Losing Face in War: Soldiers’ Struggle after Returning Home
from War with Facial Disfigurement in Dalton Trumbo’s
Johnny Got His Gun and Amy Harmon’s Making Faces; and a
Didactic Approach to the Topic
Diplomarbeit
Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades
einer Magistra der Philosophie (Mag.a phil.)
an der Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät
der Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Institut für Amerikastudien
Eingereicht bei: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Gudrun M. Grabher
Eingereicht von: Ronja Weiskopf
Im Juni 2020
Plagiarism Disclaimer
I hereby declare that this diploma thesis is my own and autonomous work. All sources and aids used have been indicated as such. All texts either quoted directly or paraphrased have been indicated by in-text citations. Full bibliographic details are given in the bibliography. This work has not been submitted to any other examination authority before.
June 2020 ______
Date Signature
Acknowledgments
At this point, I would like to thank the people who have supported me throughout the process of writing this thesis as well as during my studies.
First of all, I would like to thank Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Gudrun M. Grabher for her never-ending patience, her honest and constructive feedback, and for arousing my enthusiasm and fascination for the challenging but interesting topic of facial disfigurement.
Moreover, I would also like to thank my parents and siblings for their unconditional love and support. You incessantly believe in me, support every decision I make, and always encourage me to pursue my goals – I owe you a special debt of gratitude.
Finally, I would like to thank Lukas and Verena for distracting and helping me clear my mind when necessary, for their moral support throughout the writing process of this thesis, and for pushing and encouraging me to keep writing when
I lacked ideas or motivation.
Thank you all for your support!
Table of Contents
1. Introduction………………………………………………………………..1
2. One Cannot not Communicate: The Human Face………………………....5
2.1. Facial Disfigurement as a Form of Disability: Defining Disability and
Investigating the Significance of the Face……………………...... 6
2.2. Reducing Attributes which Are Discrediting: Coping Strategies for
People with Facial Disfigurement………………………………….14
2.3. Repairing Disfigured Faces: Reconstructive Surgery as an Established
Field of Medicine…………………………………………………..24
3. Disfigured Faces of War in Literature…………………………………….35
3.1. All Means of Communication Gone: The Totally Disfigured Body in
Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun……………………………..36
3.2. Hercules Turning into Frankenstein’s Monster: War Changing a
Young Soldier’s Face from Beauty to Beast in Amy Harmon’s Making
Faces……………………………………………………………….50
4. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..65
5. A Didactic Approach to the Topic of Facial Disfigurement and Amy
Harmon’s Making Faces…………………………………………………69
5.1. Bullying, the Impact of Visual Difference on Pupils’ Well-Being at
School, and Suggestions for Teachers and School Staff as How to
Raise Awareness and Acceptance………………………………….70
5.2. Integrating the Topic of Facial Disfigurement and Amy Harmon’s
Making Faces into the English Classroom: A Lesson Plan…………75
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………..89
1. Introduction
Throughout history, beauty, outward appearance, status, and wealth have been among the most desirable achievements of human beings. Of course, they have been subject to change, depending on the respective culture and society of the time and those who have not been able to accomplish the preferable norms have often been excluded from and not been appreciated by society.
Nevertheless,
[t]o become someone else or to become a better version of ourselves in
the eyes of the world is something we all want. Whether we do it with
ornaments such as jewelry or through the wide range of physical
alterations from hair dressing to tattoos to body piercing, we respond to
the demand of seeing and being seen. (Gilman 3)
Beauty and the visibility of status have always been and still are of great importance in every culture because people are mostly attracted to each other due to their outward appearance before getting to know the character behind it.
Therefore, it is interesting to elaborate on the effects that physical or mental disabilities have on the lives of people who visibly deviate from the norm.
Being disabled in most cases equals being socially burdened because disabilities expose “affected individuals to inspection, interrogation, and violation of privacy” (Couser 16f). Consequently, the face as the initial point of focus provides a special target for inspection and judgement because beauty is mostly defined through the face and its “[…] proportions in the case of eyes and ears, even teeth, [which] compose a symmetry that prompts the judgment of beauty” (Hunt 5). Thus, the question arises to what extent a disfigurement of the face changes its significance and what impact facial disfigurement has on the life
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and social functioning of people, especially on soldiers, who are often gravely injured in war. In this respect, reconstructive surgery can be a powerful tool for people with facial disfigurement to successfully come to terms with their situation and improve their well-being, in combination with other coping strategies.
Nevertheless, concepts of beauty and conformity have changed a lot throughout history, always depending on the culture and the mindset of the society of the time. Literature often reflects social circumstances and can therefore be considered a witness or representative of a certain time period. It can both praise and cast doubt on social norms. However, when literature is investigated, it stands out that the main characters are often beautiful people who aspire to accomplish the desirable social values and norms of the time. Thomson maintains that “[…] main characters almost never have physical disabilities” (9).
Therefore, it is interesting to examine literary pieces which place a main character who deviates from the norm, be it due to a physical or mental disability, at the center of the story.
Hence, this diploma thesis will investigate Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got
His Gun and Amy Harmon’s Making Faces. In both literary pieces, the main character is a soldier who suffers from severe facial disfigurement after having served in war. The disfigurement of their faces completely changes the protagonists’ lives and results in them having to face numerous challenges because human beauty is mostly defined through the face and the consequences for people who visibly deviate from the norm are striking. Consequently, this diploma thesis aims at elaborating on the effects the protagonists’ facial disfigurement has on their lives and how they manage to cope with them. In
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addition, a didactic approach to the topic will be offered in order to show how it can be integrated and applied in the context of the classroom.
In the first chapter, the theoretical framework will be established by first investigating the significance of the face. Therefore, the term disability will be defined in order to highlight that facial disfigurement is a disability.
Furthermore, the influence of the visibility of a disability in social situations will be investigated because a disfigurement of the face is one of the most visible and severe bodily impairments, especially when it comes to social functioning.
