-opting some of the conventions of romantic friendship fiction, Twain decreased the distance between his underclass characters and middle-class readers. Yet by writing and publishing the first novel about tramps during a period of heightened national concern about homeless men, Twain increased the topicality and popular appeal of what was, in its initial American publication in 1885, a subscription book that needed an element of sensationalism in order to sell.

Abstract The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of the racial slurs nigger and negro in Heart of Darkness on readers’ perception of dehumanisation, discrimination, and racism. It compares data collected through online questionnaires to test whether the absence or different frequencies of the slurs influence how participants perceive the fictional representation of the African people in the text. Three versions of the same questionnaire are used: one with unmodified passages from Heart of Darkness, one with the same passages but without the racial slurs, and one with the same passages but with more slurs than in the original. Findings show that the absence or overabundance of slurs compared to the original does not alter reader perception of dehumanisation, discrimination, and racism. By comparing the results, this paper makes two interconnected contributions. First, it contributes to the critical discussion about racism in Conrad’s novel, by providing evidence on whether the representation of the Africans is perceived as dehumanising, discriminatory, and racist by readers. Second, it offers an empirical perspective on the usefulness of the “sanitising” (removing or substituting of all racial slurs) of literary texts with potential racist implications, adopted by some publishing houses and applied to novels like Conrad’s The Nigger of the “Narcissus” and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Beltings and beatings play a prominent role in Twain's boy fictions. In “The Story of the Bad Little Boy” (1865), Jim is “always spanked…to sleep” by his mother and, instead of a good-night kiss, “she boxed his ears when she was ready to leave him.” While in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884–85), when Huck stays with pap in the cabin in the woods, “by-and-by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand it. I was all over welts.” It is the prevalence of such punishments, and attempted punishments, in Tom Sawyer's young life that provides the starting-point for my present analysis of childhood discipline and its fictional representation in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). For to focus on the different types of punishment Tom undergoes, the supervisory controls which are placed over him, and the way he responds to them, is to suggest a reading of Twain's novel as illustrative both of the changing forms of domestic discipline being introduced in America in the 1830s and 40s, and the spaces in which that discipline functions. In pursuing this line of inquiry, I build on previous work on the development of modern American social regulation in the antebellum period, and particularly that by G. M. Goshgarian and Richard H. Brodhead.

The world of Tom Sawyer, both that of the character and of the novel which bears his name, is a world dominated by fences; the neat, straight palings that surround the Widow Dougla's property, the fence around the Teacher house over which the lovestick Tom gazes longingly after Becky, and all the other upright boundaries delineating St. Petersburg respectability. As the central icon of the novel, Aunt Polly's white-washed fence appropriately represents the care and maintenance of order to which the town is committed, an order upon which both Tom and his story depend. Although Twain first identifies St. Petersburg as a poor, shabby, frontier village, it is far from defenseless in its confrontations either with shabbiness or wilderness. Well ordered by its fences and undergirded, like Tom's story, by the central institutions of civil and cultural order — the court, the school, the church — it is a society where things have been assigned their proper places and where the primary function of the St. Petersburg elect is to tend those places. This is a world overseen by guardians and Sunday superintendents, schoolmastes, and judges, authorities who, if sometimes mistaken, or even slightly absurd, are essentially benign and nearly always reliable. Thus it is that the minister, praying for the community's children, does so in the context of a hierarchy of responsibility that from country officials to the President of the United States, an ordering presence that, among other reassuring work, is to guarantee the well-being of the young. As though to provide the fullest representation of this benevolent system, Missouri's most important senator, Thomas Hart Benton, makes a cameo appearance in the novel, albeit one in which he is judged of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a book about boyish freedom, it affirms at every turn an order of the most conventional sort and depends upon that order for the version of boyhood it depicts.

IMPROBABILITIES, CROSSOVERS, AND IMPOSSIBILITIES | Extending and to some extent revising some of his earlier work, James Phelan in this essay examines three kinds of “unnatural”departures from the mimetic code. Paralepsis (or implausible knowledgeable narration), simultaneous present-tense character narration, and a kind of departure not previously noticed, which he calls cross over narration: “an author links the narration of two independent sets of events by transferring the effects of the narration of the one to the other.” In spite of being rather different ways of breaching the mimetic code, the three breaks form a useful cluster for investigating underlying conventions of reading that can explain why readers often do not notice the breakes. Phelan thus induces two Meta-Rules of Readerly Engagement: The Value Added Meta-Rule underlies the principle that disclosurefunctions trump narrator functions, and stipulates that readers overlook breaks in the mimetic code when those breaks enhance their reading experience; the Story over Discourse Meta-Rule stipulates that once a narrative foregrounds its mimetic component, readers will privilege story elements over discourseelements, and thus be inclined to overlook breaks in the code. Four additional Rules are derived from the Meta-Rules in a reading of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which serves as an example ofimplausibly knowledgeable narration. Rules and Meta-Rules are then deployed in reading a passage of The Great Gatsby, exemplifying crossover narration. A discussion with Henrik Skov Nielsen about the simultaneous present-tense narration in Glamorama marks both the closeness and a certain differencein perspective between rhetorical narratology and Nielsen’s concept of narration without narrators.

