[NFBWATLK] Portrayal of Blindness in All the Light We Cannot See

[Arielle Silverman]

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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