Finally, a description of the significance of the face will be provided followed by a discussion of how a disfigurement changes the significance of the face and how facially disfigured people are perceived and judged by ‘normal’ people.
Second, several strategies for coping with stigmata and disabilities will be presented. Thus, the differences and similarities between congenital and acquired disabilities will be described in order to find out whether there is a difference in the amount of success concerning the coping process. Afterwards, various strategies will be presented and discussed. Third, the medical field of reconstructive surgery will be introduced. It is pivotal for patients who suffer from facial disfigurement in this as it offers them a chance to regain a face that nearly resembles a ‘normal’ one. Hence, the difference between reconstructive and aesthetic surgery as well as the history of reconstructive surgery will be elaborated on. The focus will lie on the reconstruction of soldiers’ faces and shortly on the significance of photography for both the coping process of the patients and the awareness of the public.
The second chapter will provide an analysis of Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny
Got His Gun and Amy Harmon’s Making Faces. Both analyses will follow the same structure, beginning with a brief introduction of the respective author. 3
Thereafter, the two texts will be analyzed regarding four issues of interest. First, the question raises to what extent the reasonability of war is anything but taken for granted in the literary pieces and in which way the horrors of war are described. Second, the significance of the disfigured face of the two main characters will be investigated and which impact their severe change of appearance has on their lives. Third, a discussion of how the main characters manage to cope with their facial disfigurement will be provided followed by, fourth, an analysis of how reconstructive surgery helps their coping processes and whether the methods used to repair the damaged faces are described in the books.
Following the conclusion, the final chapter of this diploma thesis elaborates on the issues of bullying and harassment at school, which are often directly interrelated with the outward appearance of pupils and their desire for affiliation with the ‘normal’ and ‘cool’ groups. Therefore, the term bullying will be defined followed by a theoretical framework highlighting how and why facial disfigurements can influence the well-being of pupils as well as what school staff can do in order to prevent the harassment of pupils who deviate from the norm, and especially of those with facial disfigurement. Furthermore, a detailed lesson plan which demonstrates how Amy Harmon’s Making Faces can be integrated into an English class will be drafted. This draft will follow the predefined outline, structure, and format of the ILS Innsbruck, the Institut für LehrerInnenbildung und Schulforschung Innsbruck, and gives an idea of how the issue of being visibly different can be approached in school with the aid of a piece of literature.
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2. One Cannot not Communicate: The Human Face
In her poem “I have never seen ‘Volcanoes’−”, Emily Dickinson compares the human face to a dormant volcano which appears calm on the outside while it is boiling with rage on the inside:
If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place – (80)
These lines suggest that the human face can conceal people’s real feelings towards the outside world by keeping its features in place, even if in reality the emotions are completely contrary. Thus, people often try to hide the feelings they do not want to show – they do not want to communicate anything. However, the face is the most important tool for verbal as well as non-verbal communication. That is why the human face is vital for social interaction and functioning and even if people do not use words to communicate with others, we can, nevertheless, convey a message through our facial expressions.
Furthermore, people recognize each other by the face, by the uniqueness of, for example, their voice, their eyes, or their nose. It even seems as if it is no challenge at all to “pick a single face out of the hundreds of thousands we [have] seen […]” (McNeill 81). Therefore, a deformity of the face, or even just a part of it, has a huge impact on the emotional well-being since an injury of the face, the most visible and exposed part of the human body, is worse than, for example, a scar on a leg as it “directly harms [people’s] self-image” (McNeill 323).
Consequently, the face is probably the most significant part of the body, which makes it difficult to cope with facial disfigurement. Yet, reconstructive surgery 5
nowadays often succeeds in repairing disfigured faces. It does not give people back their original face but makes their lives easier and less stigmatized by letting them vanish in the masses of ‘normal’ faces again. This chapter focuses on the significance of the face, the stigmatization that comes with facial disfigurement, on coping strategies which can help the affected to come to terms with a deformity of the face, and on reconstructive surgery, which reached its heyday important during the First World War, from which so many soldiers returned facially injured.
2.1. Facial Disfigurement as a Form of Disability: Defining Disability
and Investigating the Significance of the Face
In order to show that facial disfigurement is a disability, the term
‘disability’ first needs to be defined. Mitchell and Snyder, for example, use the word ‘disability’ “to designate cognitive and physical conditions that deviate from normative ideas of mental ability and physiological function” (2). Davis provides a similar definition by saying that disability “is a disruption in the visual, auditory, or perceptual field as it relates to the power of the gaze” (53).
Disability, thus, is a condition of the body or mind not considered to be ‘normal’ by the society it appears in. It is a condition which is culture-bound because a deformity is a disability and disabled people have to function within a culture or society just like ‘normal’ people.
Therefore, the negative connotation of a disability is triggered by society and disabled people are defined from the perspective of the ‘normal ones.’ In this regard, Garland-Thomson is right when she states that disability needs to be seen “as another culture-bound, physically justified difference to consider along with race, gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality” (5). If disabled people are
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constantly judged by society, some parents are consequently right by arguing that their physically or mentally disabled children should create their own identity first before exposing them to the public.
In social encounters, ‘normal’ people will immediately know about the other’s disfigurement if it is clearly visible. Visibility then becomes a crucial factor, influencing the direction social encounters may take (Goffman 65). Social relations are affected by the degree of a disability’s visibility (Garland-Thomson
14) and when it comes to facial disfigurement, visibility plays an even greater role in social encounters with ‘normal’ people, especially if the disfigurement is close to the central facial triangle of the eyes and mouth (Bradbury 194). A disfigurement of the face cannot really be concealed and people with a facial disfigurement “cannot access the civil inattention the rest of us take for granted
[…]” (Frances 199), i.e. the possibility of vanishing in the masses of ordinary faces without attracting immediate attention.
