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Christopher Jon Heuer

Sign Language Studies, Volume 7, Number 2, Winter 2007, pp. 195-199(Article)

P bl h d b ll d t n v r t PrDOI: 10.1353/sls.2007.0004

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C H R I S T O P H E R J O N H E U E R

Deafness as Conflict andConflict Component

Writers of D/deaf autobiographies or biographiesface something of a dilemma when incorporating deafness into thestories they tell. This includes writers of D/deaf fiction because manysuch works are based on the same personal experiences from whichautobiographies and biographies are derived. At heart, autobiogra-phies and biographies are merely stories, and stories cannot existwithout some type of conflict. The tension might be complex orsimple: a crisis of identity or a fight to keep a residential school open.It might be found in a decision to move from one state to another orin a collapsing marriage.

Because D/deaf autobiographies and biographies are in somesense about deafness and because no autobiography or biography canever be complete unless it captures the discord inherent in the sub-ject’s life, several questions arise: What is the fundamental relation-ship between deafness and conflict? As we approach the task ofrelating and reliving the tensions of a D/deaf life through the craft ofstorytelling, does deafness become the central conflict, or does deafnessinstead become merely one component of it? Or does it perhaps be-come some mixture of the two?

One of my own autobiographical fiction projects involves the lifestory of Daniel Tallerman, a hard-of-hearing teenager struggling tosurvive the abuses of a violent alcoholic father, as well as those ofboth the hearing and the Deaf communities.1 The mistreatment heendures, along with the identity conflicts he experiences from being

Christopher Jon Heuer is Professor in the Department of Applied Literacy atGallaudet University and the author of All Your Parts Intact: Poems.

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repeatedly placed in and pulled out of mainstream schools and deafinstitutions, slowly brings on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Daniel Tallerman’s experiences are at least somewhat autobio-graphical in the sense that they happened to me, but they are alsofictional in the sense that events that happened far apart were movedcloser together for the sake of drama. In addition, Daniel’s characterand encounters are molded from and completed by the real-life expe-riences of my siblings and friends. For example, in the short story‘‘On the Bottom,’’ Daniel has an older brother named Wayne, whohas a cognitive disability. My own older brother, Steven, also has acognitive disability. As another example, the short story ‘‘Listeningfor the Same Thing’’ largely revolves around Daniel’s relationshipwith his girlfriend, Jenny. The character of Jenny is based upon anactual person whom I dated in my early teens.

I mention these facts only to illustrate that autobiography andbiography are capable of working their way into fiction, and viceversa. The question of how deafness relates to conflict is one thatstretches across genres, and its implications are at once fundamentaland unavoidable. Neither autobiography nor biography nor fictioncan survive without discord. Without it, we are left with boredom.Without it, what we have is the lack of a point, a theme, and a plot.Human beings, whether deaf or hearing, are motivated to do thethings they do. Through an analysis of motivation, we come to anunderstanding of character (in autobiography, biography, and fic-tion). By examining how the motivations of one character interferewith those of another, or how competing motivations collide, wecome to an understanding of conflict.

Conflict is not just a clash between people, as would immediatelyappear to be the case in Daniel’s life. His father not only is an alco-holic who alternately abuses Daniel and neglects him but also makesfumbling, dismal attempts to be a father. His mother exists in a stateof perpetual denial. He is buffeted between the worlds of Deaf peopleand hearing people, anxious to escape the torment of his home lifeat the residential institution he attends. Yet his deaf schoolmates con-stantly pick fights with him because he cannot sign. He frequentlymisses Jenny while he is away at school, but when he visits her onweekends, hearing teenagers mock him and antagonize him becausehe is deaf.

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If these are examples of conflicts between people, they are alsoexamples of conflicts within people. Why is Daniel’s father an alco-holic? We don’t know, but we are given hints (the loss of the familyfarm to debt, for example). What forces within deaf and hearing peo-ple alike cause them to savagely attack others who are not like them?We are not told directly and can only guess. Which world will Danieleventually choose to reside in—the hearing world or the Deaf one?We do not know and are left to wonder whether his mind will sur-vive the ordeal of making such a decision.

That being said, how is a writer of D/deaf autobiography, biogra-phy, or fiction to portray deafness? Is deafness itself—as an issue ofidentity and of relating to the world, as well as an abstract concept—the central conflict? If so, the creation of a scene in which deafness isthe conflict may require a different approach from the creation of ascene where deafness is a component of some greater discord.

As an example, let us consider the following scene from the shortstory ‘‘On the Bottom,’’ portraying one part of Daniel Tallerman’slife:

I run after Wayne—he’s twenty yards ahead. I can see his openscreaming mouth.

