Come Inside my Silence and Know me The Emotional Disintegration of the Deaf Female Character in Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God

Abstract

Deafness has been considered an exceptional condition and people who have this individuality are recognized all over the world as weak, fragile, deformed, and in great need for help from other “fit “people. The problem of integrating deaf people in their societies has been risen since the 19th century. There appeared two camps; one which advocated for teaching the deaf individuals the skills that enable them to blend in the world of “hearing people “while the other camp, the manualists, called for teaching and learning sign language as a means of communication. Amid all the conflicts between those two camps appeared literary works that dealt with this issue. In Children of a Lesser God which was written 1980 by the American playwright Mark Medoff, there is a manifestation of this conflict presented by the dramatist through the characters of his play and through a love relationship between a hearing man and a deaf woman. The play depicts the suffering of a deaf woman in a hearing society and the abuse she gets from people who are unable to appreciate her uniqueness as a human being. She faces a hostile attitude starting from her parents, society, and eventually from the man she love. The current work aims at exploring the leading female character in the play and how her deafness has added to the restrictions she experiences as a woman