preview

A Man Without Words Essay

Decent Essays

Cholaki, Cassandra
ENGL 98R
11/29/12
A Man Without Words
In her book, “A Man Without Words,” Susan Schaller describes how the eighteenth century French philosophers continually exercised speculation as to how much of human nature was "given" and native, and how much was dependent on language and culture. She encountered Ildefonso, a Mexican Indian who lived in the most unique form of isolation, who was born deaf, and had never been taught even the most basic language. She set herself the challenge to make contact with this man, and introduce him to language. Ildefonso not only lacked any language but lacked any idea of language: he had no conception, at first, of what Schaller was trying to do, yet Ildefonso had a yearning to …show more content…

Furthermore, a personal experience I encountered was when I took a high school class with a girl who was also deaf. Even though she was not exactly like Ildefonso, she opened my eyes to a different world that many people do not understand and do not care to understand. On another note, some of the reading voices I had influenced the way I read at times. For example, sometimes I would read a particular line, such as “I thought Charlie—the retarded man in Flowers for Algernon, and the experiment to make him intelligent (p.58),” and refer back to the time when I read that book and start thinking about how cool it was that Susan mentioned this. Then I would create an elaborative thought of what other things Susan and I may have in common with other related or non-related experiences. Additionally, when I read, “By now he should have learned enough language to answer some of my old and new questions in detail(p.142),” I had suddenly thought of the time back when I was in kindergarten writing out my ABC’s. Throughout the whole paragraph of “reading,” I was just in one deep thought about what it would be like not being able to match words with thoughts. These examples were both illustrations of distracting voices.
In comparison of reading this novel and the

Get Access