Abstract Mark Twain’s Becky Thatcher features very little in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She mostly vanishes after Tom Sawyer, and even in that novel she speaks fewer than a thousand words of dialogue. She disappears from Twain’s work almost completely after Huckleberry Finn, where she receives a single mention. An insignificant character to academics, Becky appears in the scholarly record little more than she had in Twain’s fiction. This essay explores Becky Thatcher’s outsized role in cinematic, literary, and other adaptations across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Becky Thatcher’s literary half-life extends to clothing racks and gift shops, as well as in cinematic and literary adaptations and appropriations. These transformations map racial and sexual anxieties of several American generations. Minor though she may seem, Becky looms large in films, fiction, restaurants, tourist attractions, and all the ephemera produced from the marketing of successful fictional characters in a capitalist media landscape.

The characteristics of stereotypical characters in literary works may transform over time as the characteristics of the group they represent in society change. Child image is one of those which experiences this change the most. Child, who initially appeared as a little adult, evil born or wax to be molded, has evolved to include more complex and sophisticated depictions because the child in the real world has begun to be seen differently than before and it has been understood that it has a more complex structure than it appears. This indicates that children are not just a monolithic group who look remarkably alike and have common characteristics and behaviors. Factors such as nature, society, and living conditions play an important role in shaping each child's unique character and actions, and therefore a child cannot be exclusively decent, evil, pure, or tainted. However, in any case, the image of the child is shaped by the wishes and expectations of society. To make a long story short, from the past to the present, children have come to be understood as more than stereotypes and as multidimensional individuals, and as a manifestation of this in literature, they have begun to be represented more complexly in works. This process of change is evident when the older literary periods and more recent novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Lord of the Flies are analyzed.

This paper examines the symbolism of the magic lamp in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Kurt Vonnegut's Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp (1957). This study, which uses an archetypal approach to the texts, demonstrates how the American authors use the literary source of the magic lamp image from the Middle Eastern folktale collection of the Arabian Nights, where the lamp essentially represents Aladdin's dream and a quick route to success. Furthermore, the two authors aim to transform this image into the motif of the American dream in its modern contexts. These two literary works likewise made an effort to use the picture as a vehicle for the issues of slavery, racial prejudice, and class inequality. Additionally, the characters’ desire to escape their social and economic constraints is, contrary to what they anticipate, frustrated because of their use of the lamp. Moreover, the wishes of the characters in both texts to escape from their social and economic restraints are, contrary to their expectations, thwarted as a result of their use of the lamp. This negative outcome renders the function of the lamp the opposite to its original function in the literary sources of the texts.

