In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Arthur “Boo” Radley is seen as the town’s crazy resident, who never leaves his home and has all sorts of negative rumors spread about him. Jem and Scout’s curiosity about Boo Radley leads them to seek answers and pry into his strange life. Meanwhile in Jillian Weise’s “Nondisabled Demands,” Weise describes the entitlement that nondisabled people have when it comes to knowing personal details about people who have disabilities. In both of these works, the authors dictate the exploitation that people with disabilities face from able-bodied and -minded people on a daily basis.
In the fourth chapter of Lee’s novel, Jem, Dill, and Scout are looking for something to do when Jem comes up with a new game to play. He says “‘I know what we are going to play… Something new, something different… Boo Radley’”(43). This is essentially a proposal to use what little knowledge they have of Arthur to role play as what they would understand to be a crazy person. Not only is this notion rude in that they are using a game as an opportunity to make fun of Arthur, but they are also planning to participate in false assumptions about who he is. In the next chapter, Dill says “‘We’re askin’ him real politely to come out sometimes, and tell us what he does in there’”(52). Yet again the children are using what they think they know about Arthur’s disability as a means of entertainment. They are hoping that he will have some wild stories to tell, or that he really will be a commodity that they can observe. Arthur’s disability is exploited by the children as they intend to use it for their own enjoyment.
Weise’s poem also approaches the entertainment value that many nondisabled people take in learning about the lives of people with disabilities. “We’ll rope you / to the podium and ask / What do you have?” (lines 13-15). The image of being tied to a podium is very indicative of the resentment that some disabled people feel when they are bluntly and frequently asked about their disability. Weise later writes “then we get to say / You’re an inspiration” (lines 17-18). She is highlighting the tendency that many nondisabled people have to pity disabled people and view their disability as something they had to overcome. This attitude is then applied to their own lives in the general notion of “if they can overcome that, what do I have to be upset about?” This in itself is exploiting the lives of disabled people to make themselves feel better, or better themselves. These nondisabled people are using the narratives of people with disabilities for their own benefits.
Overall, both authors exemplify the derogatory views that are associated with disabilities and push the reader to consider what it might feel like to constantly be exploited in such a way that Arthur Radley, the speaker in Weise’s poem, and many disabled people are.
Word Count: 516
I pledge. Rosemary Pauley