Therefore, people with a disfigurement are often “highly sensitive to the scanning of others” (Bradbury 194). Frances also states that “[d]isembodied sight very decidedly has the potential to become detached from feeling altogether” (201). If this is the case, then already the looking, occurring without sympathy or any interaction, has an impact on the looked-at. The lack of empathy and feelings that comes with this kind of ‘looking’ consequently deprives disfigured people completely of a meaningful response in face-to-face encounters (Frances 202).
When people take part in face-to-face conversations, visual difference and the visibility of a disability will also influence the direction a conversation will take. If the focus lies on visual difference, marked and unmarked bodies are judged differently. While marked bodies are seen as being inferior and are 7
thereby reduced to their otherness, unmarked bodies are seen as being ‘normal’ and are protected within this sphere of normalcy (Garland-Thomson 8).
Visibility also affects the degree of exposure to inspection, which is one social burden that disabled people experience. Disabled people are exposed to inspection to a greater extent when their difference to other people is more visible (Couser 16f). In consequence, facial disfigurement is an initial point of focus in social interactions because it attracts the eye more than a ‘normal’ face.
Brown et al. found that over one-fifth of their interviewees with a visible scar on their skin “found maintaining eye contact [in social encounters] difficult as companions tended to fixate on the scar” (1053). Their visible skin scar had an impact on five main areas of their life, namely their physical comfort and functioning, the acceptability of the self and others, social functioning, the confidence in the nature and management of the condition, and on their emotional well-being (Brown et al. 1056). This clearly shows that living with a disfigured or a marked face affects all areas of life, be it private or public, the concept of the self, or the emotional well-being, which is characterized by low self-confidence, anxiety, feelings of despair, and anger or frustration (Brown et al. 1054).
However, faces do not only draw attention to viewers if they are disfigured, but the face is in general a part of our body which is pivotal for our social functioning. Therefore, the significance and importance of the face need to be investigated. In almost all social situations the face is the point of initial focus. Through our face we communicate emotions, we develop rapport, and we indicate whether we feel socially connected or not. We do not want to lose face but want to keep face and, in general, “[w]e are so attuned to faces we [will] build them from a squiggle and a dot” (McNeill 5). The first human face as we 8
know it today differs significantly from that of the Neanderthals, who are Homo sapiens’ closest congeneric species, and developed 130,000 years ago in Africa
(McNeill 20).
The face is an important part of our physical functioning and health because we breathe, eat, talk, and see with it. The mouth is of special importance for our physical functioning because it is the one part of our face that enables us to ingest energy through eating, drinking and sometimes also breathing (McNeill
38). Yet, the most intimate and powerful part of the face are the eyes (McNeill
22), which is also suggested by a famous proverb saying that the eyes are the windows to our soul. Therefore, the face and especially the eyes define how people see each other and which personality they expect people to display. If people’s face somehow deviates from the norm, their reputation and status can be downgraded and that is why we focus intensely on this part of our body.
When walking through the street, one recognizes people one knows because of their faces. When people meet face-to-face, the most important means of communication is the face, which commands people to respond and to give feedback. Therefore, the face is necessary in social situations as “[…] there are a number of ways of getting feedback on another person’s reactions, but one of the most important is watching his [or her] facial expression” (Argyle 109).
These facial expressions and signals are a universal language and extend beyond nationality, race, or culture (McNeill 181). Most people will immediately recognize, for example, anger, fear, or enjoyment only by looking at the facial movements. However, it is not only the moving face which is interpreted. People already recognize and sometimes even judge the static face of a potential communication partner before they even start talking to each other (e.g. skin
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color, race, ethnicity, sex, or age). The face is always open to interpretation and every change of facial expression is interpreted differently by different people.
Belting maintains that people represent themselves through their individual faces (11). They represent a role or a performance in life and sometimes this role can be staged and altered with the aid of the face. The same face can represent either truth or untruth (Belting 25) sometimes also both at the same time because we are the acting agent behind our face (Belting 30). This is why masks were and still are a popular tool to disguise our real face and to put on a new identity or a new persona. Hence, “[m]asks are toys of self” (McNeill
145) and we can put on every role we have ever imagined to play. The popularity of masks can be explained by the fact that with a mask, people can manipulate others into thinking that they are someone else. In addition, a mask evokes a mystic atmosphere and a feeling of secrecy (McNeill 155). The fact that people can control their facial expressions to a certain extent and can literally ‘put on a mask’ makes it so difficult to interpret facial expressions in social encounters.
However, the neural system of human beings controls facial expressions in two different ways. The neural system navigates, on the one hand, involuntary facial expressions and on the other hand manages deliberate ones (McNeill 248).
Hence, we cannot fully control our faces at all given times but sometimes involuntary expressions may slip through and reveal what we actually wanted to conceal.
Furthermore, the face is important for the development of people’s identity. The character of people is understood to be revealed by the outer appearance of the body, especially by the face (Couser 21). People often think that the face stands for a person’s whole body. The face is the part of our body we cannot really conceal. It is exposed and visible. Therefore, the face of people 10
with a facial disfigurement attracts even more attention because it cannot really be hidden and “[w]e identify odd faces more quickly, easily, and confidently than typical ones” (McNeill 82). The face should be considered only a part of the whole body and not its main representative. However, Belting states that the face is more than just a part of the body, it is the one part which substitutes the whole body (26). With disfigured faces, in fact, normal people will tend to draw their focus solely on the disfigurement. Consequently, people with a disfigured face are reduced to the disfigurement – it is the only thing people see and focus on and the whole is reduced to the face. Thus, people cancel out the owner of the face.
It is often thought that a disfigurement, and especially a facial disfigurement, is linked to the character or even the soul of people. Hunt says that a face “expresses one’s human essence in its nakedness, its vulnerability, its shame and self-doubt and love – what historically has been known as the soul”
(147). Therefore, disfigured people were often perceived as being evil in ancient times (because the disfigurement scared people), or nowadays as less trustworthy or less honest than ‘normal’ people. Sometimes, it is also the case that people become obsessed with a disfigurement and consequently want to free facially disfigured people from their evil spirits. Even the Bible deals with this issue of people being possessed by evil spirits. Jesus heals those who would be regarded as disabled today. Strikingly, analyses of the Bible show that faces and facial expressions, whether human or divine, were not described in detail in the
Bible (Hunt 17). The picture of the face of Jesus, for example, is thus a consequence of the imagination of artists who wanted to create a realistic image of his face.
