Erin Smith
ENGL 384: Section 1
Dr. Foss
28 April 2020
Misfit: Autism and Nature Imagery
It seems very fitting that I read a story about an autistic child’s interaction with a parent right after rereading the poem Misfit for this assignment. The man was recalling a time he went to Disneyland when he was young, and he came across two other kids who were interested in his Stitch plush that he was carrying around. Happy to meet people who like the same character he does, he begins to stim by flapping his arms. The very ableist mother of the two children found the behavior abnormal and didn’t want her kids to interact with him, but the other two children were perfectly fine with it. In ‘Misfit’ by Tito Mukhopadhyay it is adults like that mother that label the speaker a misfit, but the other information in the poem says otherwise. Misfit compares autistic behaviors to images of the natural world, combating the idea that these behaviors are “wrong” or “weird” as most people see them to be.
In the first stanza, Mukhopadhyay describes the earth as “turning and turning.” One common form of stimming is spinning objects, such as tops or the classic fidget spinners that were so popular a few years back. It’s an activity that brings them entertainment and relaxation. Just like autistic people, the earth spins (on its axis). The stars don’t see any abnormality in this behavior in the earth, and they chose to leave it alone rather than bring attention to it or label it something. After all, the earth’s spinning is a natural process; why should anyone call it out? Moving back to fidget spinners, they were increasingly popular for neurotypical people for some unknown reason, but at the same time those same neurotypical people would make fun of autistic kids for using them. Fidget spinners and fidget cubes were made for those with learning disabilities that can’t allow them to sit still or focus without some kind of outlet, such as ADHD and autism, to have an inconspicuous object that lets them stim without distracting the class. Yet neurotypicals took it and made fun of those it was made for. It even became an ableist meme at one point, although the popularity of the “toy” overshadowed most of the memes. I remember from high school watching some of the mean students make fun of one of our special needs boys for having one. Yet in this poem, Mukhopadhyay takes this behavior that is often stigmatized by neurotypicals and compares it to a natural, beautiful process. He claims there’s nothing more wrong with the behavior than the earth’s spinning.
Next in the poem, the birds appear as the earth continues spinning. They flap their wings just like autistic people do when they’re excited or happy (a behavior I’m very familiar with because I do it myself. ADHD is now being considered by some people to be autism’s cousin so an overlap in behaviors is not a surprise). Mukhopadhyay specifically notes in this part that the birds know he was autistic, and yet they still “found no wrong with anything” (MUKhopadhyay line 9). They flap their wings to fly, so they see his flapping as just as natural as theirs. He’s doing what he needs to do to survive comfortably and not in a depressed state. Just like birds who have their wings clipped, autistic people who aren’t allowed to stim often feel depressed. From personal experience with stimming, when someone looks at me wrong or tells me to stop when I’m flapping, my mood drops significantly. Stimming is a natural part of autistic behavior and those who do it should not be forced to stop. After all, it’s like clipping a bird’s wings, isn’t it?
The people, the men and women, however, view his behaviors differently than the stars or the birds. They stare in a way that can only be considered disgusted or appalled, because they label him a ‘Misfit’ in the next line. This stanza is meant to reflect society’s view on autistic behaviors, rather than those of the natural world. To society, what he does is unnatural. These people that do so fail to see how his behaviors are more connected to the natural world than they think. They fail to correlate the earth spinning with his spinning, or the birds’ flapping with his flapping. To them, he just isn’t like the other kids; he doesn’t do the same thing the majority of children do. Clearly there must be something wrong with him, right? While they see only something weird and out of the ordinary, the speaker and other images in the poem see it as completely normal.
He says so himself in the next stanza when describing the blowing stim: “I found no wrong with anything” (line 15). He thinks it’s nothing more than a cool trick to blow like the wind, not another one of the odd behaviors the men and women in the last stanza thought they were. He sees how this fun trick is similar to nature, describing himself as the wind. Blowing raspberries or just blowing out air in general, they’re both traits of stimming that are often seen in autistic children. Not only does he find it perfectly fine to do these activities, he wants to share them with others. He sees it as something that other people and other children will enjoy too. And in the final stanza, he questions why anyone should stop doing these behaviors. He asks the reader, “Why stop turning and turning / When right can be found with everything?” (lines 16-17) This final question comes in direct opposition to his past repeating phrase: “found no wrong in anything.” Now rather than seeing that there is “no wrong in anything,” he sees that there is all right in everything. What he does, what the birds do, and especially the earth’s spinning, they are all part of the natural world and are all good, right things to do. Not to mention the first line could be interpreted as his wish that the men and women would see the right in everything as he does. He wishes they could consider these autistic behaviors as natural and perfectly ordinary.
‘Misfit’ is a poem about an autistic child labeled as such because of his “abnormal” behavior, but he sees himself as the opposite. Using images of the earth, birds, wind, and stars, he compares his stimming activities to the natural world and creates this picture of autism being just as ordinary as other things in the world. He disregards the view of those who consider it not to be, and instead lives on happily as his autistic self.
Word Count: 1108
I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work