Introduction Films with deaf characters often do not focus on the condition of deafness at all. Rather, the characters seem to satisfy a role in the story that either furthers the plot or the audience’s understanding of other hearing characters. The deaf characters can be symbolic, for example as a metaphor for isolation representative of ‘those without a voice’ in a society. The deaf characters’ misunderstanding of auditory cues can lead to comic circumstances, and their knowledge can save them in the case of perilous ones. Sign language, because of its unique linguistic properties and its lack of comprehension by hearing people, can save the day in a story line. Deaf characters are shown in different eras and in different countries, providing a fictional window into their possible experiences. Films shape and reflect cultural attitudes and can serve as a potent force in influencing the attitudes and assumptions of those members of the hearing world who have had few, if any, encounters with deaf people. This article explores categories of literary function as identified by the author, providing examples and suggestions of other films for readers to explore. Searching for Deaf Characters in Film I am a sign language interpreter. Several years ago, I started noticing how deaf characters are used in films. I made a concerted effort to find as many as I could. I referred to John Shuchman’s exhaustive book about deaf actors and subject matter, Hollywood Speaks; I scouted video rental guides (key words were ‘deaf’ or ‘disabled’); and I also plugged in the key words ‘deaf in film’ on Google’s search engine. I decided to ignore the issue of whether or not the actors were actually deaf—a political hot potato in the Deaf community which has been discussed extensively. Similarly, the linguistic or cultural accuracy of the type of sign language used or super-human lip-reading talent did not concern me. What was I looking for? I noticed that few story lines involving deaf characters provide any discussion or plot information related to that character’s deafness. I was puzzled. Why is there signing in the elevator in Jerry Maguire? Why does the guy in Grand Canyon have a deaf daughter? Why would the psychosomatic response to a trauma—as in Psych Out—be deafness rather than blindness? I concluded that not being able to hear carried some special meaning or fulfilled a particular need intrinsic to the plot of the story. I also observed that the functions of deaf characters seem to fall into several categories. Some deaf characters fit into more than one category, serving two or more symbolic purposes at the same time. By viewing and analysing the representations of deafness and deaf characters in forty-six films, I have come up with the following classifications: Deafness as a plot device Deaf characters as protagonist informants Deaf characters as a parallel to the protagonist Sign language as ‘hero’ Stories about deaf/hearing relationships A-normal-guy-or-gal-who-just-happens-to-be-deaf Deafness as a psychosomatic response to trauma Deafness as metaphor Deafness as a symbolic commentary on society Let your fingers do the ‘talking’ Deafness as Plot Device Every element of a film is a device, but when the plot hinges on one character being deaf, the story succeeds because of that particular character having that particular condition. The limitations or advantages of a deaf person functioning within the hearing world establish the tension, the comedy, or the events which create the story. In Hear No Evil (1993), Jillian learns from her hearing boyfriend which mechanical devices cause ear-splitting noises (he has insomnia and every morning she accidentally wakes him in very loud ways, eg., she burns the toast, thus setting off the smoke detector; she drops a metal spoon down the garbage disposal unit). When she is pursued by a murderer she uses a fire alarm, an alarm/sprinkler system, and a stereo turned on full blast to mask the sounds of her movements as she attempts to hide. Jillian and her boyfriend survive, she learns about sound, her boyfriend learns about deafness, and she teaches him the sign for orgasm. Life is good! The potential comic aspects of deafness may seem in this day and age to be shockingly politically incorrect. While the slapstick aspect is often innocent and means no overt harm or insult to the Deaf as a population, deafness functions as the visual banana peel over which the characters figuratively stumble in the plot. The film, See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989), pairing Gene Wilder with Richard Pryor as deaf and blind respectively, is a constant sight gag of lip-reading miscues and lack-of-sight gags. Wilder can speak, and is able to speech read almost perfectly, almost all of the time (a stereotype often perpetuated in films). It is mind-boggling to imagine the detail of the choreography required for the two actors to convince the audience of their authenticity. Other films in this category include: Suspect It’s a Wonderful Life Murder by Death Huck Finn One Flew over the Cuckoo’s NestThe Shop on Main StreetRead My Lips The Quiet Deaf Characters as Protagonist Informants Often a deaf character’s primary function to the story is to give the audience more information about, or form more of an affinity with, the hearing protagonist. The deaf character may be fascinating in his or her own right, but generally the deafness is a marginal point of interest. Audience attitudes about the hearing characters are affected because of their previous or present involvement with deaf individuals. This representation of deafness seems to provide a window into audience understanding and appreciation of the protagonist. More inferences can be made about the hearing person and provides one possible explanation for what ensues. It is a subtle, almost subliminal trick. There are several effective examples of this approach. In Gas, Food, Lodging (1992), Shade discovers that tough-guy Javier’s mother is deaf. He introduces Shade to his mother by simple signs and finger-spelling. They all proceed to visit and dance together (mom feels the vibrations on the floor). The audience is drawn to feel ‘Wow! Javier is a sensitive kid who has grown up with a beautiful, exotic, deaf mother!’ The 1977 film, Looking for Mr. Goodbar presents film-goers with Theresa, a confused young woman living a double life. By day, she is a teacher of deaf children. Her professor in the Teacher of the Deaf program even likens their vocation to ‘touching God’. But by night she cruises bars and engages in promiscuous sexual activity. The film shows how her fledgling use of signs begins to express her innermost desires, as well as her ability to communicate and reach out to her students. Other films in this category include: Miracle on 34th Street (1994 version)Nashville (1975, dir. Robert Altman)The Family StoneGrand CanyonThere Will Be Blood Deaf Characters as a Parallel to the Protagonist I Don’t Want to Talk about It (1993) from Argentina, uses a deaf character to establish an implied parallel story line to the main hearing character. Charlotte, a dwarf, is friends with Reanalde, who is deaf. The audience sees them in the first moments of the film when they are little girls together. Reanalde’s mother attempts to commiserate with Charlotte’s mother, establishing a simultaneous but unseen story line somewhere else in town over the course of the story. The setting is Argentina during the 1930s, and the viewer can assume that disability awareness is fairly minimal at the time. Without having seen Charlotte’s deaf counterpart, the audience still knows that her story has contained similar struggles for ‘normalcy’ and acceptance. Near the conclusion of the film, there is one more glimpse of Reanalde, when she catches the bridal bouquet at Charlotte’s wedding. While having been privy to Charlotte’s experiences all along, we can only conjecture as to what Reanalde’s life has been. Sign Language as ‘Hero’ The power of language, and one’s calculated use of language as a means of escape from a potentially deadly situation, is shown in The River Wild (1996). The reason that any of the hearing characters knows sign language is that Gail, the protagonist, has a deaf father. Victor appears primarily to allow the audience to see his daughter and grandson sign with him. The mother, father, and son are able to communicate surreptitiously and get themselves out of a dangerous predicament. Signing takes an iconic form when the signs BOAT, LEFT, I-LOVE-YOU are drawn on a log suspended over the river as a message to Gail so that she knows where to steer the boat, and that her husband is still alive. The unique nature of sign language saves the day– silently and subtly produced, right under the bad guys’ noses! Stories about Deaf/Hearing Relationships Because of increased awareness and acceptance of deafness, it may be tempting to assume that growing up deaf or having any kind of relationship with a deaf individual may not pose too much of a challenge. Captioning and subtitling are ubiquitous in the USA now, as is the inclusion of interpreters on stages at public events. Since the inception of USA Public Law 94-142 and section 504 in 1974, more deaf children are ‘mainstreamed’ into public schools than ever before. The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1993, opening the doors in the US for more access, more job opportunities, more inclusion. These are the external manifestations of acceptance that most viewers with no personal exposure to deafness may see in the public domain. The nuts and bolts of growing up deaf, navigating through opposing philosophical theories regarding deaf education, and dealing with parents, siblings, and peers who can’t communicate, all serve to form foundational experiences which an audience rarely witnesses. Children of a Lesser God (1986), uses the character of James Leeds to provide simultaneous voiced translations of the deaf student Sarah’s comments. The audience is ushered into the world of disparate philosophies of deaf education, a controversy of which general audiences may not have been previously unaware. At the core of James and Sarah’s struggle is his inability to accept that she is complete as she is, as a signing not speaking deaf person. Whether a full reconciliation is possible remains to be seen. The esteemed teacher of the deaf must allow himself to be taught by the deaf. Other films in this category include: Johnny Belinda (1949, 1982)Mr. Holland’s OpusBeyond SilenceThe Good ShepherdCompensation A Normal Guy-or-Gal-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Deaf The greatest measure of equality is to be accepted on one's own merits, with no special attention to differences or deviations from whatever is deemed ‘the norm.’ In this category, the audience sees the seemingly incidental inclusion of a deaf or hearing-impaired person in the casting. A sleeper movie titled Crazy Moon (1986) is an effective example. Brooks is a shy, eccentric young hearing man who needs who needs to change his life. Vanessa is deaf and works as a clerk in a shop while takes speech lessons. She possesses a joie de vivre that Brooks admires and wishes to emulate. When comparing the way they interact with the world, it is apparent that Brooks is the one who is handicapped. Other films in this category include: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (South Korea, 1992)Liar, LiarRequiem for a DreamKung Fu HustleBangkok DangerousThe Family StoneDeafness as a Psychosomatic Response to Trauma Literature about psychosomatic illnesses enumerates many disconcerting and disruptive physiological responses. However, rarely is there a PTSD response as profound as complete blockage of one of the five senses, ie; becoming deaf as a result of a traumatic incident. But it makes great copy, and provides a convenient explanation as to why an actor needn't learn sign language! The rock group The Who recorded Tommy in 1968, inaugurating an exciting and groundbreaking new musical genre – the rock opera. The film adaptation, directed by Ken Russell, was released in 1975. In an ironic twist for a rock extravaganza, the hero of the story is a ‘deaf, dumb, and blind kid.’ Tommy Johnson becomes deaf when he witnesses the murder of his father at the hands of his step-father and complicit mother. From that moment on, he is deaf and blind. When he grows up, he establishes a cult religion of inner vision and self-discovery. Another film in this category is Psych Out. Deafness as a Metaphor Hearing loss does not necessarily mean complete deafness and/or lack of vocalization. Yet, the general public tends to assume that there is utter silence, complete muteness, and the inability to verbalize anything at all. These assumptions provide a rich breeding ground for a deaf character to personify isolation, disenfranchisement, and/or avoidance of the harsher side of life. The deafness of a character can also serve as a hearing character’s nemesis. Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995) chronicles much of the adult life of a beleaguered man named Glenn Holland whose fondest dream is to compose a grand piece of orchestral music. To make ends meet he must teach band and orchestra to apparently disinterested and often untalented students in a public school. His golden son (named Cole, in honor of the jazz great John Coltrane) is discovered to be deaf. Glenn’s music can’t be born, and now his son is born without music. He will never be able to share his passion with his child. He learns just a little bit of sign, is dismissive of the boy’s dreams, and drifts further away from his family to settle into a puddle of bitterness, regrets, and unfulfilled desires. John Lennon’s death provides the catalyst for Cole’s confrontation with Glenn, forcing the father to understand that the gulf between them is an artificial one, perpetuated by the unwillingness to try. Any other disability could not have had the same effect in this story. Other films in this category include: Ramblin’ RoseBabelThe Heart Is a Lonely HunterA Code Unkown Deafness as a Symbolic Commentary on Society Sometimes films show deafness in a different country, during another era, and audiences receive a fictionalized representation of what life might have been like before these more enlightened times. The inability to hear and/or speak can also represent the more generalized powerlessness that a culture or a society’s disenfranchised experience. The Chinese masterpiece To Live (1994) provides historical and political reasons for Fenxi’s deafness—her father was a political prisoner whose prolonged absence brought hardship and untended illness. Later, the chaotic political situation which resulted in a lack of qualified doctors led to her death. In between these scenes the audience sees how her parents arrange a marriage with another ‘handicapped’ comrade of the town. Those citizens deemed to be crippled or outcast have different overt rights and treatment. The 1996 film Illtown presents the character of a very young teenage boy to represent the powerlessness of youth in America. David has absolutely no say in where he can live, with whom he can live, and the decisions made all around him. When he is apprehended after a stolen car chase, his frustration at his and all of his generation’s predicament in the face of a crumbling world is pounded out on the steering wheel as the police cars circle him. He is caged, and without the ability to communicate. Were he to have a voice, the overall sense of the film and his situation is that he would be misunderstood anyway. Other films in this category include: Stille Liebe (Germany)RidiculeIn the Company of Men Let Your Fingers Do the ‘Talking’ I use this heading to describe films where sign language is used by a deaf character to express something that a main hearing character can’t (or won’t) self-generate. It is a clever device which employs a silent language to create a communication symbiosis: Someone asks a hearing person who knows sign what that deaf person just said, and the hearing person must voice what he or she truly feels, and yet is unable to express voluntarily. The deaf person is capable of expressing the feeling, but must rely upon the hearing person to disseminate the message. And so, the words do emanate from the mouth of the person who means them, albeit self-consciously, unwillingly. Jerry Maguire (1996) provides a signed foreshadowing of character metamorphosis and development, which is then voiced for the hearing audience. Jerry and Dorothy have just met, resigned from their jobs in solidarity and rebellion, and then step into an elevator to begin a new phase of their lives. Their body language identifies them as separate, disconnected, and heavily emotionally fortified. An amorous deaf couple enters the elevator and Dorothy translates the deaf man’s signs as, ‘You complete me.’ The sentiment is strong and a glaring contrast to Jerry and Dorothy’s present dynamic. In the end, Jerry repeats this exact phrase to her, and means it with all his heart. We are all made aware of just how far they have traveled emotionally. They have become the couple in the elevator. Other films in this category include: Four Weddings and a FuneralKnowing Conclusion This has been a cursory glance at examining the narrative raison d’etre for the presence of a deaf character in story lines where no discussion of deafness is articulated. A film’s plot may necessitate hearing-impairment or deafness to successfully execute certain gimmickry, provide a sense of danger, or relational tension. The underlying themes and motifs may revolve around loneliness, alienation, or outwardly imposed solitude. The character may have a subconscious desire to literally shut out the world of sound. The properties of sign language itself can be exploited for subtle, undetectable conversations to assure the safety of hearing characters. Deaf people have lived during all times, in all places, and historical films can portray a slice of what their lives may have been like. I hope readers will become more aware of deaf characters on the screen, and formulate more theories as to where they fit in the literary/narrative schema. ReferencesMaltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin’s 2009 Movie Guide. Penguin Group, 2008.Shuchman, John S. Hollywood Speaks. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Filmography Babel. Dir. 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