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In ancient times, disabled people were said to be invaded by the devil and thus they needed to be spiritually cleaned (Couser 21f). So, people often did not see the character or personality behind, for example, a disfigured face but only the ‘evil character’ which the disfigurement suggested, and this attitude is sometimes still inherent in some people’s minds nowadays. This mind-set derives from the study of physiognomics which says that the face reveals the character of people and that similar faces suggest a similar character. The features of a face thus reveal a particular type of person (Belting 83). In fact, people use facial features or anomalies as evidence for intelligence or stupidity.
Large, high foreheads, for example, are seen as a marker for intelligence and facial disfigurements hint at criminal or stupid character traits. Yet, the nature of a particular face does not correspond to the intellect or character of the respective person (McNeill 169). Instead, there is a self behind every face through which it becomes alive. Therefore, “[f]aces [cannot] help expressing the mind, and when we say we love a face, we mean the soul that animates it” (McNeill 342).
People with a facial disfigurement are not only reduced to their disfigurement but they are also perceived and judged more negatively than people without a disfigurement. Rankin and Borah, among others, did research on this issue. They took photographs of facially disfigured people and showed them to the participants of the study who were without any disfigurement. They were shown the original photograph of a patient followed by the same photograph on which the patient’s face was digitally enhanced to appear without facial deformities. The participants were then instructed to evaluate the different photographs. The authors found that facial disfigurements “have a significant negative effect on perceptions of social functionality including employability, honesty, trustworthiness, and effectiveness” (Rankin and Borah 2144). So, 12
people thought that the patients with a facial disfigurement could not really function within or be accepted by society, especially when they were asked about the patients’ ability to work. Furthermore, they found that study participants perceived the people on the photographs with a facial disfigurement to be less attractive, optimistic, and capable of social functioning (Rankin and Borah
2145). In contrast, the people on the enhanced photographs were perceived more positively “in many social, employment, and psychological spheres” (Rankin and Borah 2145).
In cultures where beauty equates success, positive qualities are only associated with attractive individuals, while people with all kinds of physical or mental disabilities are perceived as significantly more negative than ‘normal’ people (Rankin and Borah 2144f). Brown et al., in their study on the effects of visible skin scars, also found that even people suffering from a visible deformity themselves “believed that others would judge them as being criminally inclined or think that the scars had been deliberately inflicted – suggesting they were weak-willed or ‘weird’” (1051). Thus, the more non-conformist a person is, whether voluntarily or not, the more is he or she likely to experience negative perceptions and judgments just like Emerson argues in his essay “Self-
Reliance”: “For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure”
(1164). People who do not conform to the ‘normalcy’ that is expected are often punished by being put on the margins of society by ‘normal’ people who do not distinguishing between people who are non-conformists by choice and those who were turned into non-conformists involuntarily.
Thus, the immediate visibility of a facial disfigurement is crucial in face- to-face encounters because the more visible it is, the more difficult it will be for facially disfigured people to succeed in social encounters. The face is the most 13
visible and important means of communication and the first part of the body we recognize and focus on when we meet. Both the static and the moving face need to be interpreted but the face cannot only reveal but also conceal the thoughts of the acting agent. People with a facial disfigurement cannot conceal it and are often reduced solely to it. The person or character behind the disfigurement is not recognized and is often perceived more negatively than ‘normal’ people.
Therefore, people with a visible disfigurement or disability need to learn how to cope with their ‘otherness’ and develop certain strategies in order to do so. If the face as the most important means of communication is in some form affected, people need to develop other strategies in order to communicate successfully despite having a disfigurement. Strategies facially disfigured people may use include a more frequent use of body language or the focus on suprasegmental elements of speech (intonation, emphasis, pitch, or the rate of speaking).
2.2. Reducing Attributes which Are Discrediting: Coping Strategies for
People with Facial Disfigurement
Disfigurements, no matter whether visible or not, can easily lead to difficult situations in which stigma can occur and which involve “stigmatizers, the stigmatized, bystanders, the process of stigma, and the social context in which stigma occurs” (Bresnahan and Zhuang 1284), all of the five building the basis for stigma research. How facially disfigured people cope with such situations, is a highly individual process that forces them to develop and adapt their coping strategies several times. There is not only one strategy which can be applied but stigmatized people constantly need to adapt their strategies according to the different situations they find themselves in.
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In general, it does not matter whether people have to cope with a congenital or an acquired disability. This means, on the one hand, that people with a congenital facial disfigurement do not necessarily perform better in social situations just because they had more time to adjust to their difficult situation.
On the other hand, people with an acquired facial disfigurement do not necessarily benefit from their social networks they had developed before their change in appearance (Van den Elzen et al. 779). Kish and Lansdown argue that disfigurements caused by trauma are easier to cope with than congenital disfigurements. They also state that common sense suggests that severity is causally connected to coping, meaning the more severe a disfigurement the worse can individuals cope with it. This assumption, however, does not necessarily have to be true. Severe disfigurements often do not “cause more distress than milder disfigurements” (Kish and Lansdown 499). Furthermore,
Bradbury argues that acquired disfigurements are not necessarily more difficult to cope with than congenital ones but that the two types rather face different challenges (194). She also states that people with a minor disfigurement may often be “very sensitive to others and misinterpret a glance from someone else as a hostile act” (194).
Yet, both people with an acquired and those with a congenital disability need to develop certain strategies which enable them, despite their visible deviation, to be successful in social situations and in everyday life. For example, people with major disfigurements often develop basic strategies such as explaining, out-staring, or distracting with positive self-talk (Bradbury 194).
