From: Marianne.Spengler@f24.n3602.z1.fidonet.org (Marianne Spengler)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: The Tale Of The Farmers
Date: 7 Oct 92 16:45:42 GMT
Reply-To: Marianne.Spengler@f24.n3602.z1.fidonet.org
Organization: FidoNet node 1:3602/24 - ADAnet One (tm) Net, Pinson AL
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Originator: wtm@sheldev.shel.isc-br.com

Index Number: 24763

[This is from the AbleNews Conference]

I began a reading of THE TALE OF THE FARMERS a few days ago that
I'd like to continue today in brief.  (I'll try to do a full
critique of the allegory later).

First, let me state clearly (rather than imply) the argument of my
reading: The narrator of THE TALE OF THE FARMERS reveals a deep am-
bivalence towards the disabled.

Now, let me restate my earlier evidence.  The narrator's slips of the
tongue in naming and renaming the tale's characters speak of his/her
deep ambivalence.   Thus, the narrator's confusions undercut the
tale's moral, the moral itself but another example of ambivalence.
I'll explicate that point here.

Reexamine for a moment the story's moral: changing our attitude towards
the disabled is better than coping with the disabled.

Since definition is the tale's organizing principle, the narrator forces
us as readers to ask what it means to change and to cope.  The narrator
argues that change is positive, ". . . a natural and healthy way of
learning and growing and reaching maturity."  Coping, on the other hand,
is the lesser good since it ". . . presupposes some negativity with which
one must come to grips."

Now who of us would not want be on the side of the angels when the story's
argument is explicated in those terms?  But let us be wary readers so that
we do not mistake dross for gold.

Having introduced the underside of the word 'cope,' the narrator closes
us off from the underbelly of the word 'change' because s/he is silent on
that point.  The narrator would have us believe that s/he defines
'change' to mean accepting the disabled individual for who or what the
individual is, admonishing us to look beyond what the disabled individual
can or cannot do for the family.

But change need not mean acceptance.  It can mean flight or escape, a
meaning implicit in the narrator's move from the drear of the farm's
landscape to the high ground of the allegory's framing moral.

So which meaning is the narrator's real meaning?  Accepting the disabled?
Flying from them?  We as readers do not know: we can only identify the
ambivalence in the narrator.

Now let us hear again what it means to cope, but let us do so without the
narrator's godlike guidance.  My WEBSTER'S defines the word as "to fight
or contend [with] successfully."  The narrator is right to have us see the
negative elements of the word 'cope' since fighting and contending are
fraught with tears, and pain, and, yes, agony.  But s/he is silent (again)
about the word's positive elements: to fight successfully . . . to stay
the course.

So what would I have you do . . . change?  . . . cope?  I would have you
NOT seduced by me or by the narrator.

Sanctimonious prattle, whoever's it is, cannot answer the dilemmas we face
in the real world, although it always answers problems within the confines
of the storyteller's narrative.

 # Origin: I CAN! BBS * Chicago, IL * ADAnet(tm) Regional Hub (94:107/1)

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