PERSPECTIVES IN ANALYSING LITERARY CHARACTERS WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENT
Marina binti Mahmood Matric No: 4172225
Faculty of Major Language Studies Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia
Jayalakshmi a/p Muthusamy Matric No: 4172226
Faculty of Major Language Studies Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia
Introduction
Literary discourses which discuss characters with visual impairment have mainly touched on the myth and negative stereotypical perception of the society on blind individuals. By focusing on characters who are visually impaired, various perspectives utilised by literary scholars would be scoured to learn how these perspectives can help diffuse society negative views by describing them as incompetent and burdensome.
Three novels have been selected to analyse whether justice has been prevalent in the society’s treatment towards literary characters with visual impairment. These perceptions are applied on visually impaired characters comprising of Marie-Laure in All the Light We Cannot See (2014), Homer in Homer and Langley (2009) and finally the Blind Doctor in Blindness (1997) . By using the perspectives, they provide us with a better understanding on how socialization, society and location bring about a variation of conceptualisation of how these characters decipher their spaces.
Characters with physical disabilities like visual or hearing impairment have been discussed by scholars through analysis in English language fiction. Discussions on these fictional characters often revolve around their vulnerabilities or shortcomings in carrying out normal every day tasks that we may have have overlooked. However successful they are in making up for their
shortcomings, society will still undermine them as incapable, incompetent or ineffective as they have difficulties in accomplishing tasks that normal people can do easily.
Thus, by using fiction as a tool to portray individuals with visual impairment, we can explicate that these individuals possess strengths, intelligence and special abilities just like the others. So, the aim of the paper is to analyse the perspectives utilised by scholars to highlight these visually impaired fictional characters’ positive attributes rather than portraying these unfortunate individuals as wretched, useless and voiceless.
There are a few approaches engaged by researchers in analysing characters with visual
impairment. Based on the preliminary findings, the perspectives utilised by the scholars can be divided into five parts; a.Blindness perceived as Metaphor , b.Using other Senses in Understanding Blindness c. Disability Study in Blindness. d. Intertextuality in understanding Blindness and e.
Spatial Triad in Blindness
Blindness Perceived as Metaphor and Allegory
The most obvious example of a method analysing visual impairment is in the form of a metaphor.
Blindness is seen as a metaphor because physical blindness may mean that an individual is unable to see objects as his sights have been compromised. Blindness then becomes a metaphor when physical blindness is compared to a situation in the fiction that reflects a condition which is similar to physical blindness. Blindness is a metaphor reflecting chaos in this excerpt.
“Up and down the lanes, the last unevacuated townspeople wake, groan, sigh. Spinsters, prostitutes, men over sixty. Procastinators, collaborators, disbelievers, drunks. Nuns of every order. The poor, the stubborn, the blind.”
(Doerr, 2004, pp-10)
According to Dorfman (2016), in folklores, blindness is not only a symbol of idiocy and incapacity but it also acts as punishment for inappropriate behaviour connected to adultery or promiscuous behaviour among women. In another illustration, blindness as a metaphor comes from Jose Saramago’s Blindness (1995) which portrays a society crippled by a virus that cause blindness to be contagious. The dystopian novel revolves around the first batch of citizens who become blind and they are quarantined in an abandoned asylum.
Using Other Senses in Understanding Blindness
Characters with visual impairment have often been described as having accentuated their other senses like smell, touch, hearing and taste. H. G Wells for example has described the
phenomenon in “The Country of the Blind” by saying that these characters have the ability to recognise a person through their acute sense of smell (Bolt, 2006) . The same use of the sense of smell is profound in Saramago’s Blindness when the patients stricken with white blindness are
“twitching, tense, their necks craned as if they were sniffing at something” (Saramago, 1995, pp-40) By defining their surroundings using other senses, like the sense of smell and the sense of hearing, it is invaluable to note that the authors are able to assist the visual impaired literary characters to help the readers understand the world from the perspective of a blind character. In essence, these visual impaired characters are strong and hardworking as they are potential of engaging their other senses to achieve their everyday goals.
Disability Study in Blindness
Studies on disability have garnered followers since it emerges out of disability civil right movements in the late 20th century. This involves physical and mental impairments in individuals (Mullaney , 2019). Shalk indicated that disability studies involves scrutinizing not bodily or mental impairments but the social norms that define particular attributes as impairments, as well as the social conditions that concentrate stigmatized attributes in particular populations. (2017).
An example of disability study perceived in Doctorow’s, Homer and Langley (2009) the community perceives the brothers, Langley as going crazy and Homer is an individual with a visual impairment.
Langley’ s “ Theory of Replacements, which he had by now developed into a metaphysical sort of idea of the repetition or recurrence of life events, the same things happening over and over, especially given the proscribed limits of human intelligence” (pp, 48 ) is truly insane whereby he bought newspapers of many publications and store piles over piles of them in the living room of
their house. Sadly later, the society considered the two brothers outcasts and connected their plight as someone who was stricken by both poverty and insanity.
