Crippled
Mair uses these rhetorical devices in order to express her purpose of informing the reader about how life is like as a “cripple”. She wants to provide insight on exactly how what it means to have multiple sclerosis. “These words seem to me to be moving away from my condition…the gap between word and reality.”(LL. 26-28). Here Mair is telling the reader that the appearance that her condition has left her in, allows people to generalize and label her as “underdeveloped” (L. 32). Just because she may not be physically normal to the average person, she wants the reader to realize that her disease, does not affect her ability to think. Referencing “Harrison Bergeron” by Vonnegut, she believes that her God is not a “Handicapper General” (L. 25), and that he wouldn’t but her in a disadvantage. Her views on being labeled, however, change during the course of the essay.
Crippled
Today as I trot through the forests of my homelands, I feel free knowing that my life is free from torture. For me, there will be no new products tested on my body or any body of any organism. My life is safe now from all manufacturers and scientists. My life is no longer open for testing. Although this may be true for my generation and me in the year 2050, it unfortunately was not for my ancestors.