ENGL 4310

I noticed that in class and in some of the blogs the actual handicap that He has appears to be an uncomfortable subject that people seem to shy away from. As I was reading, however, that seemed to be the subject that I naturally gravitated towards. It's almost as if, regardless of what kind of handicap a person has, it is irrelevant to the fact that they are indeed handicapped and therefore Othered to all the "normal" people. Why is it that we shy away from everything that is outside of the norm? One example of this is when Mrs. Whipple's brother and his family come for dinner; I felt like there was an all-encompassing kind of tension that surrounded both families. They all seemed to be talking around the elephant in the room because it obviously made them uncomfortable. Mrs. Whipple begins to make excuses for His absence by saying "He's timider than my other two" (53) and goes on to justify Him and herself to her family. Her brother's wife, though, gives me the impression that she would just rather avoid the awkward subject altogether. Rather than commenting about Him, she turns the conversation to her "Alfy." Also, the second time He is brought up, Mrs. Whipple's brother simply states "That's fine, He's getting along fine" (53) which abruptly ends any conversation that may have started with Him as the focal point.

I feel like it is important to discuss what kind of handicap this child may have because different handicaps have very different consequences. I had the feeling that He may have been autistic. My sister works with autistic adults, and said that they all had widely varying degrees of severity. If this is the case with Him, I would say he is highly functional and actually pretty intelligent. He responds to his mother's demands and can accomplish things the other two children either won't or can't do. His major setbacks are the fact that he can't talk and seems to be physically different than other children his age. The thing that really bugged me while I was reading this was when they took his blanket and Mrs. Whipple said "He never seemed to mind the cold" (50). I was talking to my sister, and she said that many autistic people have very keen senses and they often reach out for physical contact. This would mean that, if He is autistic, he would likely be more sensitive to the cold than his siblings, but because He can't talk, they either assume He doesn't mind, or perhaps they just know He can't object. It would be interesting to explore the implications of other disabilities and how they would change our perceptions of this reading.