Intertextuality in Understanding Blindness.
One way of analysing visually impaired literary characters is by using intertextuality. Kristeva (1986) postulates that “ A writer can only participate in history is by transgressing this abstraction through reading-writing. That is; through the practice of signifying structure in relation or opposite to another structure.” (pp-36) Thus, in the context of intertextuality, the term means the text construct its meaning by using another text. The similarity between the two texts will reflect and influence the reader’s understanding of the text.
In a study done by Gomes (2017), he cited an example from Saramago’s Blindness (1995). The characters in the novel who were infected by blindness were compared to a 1568 painting by a Dutch painter, Pieter Bruegel. Bruegel’s subjects in the painting are blind people too. “Saramago brings the condition of blind characters in his novel and the blind people in Bruegel’s painting with the utterance ; otherwise they would meet the same fate as the blind people in the painting, walking together, falling together and dying together (1995, pp ; 117-118)
Based on these illustrations of intertextuality, we are able to view visual impairment in a different perspective. Authors are able to inject passion and vigour in blind literary characters so that readers will not always associate blindness with misery and pitiful lives.
Spatial Triad in Blindness
This analysis will be based on Lefebvre concept of space that elaborates the tripartite model of space, or commonly known as Spatial Triad. First space refers to the abstract process of social production, reproduction, cohesion and structuralism. While Second Space functions as the mediator between First Space and Third Space by mediating three levels together into a coherent ensemble or in short a work place for the characters. While The Third Space houses the
embodiment of individual’s cultural experience (LeFebvre , 1974).
Let us take a look at how Spatial Triad is operationalised or illustrated in the fictions. Since these characters are visually-impaired, our way of clarifying thoughts and ideas using Spatial Triad as the first space is associated with the process of producing ideas, imagination and plan. Second space for these visually impaired characters represent what they perceive the space to be. Then the third space is how they live in the space and how they interact with the space they lived in. Finally, once the characters have interacted with these three spaces, the analysis of whether this particular space will come in; to determine whether or not this space project or hinder the triumphs or disasters that befall these characters. The following example is an extract from Homer & Langley (Doctorow, 2009)
“I enlisted one of the junior clerks at the family bank to do the bookkeeping ……. It was a good walk, I used a stick but really didn’t need it having made a practice as soon as I knew my eyes were fading of surveying and storing in my memory ….. I knew the length of the blocks by the
number of steps it takes from curb to curb. I was a vigorous walker and gauged the progress of our times by the changing sounds and smells of the street. ……..”
(Doctorow, 2009, p.p - 20)
“I” refers to Homer, the visually-impaired character who is walking to the family bank. Homer had successfully walked to the bank on his own without the need to use the walking stick simply
because he depends on Le Febvre first space; his memory. While he still has his fading vision, he tries storing as much information as possible in his memory, (storing in my memory) so he can somewhat walk without an aid to the prescribed area. The second space refers to Homer’s journey to the bank which he does it with much ease (I knew the length of the blocks by the number of steps it takes from curb to curb) indicates the “conceived space” that Homer is familiar with before he loses his vision. Readers can sense Homer’s confidence as the second space or the journey itself does not change and the path is still in tact and he walks vigorously; suggesting confidence and urgency.
The third space then is represented by how space is used in the fiction. From the illustration above, the space that charts the path from Homer’s house to Fifth Avenue has significantly demonstrated that the space brings triumph to Homer. By using these concept, confidence and independence can be further enhanced by using his other senses; smell,touch and hearing.
CONCLUSION
After examining five different perspectives on analysing visually impaired characters; we are able to concur that visual impairment both in literary characters and real life individuals with problems with their visions are literally capable to carry out their daily lives as efficient as any other human beings. According to Vuletic, Sarlija and Benjak (2016) they emphasize that “numerous studies reported that persons with disabilities may have a much more positive self-image than healthy persons surrounding them. Negative predispositions, perception and contradictory behaviour towards persons with disabilities are associated with the general population’s prejudice.”
In essence, society and caregivers should be able to provide constant care and encouragement for these brave individuals to lead a normal life. Society must accept individuals with disabilities with open arms so that they can strive for excellence in life.
REFERENCES
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Doctorow, E.L . (2009). Homer & Langley. Random House : New York.
Doerr, A. (2015). All the Light We Cannot See. Harper Collins : London
Gomes, M.A.M.(2021) An Essay About Dialogue: Intertextual Relations Between Jose Saramago, Pieter Bruegel and Van Gogh. Bakhtinia. Sao Paolo. 43-59.
Kristiva, J. 1986. The Kristeva Reader. Columbia University Press. New York.
Lefebvre, H. 1974. The Production of Space. New Jersey: Blackwell.
Mullaney, C. (2019). Disability Studies: Foundation and Key Concepts https://daily.jstor.org/reading-list-disability-studies/ .
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