Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases

by Lars Gustafsson

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Historical Context

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Treatment of the Mentally Retarded

The twentieth century witnessed a dramatic shift in societal perceptions of mental retardation. In the United States, the early decades saw those with mental disabilities often relegated to distant institutions for the so-called "feeble-minded." These vast, isolated facilities, typically nestled in the countryside, housed over a thousand residents each. Surrounded by gardens and sprawling farms, the institutions relied on the labor of male residents to maintain machinery and care for livestock, while female residents were tasked with domestic duties like laundry. Those with milder disabilities tended to more severe cases and assisted with younger children. Occasionally, some returned home to their families during holidays, offering brief respite from institutional life.

However, the early twentieth century was marked by a pervasive misunderstanding of mental retardation. Instead of being seen as vulnerable individuals in need of care, they were increasingly viewed as societal threats. Prominent voices of the time argued that their impaired reasoning left them more prone to criminal behaviors and moral transgressions. James W. Trent Jr., in his work Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States, highlights the period between 1900 and 1920, observing a growing narrative that linked "mental defectives" with societal vices and painted them as prime contributors to these issues.

Amidst this stigmatization emerged the eugenics movement, which advocated for the sterilization of those deemed unworthy of reproducing. Rooted in an interest in heredity and a misguided quest for human perfection, eugenics garnered support from influential figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Its proponents believed that by nurturing superior human stock, humanity could eradicate chronic societal issues such as poverty, crime, and mental retardation itself. Mildly retarded individuals, often labeled as "morons," became prime targets due to their ability to blend into society, unlike their more visibly impaired counterparts termed "idiots." The movement perpetuated the notion that mental retardation was unchangeable and that those affected were beyond education.

In 1907, Indiana set a precedent by enacting the first sterilization law in the United States, targeting criminals, rapists, and the mentally retarded. By 1917, eleven additional states followed suit, and after World War I, fifteen more states allowed sterilization under certain conditions. In the landmark 1927 case Buck v. Bell, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes infamously declared, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” upholding such laws.

The eugenics ideology took root beyond American shores, flourishing in Nazi Germany throughout the 1930s and 1940s, where 400,000 individuals were sterilized. Sweden, too, engaged in similar practices, sterilizing up to 60,000 women from 1926 into the 1970s for various reasons, including mental retardation.

As the U.S. approached World War II, institutionalization of the mentally retarded surged. Many were committed involuntarily and indefinitely by court orders. From 43,000 residents in state institutions in 1926, the numbers swelled to 81,000 by 1936.

During this era, mental retardation bore a stigma of disgrace that lingered into the 1950s and beyond. Families often concealed the condition, fearing association with vice, immorality, and societal failure. Trent encapsulates this sentiment: “To have a defective in the family was to be associated with vice, immorality, failure, bad blood, and stupidity.”

In the aftermath of World War II, as the atrocities of Nazi eugenics came to light, support for sterilization in the United States waned. It became evident that many individuals with mental disabilities had effectively served in the U.S. military during the war, challenging prior assumptions.

The 1960s brought to light numerous scandals about the deplorable conditions in institutions for the mentally retarded. A shocking photo essay in Look magazine in 1966 exposed...

(This entire section contains 709 words.)

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the neglect and squalor within these state schools. In 1967, a visitor to the Sonoma State Hospital in California observed appalling conditions, as recorded by Trent, where "wards of naked adults sleeping on cement floors often in their own excrement or wandering in open dayrooms," heavily sedated and dazed. A 1972 television expose revealed harrowing conditions in two New York homes for the retarded, drawing comparisons to Nazi death camps.

Gradually, public perception began to shift. By the 1970s, society started to recognize that individuals with mental retardation could flourish outside institutional walls, living productive lives. This led to a public policy of deinstitutionalization, advocating for the integration of the mentally retarded into communities, schools, and workplaces, focusing on normalization and inclusion over isolation.

Literary Style

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Perspective

The narrative unfolds through a third-person lens, guided by a storyteller who possesses a deep understanding of how the boy, later a man, who is differently abled, perceives his surroundings. This narrator is wise and perceptive, weaving intricate sentences when necessary—one even stretches to 132 words—and in the final six paragraphs, a poetic elegance emerges, painting a vivid vision of the profound bond between the man and the vast universe. This connection is a truth the man intuitively senses but can never consciously comprehend.

Despite the narrator's superior intellect and expansive vocabulary compared to the protagonist, he employs specific techniques to shrink the distance between the reader and this unique experience. Firstly, the absence of dialogue portrays the boy's isolated existence; his world is enclosed, disconnecting him from human interaction. Moreover, while the narrator's consciousness is more advanced, his narrative style is predominantly straightforward, mirroring the child's innocent perspective. Phrases like "The House, large, white, behind trees and a fence," and "a wind came through the big ash trees" capture a child's simple, yet vivid, observations. Metaphors further illuminate the boy's unique view of the ordinary: the ice axe becomes "a cruel giant with dragon’s teeth," and the shoelace knot transforms into "a small, evil animal that the lace passed through." Additionally, the narrator occasionally adopts the second-person perspective to draw readers into the boy's world with phrases like "water you inhale deeply has a strange way of stinging," and "the joiner’s saws... that clattered so merrily when you released the tension." Lastly, his anonymity throughout the story, referred to only as "he," underscores society's tendency to strip him of individuality, reducing him to a label rather than acknowledging him as a vibrant individual with preferences, interests, and needs.

