“Often the Deaf community levied their anger at implants, though in truth language deprivation had been prescribed by professionals long before that technology existed. For February, the appeal of implants was clear, but the false binary they created was the real danger.”
The narrative handles the debate on cochlear implants and the perception of deafness in both the deaf and hearing communities. The controversial idea behind the assistive technology has been to introduce deaf children into the hearing world rather than teaching sign language. In the quote, the narrator affirms that the agenda against the implants by the deaf communities is misplaced. February is an advocate of both since it is added advantage for students who have implants and learn sign language. The real enemy is linguistic deprivation by professionals and parents which has been a problem in the deaf community.
“Nine out of ten deaf kids had hearing parents, and those parents held Deaf fate in their hands—the fate of their own children, of course, and the future of the Deaf community at large. Problem being, most parents understood deafness only as explained to them by medical professionals: as a treachery of their genes, something to be drilled out.”
With the many controversies about how the hearing and deaf communities interact, most of the power lies in the hands of parents. They choose the direction their child will take from a young age which affects their coping skills in the future. In fact, through the guidance of doctors and professionals the parent’s decision can be swayed either way. As such hearing parents of deaf children can make choices that hurt the ability of the child to understand language. They can end up viewing deafness as a defect to be corrected rather than a way of life to teach to their deaf children.
“Being motherless was different than being fatherless. It was primal, the archetype for human suffering, like losing the North Star.”
One of the minor conflicts in the narrative is February dealing with the loss of her mother after succumbing to dementia. She becomes an orphan since she lost her father a while back too but she has never known grief like this before. The narrative is also about grief especially mourning the death of a mother which takes a toll on the child or children. A mother offers a sense of safety and direction because of their crucial role in the growth of their child from birth. Thus, the quote alludes to this sense of loss that February harbors akin to the children who have lost mothers.