These strategies cannot only help disfigured people but they also comfort family members and ‘normal’ looking people in social encounters. When people with facial disfigurement choose a strategy, the changes the disfigurement brings with 15
it in the public sphere and also what it means for one’s relatives need to be considered. As the disfigured person is expected to provide comfort for the
‘normal’ person, it is the nonconformist person who needs to put effort into developing certain strategies in order to reduce discomfort. Thus, coping strategies are “behavioral and cognitive strategies used to maintain a sense of acceptability or self-esteem against the impact of others’ reaction” (Thompson and Kent 669).
The two reactions probably most difficult to cope with are pity, which
“places a person firmly in the lowest status group” (Bradbury 193), and staring, which is immediately detected by “our mental gaze-radar” (McNeill 228). Every time people are being stared at we are actually not in danger but stares nevertheless evoke feelings of discomfort and threat. If we cannot counter or escape the situation but have to deal with the staring person, our body reacts automatically. Our heartbeat rises, arousal increases, and the galvanic skin response is altered, all of which can ultimately lead to the reaction of fleeing
(McNeill 228). Staring is usually considered rude and “[t]he classic stare is blatant, persistent, often blank, and unresponsive to the acts of its target”
(McNeill 230). These attributes make it so difficult to deal with stares, both for people who can be placed within the norm and even more so for people who deviate from the norm as a disfigurement attracts more stares.
Hughes suggests a number of possible strategies which are used by disabled people to reduce stigma, i.e. a bodily sign or an attribute which is discrediting (Goffman 13). The strategies Hughes describes include removal, countering, fighting, avoiding, passing, and covering (21). The last two strategies are dealt with in greater detail by Goffman. In general, the aim of all
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these strategies is to shift the attention of ‘normal’ people away from the discrediting disfigurement to characteristics that are more favorable.
Removal is a strategy through which disfigured people attempt to eliminate the stigma. Sometimes, for example, it is possible to remove a disfigurement through surgery. With the heyday of reconstructive surgery during and after the First World War, removal has become a coping strategy which can easily be applied. However, the removal of a disfigurement and the stigma that comes with it often cannot meet the demands of disfigured people. Scars are often still visible and the patients often disappointed with their mirror image after reconstructive surgery because it does not look the way they expected it to.
Furthermore, severe disfigurements cannot be completely removed and healed easily. Thus, physical as well as psychological scars will remain, and Brown et al. found that 56% of the patients they investigated were dissatisfied with the appearance of their scars after the surgical intervention (1051).
When people counter a stigma, they try to acquire skills which one normally would not associate with the stigmatized group they belong to. Those with a physical disability, for example, may show that they are good at a certain sporting activity.
In addition, it is also possible to fight a stigma. This strategy implies that people try to fight the reality and to establish a new, unconventional character or identity.
The fourth possible way of reducing stigma in social situations is to just avoid them wherever possible. As it has already been mentioned above, stigmatized people need to put effort into making social encounters as comfortable for non-stigmatized people as possible. Therefore, it is a widely used strategy to just avoid social situations. The study of Brown et al. 17
substantiates the existence of this strategy as they found that 35% of their interviewees with a visible skin scar “felt less sociable and generally had a strong desire to be alone and avoid situations where they could be observed […]”
(1052). However, this strategy does not really improve well-being as a study by
Kondo and Yamazaki shows. They found that coping methods such as ‘avoiding’ or ‘concealing’ may be temporarily beneficial but that they have negative effects on psychological well-being in the long run (152). What they suggest is that
“[a]voidance or concealment decreases psychological well-being, while general social skills and self-assertion increase psychological well-being” (Kondo and
Yamazaki 153). Many aid groups today therefore aim at improving the social skills of disabled people.
Another strategy used by stigmatized people is covering. This means that although their stigma is known, he or she will hide it as well as possible so that the disability is in the background of an interaction. Brown et al. state that 68% of the interviewees of their study on visible skin scars tried hard to hide their scars, that they avoided reflective surfaces, or that they were obsessed with their reflection in a mirror (1052). Covering or concealing a sign of stigma is seen as very time consuming by stigmatized people, and Brown et al. found that
“[c]lothes, hairstyles, body positioning and make-up were used to cover up the scars” (1052).
The last strategy often used is passing. This means that people present themselves as being normal and as not belonging to a certain group of stigmatized people. Goffman says that “[b]ecause of the great rewards in being considered normal, almost all persons who are in position to pass will do so on some occasion by intent” (95). Therefore, passing is a strategy almost all disabled people use from time to time either consciously or unconsciously. 18
Garland-Thomson, however, questions this strategy to a certain extent because she says that if “disabled people pursue normalization too much, they risk denying limitations and pain for the comfort of others and may edge into the self-betrayal associated with ‘passing’” (13). People who pass need to hide discrediting information because otherwise they would not be considered
‘normal’ (Goffman 105). Goffman mentions that in relationships an appropriate amount of intimate facts about oneself needs to be exchanged in order to show trust and mutual commitment (108). Those are missing when people use
‘passing’ in order to reduce a stigma.
Several techniques of passing can be employed by disabled people in order to manage crucial information. Firstly, the signs of a certain stigma can be concealed (Goffman 114). Secondly, people try to present the signs of a stigma as if belonging to another stigma, mostly a less discrediting one (Goffman 117).
Thirdly, people with a stigma can divide “the world into a large group to whom
[they tell] nothing, and a small group to whom [they tell] all and upon whose help [they] then [rely]” (Goffman 117). Hughes describes this technique as drawing a small group into “collusive awareness” (23). This means that disabled people often ask family members or close friends to assist and help in concealing their disability. Consequently, this collusive awareness then also helps disabled people to be considered ‘normal’. Furthermore, people who are members of the collusive awareness group can also be considered as belonging to the group of
‘The Wise’. The term “The Wise” was also introduced by Goffman along with the term “The Own” (31). “The Own” are people who share a stigma and “The
Wise” are ‘normal’ people who sympathize with the stigmatized person. People belong to the group of “The Wise” if they, for example, work with stigmatized
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people (e.g. nurses, reconstructive surgeons, etc.) or are part of their social life
(e.g. family members, friends, etc.).
