Throughout history our society, the "able-bodied society- looked down at crippled people as being only part human or "the other- because of their imperfections that most of us can't cope with, such as them being not able to walk. In "Pity and Fear- Leslie Fiedler tries to argue about many ideas as to why we act this way around the disabled. Some of Fiedler's ideas were too hard to agree with such as " deep in the undermind of all of us there persists a desire to murder the disabled, even when they are infants,"" because I don't have a desire to kill the disabled and I'm pretty sure many people don't either. But the idea that did grab my attention was when Leslie Fiedler said "literature lets us accept our failure to realize our ideals without betraying us into bland self-deceit or blind self-esteem-. This says that literature harbors every able-bodied persons hidden desires and fears of becoming disabled, and making us aware of our temporary state. Even though in the Cripple of the Inishman by Martin Mcdonagh and " The Incomplete Quad- by David Sedaris, the authors write about different ideas about the disabled and how they are treated, they both seem to be aware of the ideas that Fiedler writes about in his essay about how the crippled are perceived and thought of in the world today.
One thing that Fiedler points out is that " What we experience as we flinch from their suppurating stumps "and if we do not realize this, literature reminds us - is not a rational fear of infection, but an irrational horror cued by their trauma and difference, the travesty of the divine image, which our religious tradition tells us is represented by the "normal- human body."" (pg41) What Fiedler is trying to say is that we don't accept the disabled because we don't like to feel different, and the divine image (a belief that a person without disabilities can only be perfect), of what we assume to be the perfection gets ruined because we fear of becoming like them.
