76 pages • 2 hours read
Ann Clare LeZotteShow Me a Sign
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
A Tale of Two Towns
Show Me a Sign is divided into two parts. The first part describes Mary’s pleasant life on Martha’s Vineyard, while Part 2 is concerned with her hellish experience of captivity in Boston. In both locations, Mary is treated well or poorly, depending on the community’s perception of people who are deaf. The early chapters of the novel paint a rosy picture of pastoral beauty. Mary says, “Our sheep farm sits on rolling meadows bounded by stone walls. From the high road to the Atlantic Ocean beyond, Chilmark is a hilly place. I sign, ‘Good morrow, sheep.’ They barely look up” (14). Mary thinks nothing of using sign language to greet her family’s flock. Her natural use of sign language to communicate is mirrored in the behavior of the town’s other inhabitants, both hearing and deaf. She explains:
It is common practice for Vineyarders to use a spyglass to converse with neighbors whose houses are far apart. If they are hearing, signals are sent by blowing a large horn. Then both parties take up their spyglasses to read each other’s signs. If the other party is deaf, like Mr. Skiffe, they choose a time (18-19).
Such a system is not only practical but offers the upper hand to those who are deaf. Signs can be communicated at great distances where voices would fail. It would be another 100 years before the telephone could approximate long-distance communication between neighbors.
Because Mary has never left the island, she doesn’t view deafness negatively. It’s simply different, and everyone around her shares her belief. After her abduction by Andrew, Mary realizes how the rest of the world perceives people who are deaf. When she arrives in Boston, she describes hearing people as “flapping their lips” (159), which is unusual to her because she comes from a community who uses sign language. While Boston initially seems confusing because of the speech-dominant culture, Mary is shocked when she sees how people with disabilities are treated: “Ezra Brewer told me that after the War for Independence, veterans who had lost limbs or were disfigured were treated as heroes. But I see no evidence that those with physical differences are respected” (161).
In no time, Mary comes to realize that most of the Boston residents have no respect for or understanding of people who are deaf. She is mistreated by Mrs. Muffins and Andrew while she toils at the inn. Mary says:
I pause in front of a large brick building and catch sight of my reflection in a window. Is that really me? I look like a vulgar beggar. A deaf and dumb one at that. If I desperately grabbed someone’s coat sleeve, he’d surely hand me a ha’penny and shake me off (173-174).
Her disturbing experiences in Boston offer a valuable lesson. The world needs to change its perception of deafness, and Mary is determined to be an agent of that change. Her return to Martha’s Vineyard is more than the natural relief of someone returning home. For her, it is the return to a world of sanity where people who are deaf are valued as much as those who are hearing. Now that Mary has experienced prejudice, she is determined to fight against it so that other children who are deaf will not experience the same.
Social Hierarchies
Like most of America in the early-19th century, the Martha’s Vineyard of the novel is dominated by a mindset of white Anglo-Saxon superiority. Mary’s father is considered eccentric for hiring Black and Irish farmhands. Mary says, “In our town, the Irish are seen as inferior to the English but superior to freedmen. […] I used to be embarrassed when our neighbors commented on Papa’s radical notions” (40).
Mary’s mother doesn’t share her husband’s democratic ideals. She is a strong proponent of the social hierarchy:
Mama socializes only with English women. She is glad early missionaries to the island succeeded in Christianizing so many Wampanoag. I was raised to accept her beliefs. But ever since George died too young […] I have begun to question everything (10).
The stratification of society on the island is based on a sense of superiority among the white settlers. Although Mary has learned about these views from her family, she is confused by Thomas’s cultural identification with others who don’t share his racial characteristics. He is a Black freedman who has married an Indigenous wife and fully participates in the Wampanoag culture because it doesn’t make the same distinctions about skin color that white culture does. Thomas explains to Mary:
‘It’s not just about blood. My wife, daughter, and I belong in the town of Aquinnah. We share the same beliefs and customs. We participate in ceremonies to honor the Great Being Moshup. We work hard to sustain our small community.’ That doesn’t make sense to me. Some Indians have joined our society. They are our neighbors, but we are still different and separate (42).
Martha’s Vineyard mirrors the social stratification of the larger culture. However, once Mary is exposed to life in Boston, she comes to understand that there is further stratification within white society. She sees beggars and learns that white people with physical disabilities are looked down upon. She also observes that white people who are deaf or mute are perceived as intellectually deficient. For example, she is mistreated while she is a servant at Mrs. Muffins’s inn. These experiences inspire Mary to raise the general consciousness about the value of people who are deaf.
Defining Deafness and Debunking Myths
LeZotte sets her story in 1805 at a time when intellectual curiosity overtook the superstition of the Dark Ages. While scientists were keen to study the phenomenon of deafness, their theories about its origins were frequently illogical. As Andrew conducts his investigation among the citizens of Martha’s Vineyard, he reveals many of the prejudices of his contemporaries.
Initially, he takes soil and water samples under the assumption that a contaminant might be responsible. These actions imply that Andrew sees deafness as a disease, like yellow fever. Mr. Pye challenges this view by asking, “If we clean our water supply and other foul living conditions, assuming there are any in Chilmark, do you mean for the deaf to disappear? Is it your opinion that deafness is a scourge to eliminate, like yellow fever?” (133). Andrew believes that if he purifies contaminants, he can purge humanity of its supposed defects.
Off the island, people who were deaf were frequently assumed to be intellectually deficient. As Andrew tells Mary, “They don’t exist in great number elsewhere […] And most of them reside in asylums or beg for alms on the street. They are not capable of earning their keep” (72). Even the generally enlightened Dr. Minot adheres to this view when he writes in his journal, “But we shouldn’t get too excited, or expect too much, from Mary. She may be dimwitted, after all” (210).
The scientists of the day left no stone unturned in their search for a cause for deafness. While Minot is performing yet another examination on Mary, she puts him in his place:
He signals for me to stand and twirls two fingers on his right hand for me to turn around. He feels my back from my neck to my rear. What notions they have about our deafness! I face him and point to my ears to indicate that is my one peculiarity. That makes him stroke his chin, and he seems to chuckle (195).
Aside from these absurd theories, Andrew has a much darker agenda related to his quest for answers when he says, “I think the healthier and more whole we are, the better […] We must strive for perfection, not just in nature but among men. Anything less is a poor substitute” (133). His words might easily have been spoken by a Nazi eugenicist during World War II. The attempt to perfect humankind requires eliminating anyone who doesn’t conform to a particular ideal. When seen in this light, deafness is a flaw to be eradicated. Thankfully, such a belief never became widely accepted in the scientific community or among the general public.