A lot of research has also been conducted in the field of social skills training for stigmatized people. Social skills, as Newell claims, are “a set of behavi[ors] which are learnt so unconsciously that they are never labelled as having been learnt” (143). People’s everyday social interactions are based on those skills but mostly they only learn how to interact with others who are perceived as being beautiful, normal and not disabled. In addition, people with visible disfigurements have to adapt their social skills to their new situation as they often also lack the physical ability to successfully communicate with others, for example, if the disfigurement affects speech or the ability to move certain parts of the face. Therefore, solely being part of social encounters is often not helpful to restore social skills (Newell 143) and that is why social skills training can help disfigured people as long as it is carried out before they have to cope with stigmatizing situations they encounter in society.
Kish and Lansdown, however, state that social skills training “is not to redress a social skills deficit, as with shy or aggressive behavior, but to enhance interpersonal skills for dealing with extraordinary circumstances” (500). Certain social skills programs include, for example, problem-solving training, body language, conversational skills, active listening, and responding to comments and questions (Kish and Lansdown 500). Social skills training decreases the level of anxiety of disfigured people, who may consequently be less depressed and “feel less inadequate and more confident as a result of becoming more effective in social communication” (Bull and Rumsey 252).
Furthermore, Kish and Lansdown introduced coping strategies which are based on taking initiative and cognitive behavior. Their findings include 20
strategies like showing empathy by acknowledging the anxiety of ‘normal’ people, giving information, reassurance, positive thinking, distraction, assertiveness, and a sense of humor (505). The cognitive-behavioral approach is also substantiated by Newell, who states that this approach “is likely to prove useful in addressing psychological difficulties following disfigurement or other threat to body image” (125). He compared two different groups of participants.
One group was composed of disfigured people and the other comprised participants with eating disorders, BDD sufferers, and social phobics. The difference between the two groups is that in the second group the visible disfigurement is non-existent. However, there are also some features that both groups share, as for example, anxiety, behavioral and social avoidance, the fear of negative assessment by others, or the disturbance of body image (Newell 125).
Due to these similarities and the fact that cognitive-behavioral approaches have proven to be successful in treating disturbances of body image, Newell draws the conclusion that this approach could also be helpful for disfigured people who have to cope with their situation.
Meisenbach introduces Stigma Management Communication (SMC) strategies and defines five categories: accepting, avoiding, evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, and denying (277). SMC strategies can also help stigmatized people to come to terms with their stigma, as their choice of strategy depends on “their attitude toward challenging or maintaining others’ perceptions of the stigma” (Meisenbach 277).
The first strategy Meisenbach mentions is accepting. When stigmatized individuals accept the stigmatizing aspect of their appearance, they also accept that it is part of their identity and that they have to incorporate it “into their sense of self” (Meisenbach 278). Sub-strategies of accepting include, among others, 21
passive acceptance (giving no comment in stigma communication situations), using humor, isolating oneself from society, only bonding with other stigmatized individuals, or openly displaying or disclosing the stigmatizing attributes
(participating in the stigmatized behavior and discursive activities) (Meisenbach
279-280).
The second strategy which is suggested in SMC is avoiding. Meisenbach argues that “[i]f individuals accept the existence of a particular stigma, yet challenge that the stigma applies to them specifically, then they may engage in avoiding the stigma” (280). Hiding the stigma attribute, distancing the self from the stigma, and eliminating the stigma behavior or attribute are among the respective sub-strategies.
Other strategies which can be utilized are evading responsibility and reducing offensiveness. The aim of both strategies is to alter public opinions and notions of the characteristics of a stigma and to show that the stigmatized is in control of the stigma (Meisenbach 282). Reducing offensiveness includes sub- strategies like bolstering or refocusing (shifting the focus from stigmatizing to non-stigmatizing parts), minimization (focusing on the fact that the stigma does not disturb or derogate others), and transcendence (highlighting the valuable side of the stigma) (Meisenbach 283).
The last strategy suggested by Meisenbach is denial, which comes along with ignorance (283). She states that “simple denial” occurs if stigmatized individuals simply state that there is no stigma (284). However, she also mentions another type of denial, namely “logical denial” (284). For example, the stigmatized could argue against a common assumption associated with the stigma by stating specific evidence that disputes the stigma (Meisenbach 284).
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The strategies mentioned by Meisenbach could help stigmatized people in coping with difficult situations and conversations in society.
Another way of dealing with disabilities, especially with facial disfigurement, is consulting experts in this field, for example organizations like
Changing Faces. The aim of this organization is “to provide direct help to patients and their families [,] to promote better health care [,] and to promote public awareness of the problems faced by people who have congenital or acquired disfigurement from whatever cause” (Clarke and Psychol 305). Clarke and Psychol took interest in developing an information resource for disfigured people and therefore did research on which information they needed. They found that 31% of the interviewees wanted information about “factual or procedural questions” (306), i.e. information about the surgery itself, its risks, or its possible outcome. Furthermore, 52% of the people wanted advice on “support and coping” (Clarke and Psychol 306). When children asked for information about coping skills, they mostly requested advice on their low self-esteem, being bullied, and general problems at school (Clarke and Psychol 308). If adults requested information about possible coping strategies, the issues raised were long-term ones. The issues that patients mentioned were connected to the social isolation many of them feared experiencing because of their lifelong problems of being stared at, being commented on, and being stigmatized (Clarke and
Psychol 308).
Thus, charities that provide information and expert opinions on various issues disfigured people have to deal with are of great importance. They offer people who are suffering from a disfigurement a chance to open up about the difficulties they experience and tools to successfully cope with the condition they find themselves in. Bull and Rumsey also argue that counselling can be very 23
helpful for facially disfigured people because professionals listen to their concerns, their self-concept as well as the understanding of the perspective of others can be improved, and the preoccupation with the self can be reduced
(247).
