On the portrayal of a convincing deaf character in fiction

Katrina, a character in the short story ‘ Where are you, Stevie?’ from Hitting Trees With Sticks by Jane Rogers is deaf. She can lipread and she can speak as she went to deaf school where they taught them “to make the shapes in our throat” [Rogers 2012: 59]. Surprisingly, I understood it only by the middle of this part of the story when Katrina pronounces herself deaf. Am I an inattentive reader? Or does the author so masterfully disguise it that the reader has not the slightest ground to start doubting her hearing abilities? I would like to examine this now.

If reading attentively we would notice that Katrina’s behaviour is quite typical of people suffering from deafness. Let’s now look into these features.

Reacting to the sound by turning the head, looking in the direction, etc. is typical behaviour of a person who can hear. However, for a deaf person hearing and reacting to the sound is not typical. So, the writer places Katrina in situations in which she does not react to the sound in the way typical of a hearing person.

• (1)    Before we open the door to a visitor there should be a knock on it or bell ringing. But the second paragraph of the story starts with:

I went down to open the front door [Rogers 2012: 56].

• (2)    When a hearing person talks with another person he is listening to the sound of his voice and judges this person by his voice, like “she spoke in a low/soft voice”, etc. But not by the movement of his facial muscles as Katrina does:

She spoke using her facial muscles like her features were too stiff to move [Rogers 2012: 56‒57].

• (3)    If there is an action accompanied by a sound, especially a loud one, at once a hearing person will react with his sense of hearing, like turning his head to the source of sound when something heavy falls down, whereas Katrina reacts with her sight and touch first:

Next time it was the same routine coming out of the house. I didn’t look but I felt [not heard – author’s note] the thud of his door closing and his body blocking the light to my left [Rogers 2012: 58].

In the text there are several cases when we see Katrina’s reacting with her sense of sight (‘see’) when she encounters people whose movement produces some noise to which she does not react:

• (4)    I saw the old lady in Stevie’s yard this morning… The old lady was piling stuff into their bin [Rogers 2012: 56].

Because Katrina has difficulty following verbal directions without seeing the source of sound she fails to lip-read in the situations when she cannot see the speaker’s face. The examples of these situations are the following:

• (5)    He said something I didn’t catch, turning his face to the street [Rogers 2012: 58].

• (6)    The dark bulk of him came towards me and stopped, so I had to look up (she uses her sense of sight – author’s note) and he was talking (and what does he say? She does not tell us – author’s note). He looked nervous.

‘I’m sorry?’ (she asks him to repeat what he has just said – author’s note)

‘At night. It’s not what you think,’ he said [Rogers 2012: 58].

When any sense is lacking other senses are heightened. Thus, we can see that Katrina herself speaks about this sense compensation:

• (7)    There is a balance between loss and gain, and gain is found in loss. [Rogers 2012: 62].

As she herself admits that:

• (8)    But I’ve learned to see sounds…Different sounds…have different shapes and colours [Rogers 2012: 63].

The text is rich in examples of Katrina’s using the other senses but not the sense of sound to describe the world around her and her interaction, physical and emotional, with it; and touch and vision are the most important of them. Besides, she notices minute details in things which hearing people tend to fail to notice.

• (9)    I was at my open bedroom window, the December air was damp but less flatly cold than it had been. It tasted different, some-

  thing in it was more rounded, softer, stirring with life beyond winter [Rogers, 2012: 56] (taste, touch, smell).

• (10)    She smelt cloyingly of being unwashed, of staying in bed to sweat out sickness. Plus something animal, maybe sheep droppings [Rogers 2012: 57] (smell).

The next paragraph is a vivid example that Katrina saw everything around her in terms of shapes and colours:

• (11)    I sit in the little basket chair and stare at my room. Everything is as it always is. Nothing has changed. The chest of drawers is hunched in shadow like a crouching bear. My stones and shells on the table are rounded and shadowed, hollowed and polished by gleams of light, [ their whites and creams and greys and rosy pinks shyly rejoicing the light, releasing deepening colour like a scent. Each holds its own cold smooth form for me to lift and cradle in the palm of my hand [Rogers 2012: 57‒58].

Let me argue that this story is written about a disabled character, but that Katrina is not treated as such, finding her own ways and even considering the sense of sound and hence hearing superfluous (if compared with the other senses):

• (12)    I knew the cold with every bit of me, there was none left over for knowing more. For hearing. How can you experience more than you experience? Someone who could hear whatever there is to hear on such a day – wind? birds? – would know less [Rogers, 2012: 62].