Ten yards.I tackle him and smother the flames with my body. Brief warmth

against my sweater, and then it’s out. Wayne is crying.Telling on you! he wails, pointing. Telling Dad on you! He’s sitting

on the ground, and I shush him, trying to quiet him down. Only hiscoat is burned, not him. But he won’t quiet down, and then he’s upagain, running toward the house.

I hate him because he doesn’t understand anything. I hate himbecause I’m a retard to the hearing kids and beneath everybody. Ihave a retard older brother, and he should be beneath me. ButWayne doesn’t go to my school. I’m alone. (Heuer 2003, 45)

The scene epitomizes Daniel’s misdirected hatred of (and con-versely his very deep love for) his older brother, who has a cognitivedisability. Alongside this we see something of a social statement. Thetitle ‘‘On the Bottom’ is in fact a dark allusion to a social hierarchyDaniel perceives all around him: one in which hearing people are atthe top, deaf people are one level down, and those with multipledisabilities (such as cognitive disabilities) are one level further down.Daniel, who is a hard-of-hearing and formerly mainstreamed student,

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cannot reconcile the fact that, in a deaf residential institution, he isexperiencing more abuse than he ever did in his previous mainstreamschool. Because he is hard of hearing and not fully deaf, he thinks heshould be closer to the top of the hierarchy than the bottom, but inthe residential institution, his ‘‘hearing’’ identity is precisely whatcauses others to ostracize him.

It can be argued that the central tension in the preceding scene isdeafness or, more precisely, Daniel’s struggle to find his place withinit. However, in the scene that immediately follows, deafness is not thecentral conflict:

A rock is somehow in my hand. I hurl it after him—it hits himsquare on the back of his head and down he goes. I can see the bloodgushing out of his head from where I am, but I can’t move.

His leg stirs, then his arm, coming around to the gash in his head.Pushing at the wound, trying to stop the blood.

Wayne Wayne Wayne comes flooding out of my mouth so fast Ican’t breathe, and I’m stripping off my shirt and pressing it to hishead, and it’s instantly full of blood.

Oh my God, I whisper. Oh my God. . . . . . my God. But I don’tknow what I want God to do. I run to get our neighbors so theycan call my father. (ibid., 46)

The central tension in this scene is more related to abuse and itseffects. Violence begets violence, but Daniel knows of no other wayto release his emotions. Deafness, at least for the immediate moment,fades to the distant background. As a writer, I tried to make thisevident by having Daniel primarily caught up in tending the woundshe has just inflicted on his brother. As readers we barely question thelast sentence—why must Daniel run to get his neighbors to make thecall? The obvious answer is that Daniel cannot do it himself. He isdeaf, and his family has no TDD. Instead, his fear and dread of hisfather rise to the forefront—the call will no doubt result in physicalconsequences, and Daniel does not know how to handle that, either.

The themes in the stories of Daniel Tallerman are plural, at timesinterwoven and at other times distinct. Deafness as a social identity isone such theme. Coping with a parent’s alcoholism is another. Vio-lence as a way of life is yet another. All of these themes, at one pointor another throughout the course of these two stories, become the

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central conflict itself, as well as components of the discord. Some-times they become both. These elements influence and shape eachother. The intent is to leave the reader with the understanding thatthe experience of deafness is so unique for each individual and ismolded to such an extent by all the other forces operating in a per-son’s life that, if one were to remove these other forces and compo-nents, the experience of deafness alone would be that of a vacuum.

Thus, as writers we must decide what we are trying to do with aparticular scene. Are we attempting to make social commentary ondeafness? If so, does deafness itself serve as the central conflict of thatscene? Or are we trying to show the relationship (however weak orstrong at a given time) between deafness and some other conflict-component or issue (such as abuse or alcoholism)? If so, must deafnesstake a temporary step to the back of the stage in order to allow theseother elements to emerge more fully into the spotlight?

Whatever our answers, we find ourselves walking a fine line. Arethe subjects of our autobiography or the characters in our fictionliving in a world where people are made up of Deafness or in onewhere Deafness is made up of people? The central conflict in thestories we tell will never be more important than the individual com-ponents of those tensions. Both are equally complex. If we take careto fully develop both, chances are the result will be a more honeststory, one that we were (perhaps subconsciously) too ashamed andfrightened to tell when we first started writing it. But these are ex-actly the types of stories that we must write because ultimately it isonly our honesty that has any hope of ensuring that our stories donot repeat themselves.

Notes

1. Daniel Tallerman’s story begins with the short story ‘‘Listening forthe Same Thing,’’ published in the Deaf Way II Anthology: A Literary Collec-tion by Deaf and Hard of Hearing Writers, ed. T. M. Stremlau (Washington,D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2002). It continues with the short stories‘‘On the Bottom’’ and ‘‘Trauma,’’ published by the Tactile Mind Press.

References

Heuer, C. 2003. On the Bottom. Tactile Mind Quarterly 7: 32–49.

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