2.3. Repairing Disfigured Faces: Reconstructive Surgery as an
Established Field of Medicine
A pivotal possibility of dealing with a visible facial stigma is offered by reconstructive surgery. This special field of medicine aims at giving disfigured people back what they most desire – a face that can disappear in the masses and can almost be restored to the original one. The human face has many veins and arteries that provide a rich supply of blood which hastens recovery. Therefore, the face is well-suited for reconstruction (McNeill 323). However, it is not yet possible for surgeons to recreate a human face exactly as it was before. Thus, surgery which changes facial features can result in some patients feeling they have lost part of their identity or their self because the face is the most crucial part of the body with which people define and present themselves to others
(McNeill 7f).
In addition, the fact that many current societies are still biased against physically visible stigmata make many disfigured people “feel under pressure to re-establish a ‘normal’ appearance in order to get back into the realms of what is acceptable” (Bull and Rumsey 186). Yet, also people who appear to look
‘normal’ undergo aesthetic surgery to alter their appearance and probably raise acceptance within their social environment. The two fields are not the same, though. They have a shared history but with the onset of the First World War they were divided into different fields. Reconstructive surgery was and still is a
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challenging field of medicine not only because of the high number and the complexity of surgeries but also the emotional, psychological, and social well- being that follows surgical intervention. Photographs of the original and the restored face can be a useful tool to accustom both the patients and their social environment to the newly obtained appearance and the possible new identity, personality, or feeling of self that comes with the change of the face.
Reconstructive surgery is different from aesthetic surgery, which nowadays many people turn to in order to alter their appearance permanently.
Patients who turn to aesthetic surgery do not need surgery because they have a physical deficit and the operation is necessary. They want to change their bodily features only because they are dissatisfied with the way they look and because they want to meet society’s expectations of what a beautiful person is supposed to look like. People who look different than the norm have the desire to belong to a group of physically good-looking people from which they are often excluded. This, in return, results in “symptoms of psychological ‘unhappiness’”
(Gilman 22). Therefore, they alter their appearance for the purpose of fitting into a specific group of people and being able to ‘pass’ within this group. However, beauty is constituted by culture and society and what may be perceived as beautiful in one generation or in one place may still lead to exclusion in another
(Gilman 22).
Aesthetic surgery, thus, is seen by society as unnecessary, nonmedical, and as a sign of vanity. Reconstructive surgery, in contrast, is defined by the need of restoring function (Gilman 8). The post-war reconstructive surgeons
“saw aesthetic surgery as incidental to their practice,” and also Gillies, the most influential and successful reconstructive surgeon of the First World War,
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“advocated seeing ‘aesthetic surgery’ as a natural subordinate extension of
‘reconstructive surgery’” (Gilman 13).
The history of reconstructive surgery goes far back into ancient times, but it was the Great War which rendered reconstructive surgery a main field of medicine. Harold Gillies, the pioneer of plastic and reconstructive surgery, had to return to the literature of the earliest sources dating back to ancient India, the time of the Roman empire, or to 16th-century Italy in order to find inspiration for successful procedures (Petty 18). Gillies started to establish a technique that was different from the ones used before the war. Unlike in earlier days, in which substances that were not part of the patient’s body were implanted to reconstruct the facial skeleton (Petty 19), Gillies made use of living tissue from the body of injured people (Petty 20). He made himself a name and by the end of the First
World War, Gillies had operated 11,000 patients out of which only ten were considered incurably disfigured (Petty 25).
Thus, reconstructive surgery established itself as a major field of medicine mainly during the First World War. The many severe facial injuries caused by the battles and especially by shrapnel called for the utilization of a medical field of surgery which could help injured soldiers “so disfigured that their living would be more of a pain to them than their dying” (Petty 15f). In the trenches, the face was the part of the body which was exposed the most and this is why facial wounds were often the most fatal ones, apart from whole bodies and all parts of bodies having been shattered during the war (Gilman 157). The numbers show the challenge the surgeons at that time were confronted with:
Within ten days after the Battle of the Somme had started, for example, over
2,000 patients had to be taken to the casualty clearing stations and base hospitals
(Petty 22). 26
After the battles, wartime reconstructive surgeons faced the challenge of obtaining sufficient workloads. Their new work fields began to range from repair of congenital defects and trauma to purely cosmetic operations (Fraser and
Hultman 612). By the time the Second World War broke out, the casualty stations and hospitals were better organized and prepared to give immediate treatment in contrast to the First World War. Furthermore, efficiency and expertise of staff had increased significantly (Petty 55). The field of treatment, however, shifted from injured tissue by shrapnel to severe burn injuries because the war had developed to a battle in the air (Petty 58). Both injuries required complex reconstruction but burns involved massive tissue loss (Mayhew 57) as well as a “very lengthy treatment and recovery period, often for the remainder of the war” (Mayhew 85). Thus, severe burns in most cases entailed death until
1939.
However, surgeons in the 1930s began to experiment with plasma, which is a liquid medium that transports blood and proteins through the body, and which had already been accepted as an essential part of emergency medicine by the outbreak of the Second World War (Mayhew 35). Before experimenting with plasma, it was difficult to deal with injuries that involved substantial loss of tissue. In cases in which the tissue loss could not be repaired, thin metal masks were used to disguise or lessen the visible impact of the injury (Kubicki 187f).
Regardless of the extent to which these masks might have covered the disfigurement, they still called even more attention to the face and they “could not fill the vacuum of a missing face” (Kubicki 190).
Reconstructive surgeons in the UK, such as Gillies, were often seen as charlatans or mere cosmeticians. They had to struggle “in a hostile interwar environment and failed to progress or expand plastic surgery” (Fraser and 27
Hultman 612). In the US, however, American surgeons were successful in developing plastic surgery, of which reconstructive surgery was an important part, into an independent field within surgery. They “enjoyed the benefits of forming professional societies, earning a favorable public reputation, and establishing state-of-the-art training institutions” (Fraser and Hultman 612).