Compare and Contrast

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1920–1940s: In a bygone era in the United States, individuals could find themselves involuntarily confined within an institution for those with mental retardation, based solely on a note from a physician or psychologist. The grim reality in some states denied these individuals the right to legal representation or a court hearing. Consequently, many who were not intellectually disabled, but merely deemed troublesome, were committed to such institutions.

Today: A new dawn has risen with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which robustly defends the civil rights of people with intellectual disabilities. This landmark act secures their access to employment, transportation, and public amenities, including movie theaters, restaurants, and shops. It ensures that neither children nor adults with intellectual disabilities are barred from private daycare due to their condition.

1961: A Presidential Initiative

President John F. Kennedy, in a visionary move, established the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation. He urged Americans to recognize the needs and inclusion aspirations of individuals with intellectual disabilities, advocating for their integration into the fabric of community life.

Today: The year 2003 marked a significant rebranding as the President’s Committee on Mental Retardation became the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities. This change in language reflects a shift towards a more respectful and positive perception, continuing its mission under a more dignified name that combats stigma and champions positive representation.

1968: A Celebration of Ability

In a groundbreaking event, the inaugural Special Olympic Games took place at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois. Inspired by Eunice Kennedy Shriver and backed by the Kennedy Foundation, the Games welcomed 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities from 26 states and Canada, who competed in events like athletics, floor hockey, and aquatics.

Today: Fast forward to 2003, when Dublin, Ireland hosted the Special Olympics World Summer Games, marking the first occasion these Summer Games occurred outside the United States. This monumental event became the largest sporting spectacle of 2003, drawing 7,000 athletes from over 150 countries, who showcased their talents in 21 sports.

1970s: Shifts in Justice

In the tumultuous 1970s, the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976, controversially allowing the execution of individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Today: The landscape of justice shifted dramatically in 2002, when the Supreme Court decreed that executing individuals with intellectual disabilities constituted "cruel and unusual punishment," thus breaching the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. This landmark ruling resulted in commutations for numerous death row inmates, as estimates suggested up to 10 percent were intellectually disabled.

Bibliography and Further Reading

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SOURCES

Baxter, Charles, “Introduction to ‘Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases,’” in You’ve Got to Read This: Contemporary Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe, edited by Ron Hansen, Perennial, 1994, pp. 258–60.

Deneau, Daniel, P., Review of Stories of Happy People, in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 27, No. 3, Summer 1987, pp. 316–18.

Gustafsson, Lars, “Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases,” translated by Y. Sandstroem and J. Weinstock, in Stories of Happy People, New Directions, 1986, pp. 91–103.

Johannesson, Eric O., Review of Stories of Happy People, in New York Times Book Review, September 7, 1986, p. 18.

London, Jack, “Told in the Drooling Ward,” in Short Stories of Jack London, edited by Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz III, and I. Milo Shepard, Macmillan, 1990, pp. 494–501.

Shakespeare, William, The Winter’s Tale, edited by J. H. P. Pafford, Arden Edition, Methuen, 1963, p. 93.

Trent, James R., Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States, University of California Press, 1994.

Welty, Eudora, “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies,” in The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980, pp. 3–11.

Wordsworth, William, “The Idiot Boy,” in Lyrical Ballads, edited with introduction, notes, and appendices by R. L. Brett and A. R. Jones, Methuen, 1971, pp. 86–101.

FURTHER READING

Black, Edwin, War against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003.

Investigative journalist Black tells the story of America’s experiment with eugenics during the twentieth century and how it influenced Hitler and the Third Reich in Germany. Black argues that after World War II, eugenics was reborn as human genetics. He claims that confronting the history of eugenics is essential to understanding the implications of the Human Genome Project and twenty-first-century genetic engineering.

Noll, Steven, and James W. Trent Jr., eds., Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Reader, New York University Press, 2004.

Exploring historical issues, as well as current public policy concerns, this book covers various topics that include representations of the mentally disabled as social burdens and social menaces, Freudian inspired ideas of adjustment and adaptation, the relationship between community care and institutional treatment, historical events which upheld the policy of eugenic sterilization, the disability rights movement, and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.

Shorter, Edward, The Kennedy Family and the Story of Mental Retardation, Temple University Press, 2000.

Using some Kennedy family records that have not previously been seen by historians, Shorter presents the story of how the Kennedy family played a major role in educating Americans about mental retardation.

Zigler, Edward, and Robert M. Hodapp, Understanding Mental Retardation, Cambridge University Press, 1986.

This is a guide to current research and theory about mental retardation. Topics addressed include issues of definition, classification, and prevalence; motivation and personality factors; intervention in the lives of retarded persons; the possibility of “miracle cures”; and the problems of institutionalization and mainstreaming.

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