The medical field of reconstructive surgery was and remains a challenging one, as surgeons must restore an essential part of the patient’s identity. In addition, the implementation of reconstructive surgery requires highly trained, experienced, and skilled staff who have to know the anatomy of the face by heart. A single mistake can change the facial features of the patient completely. Reconstructing a face often involves more than one and even up to twenty or more surgeries. A British soldier was the first “to require more than
20 operations to restore his face, after which he returned to flying and then to training some of the early paratroops” (Mayhew 58). What made these operations very difficult to bear was the lengthy treatment, its intrusive and painful nature, and the absence of antibiotics (Kubicki 185). The primary damage should possibly be fixed on the first day before the face began to swell or clots and infections might have occurred, but only if the patient’s overall condition permitted an intervention (McDowell et al. 38).
At the time of the two world wars, grains, gravel, or glass in burns from explosions often penetrated the skin very deeply. The removal of these foreign objects was challenging and normally involved abrasion with garnet paper or the complete excision of the involved skin followed by repair (McDowell et al. 39).
Being able to successfully perform such surgery was a great accomplishment for surgeons at that time because they were not usually faced with tissue loss on this scale on a daily basis. The only four full-time British plastic surgeons of 1939 28
were mostly concerned with cleft palates, the reconstruction of car crash injuries, and minor burns, all of which being straightforward cosmetic work (Mayhew
55). Therefore, the surgeons of the Second World War were facing the challenge of “a never-ending patient list that meant twelve-hour days were [the] norm, usually longer, taken up with operations that required the most careful and delicate attention at all times” (Mayhew 75).
Even if a soldier’s facial features and expressions were altered forever, surgery could nevertheless be considered successful if the result was a ‘normal’ human face which did not show any visible sign of the violence of war (Pichel
26). The general therapeutic goals of reconstructive surgery, according to Olsson et al., are the following: restored absent or abnormal tissue and function, restored or improved facial symmetry and appearance, enhanced social and psychological well-being, limited severity and period of disability, replacement of missing or qualitatively deficient soft tissue and improved physiological function, maintenance of form and function over time, appropriate understanding by patient (family) of treatment options and acceptance of treatment plan, and appropriate understanding and acceptance by patient (family) of favorable outcomes and known risks and complications (265). All these goals and the actions that align them should ultimately lead to patients who are content and able to function within society.
Reconstructive surgery, therefore, especially helped wounded soldiers of the two world wars to live a ‘normal’ life again. Before, they were rather visible among the masses, but after surgery they had the chance to disappear within the group of ordinary people as they did before the war and before the damage. Yet, for soldiers with reconstructed faces ‘passing’ was still difficult because the only group in which they would pass off as ‘normal’ was that of the war-wounded. 29
This group, however, was very visible because soldiers’ “bodies and faces were read as signs of war” (Gilman 168). After these signs of war had been removed by altering the face, the soldiers had to physically and psychologically adjust to the newly formed personality, the latter being an even bigger challenge for the patient as well as the surgical team than restoring the face physically.
Among the eight general therapeutic goals for reconstructive surgery proposed by Olsson et al., there is one that is essential for the success of the surgery, namely “enhanced social and psychological well-being” (265). If the face did not look like the soldiers expected, the mental state of the patients could culminate in depression and withdrawal from society all the same. A beautifully reconstructed face did not necessarily entail happiness, but the crucial factor was, and still is, self-acceptance of the new self (McNeill 327). Facially disfigured soldiers who were treated with reconstructive surgery remained able-bodied but nevertheless they were “victims of prejudice, ridicule, discrimination, and other indignities [and] were in varying degrees psychologically, socially, and economically crippled” (Macgregor 132). In Macgregor’s study one patient with a facial disfigurement said that “[it is] not what it is – [it is] what it does to you that counts” (132).
Clearly, the first and foremost aim of the surgeon was to repair the disfigured face and reconstruct human features. However, “[t]he intrinsic aesthetic character of the facial wounds and the obvious relationship between the face and identity introduced new meanings for the plastic reparations beyond the merely medical” (Pichel 29). Therefore, post-surgical support and guidance became and still are today essential for the patients in order to mitigate the risk of withdrawal from society and personal isolation. Surgical teams and rehabilitation services were installed in order to help the soldiers, on the one 30
hand, to come to terms with their new appearance and, on the other hand, to successfully integrate them back into society.
It was Archibald McIndoe, a surgeon from New Zealand, like Gillies, operating during the Second World War, who insisted on regular meetings between patient and surgeon. He claimed that the relationship of a reconstructive surgeon to the facially disfigured patient is different from an ordinary doctor- patient relationship, namely a closer one (Mayhew 76). He thought that “[…] the failure of the relationship could be even worse than the failure of an individual graft, as the former had far greater long-term implications for the patient […]”
(Mayhew 76) and that the patient needed the surgeon for mental support, hope, and encouragement still long after the multiple surgeries themselves (Mayhew
76f). After having restored the function and the appearance of the face, McIndoe intended to not let the patients cope with the alteration on their own but to help them recover psychologically too.
Yet, he was very aware of the human instinct, which tells people to be repelled by severely disfigured faces, to turn away from them, or to ignore them.
He recognized that the overall success of the reconstruction relied heavily on the social environment in which the medical treatment took place (Mayhew 156).
Therefore, McIndoe aimed at integrating the public into the treatment process and persuaded them “to turn back, to look his patients in the face, and then to begin the process of understanding what such men represented” (Mayhew 156).
In order to do so, he made the town of East Grinstead, where he performed the surgeries, part of the therapeutic environment. The town’s society first visited the hospital in order to get used to the burned soldiers undergoing treatment under McIndoe’s care and the soldiers then were carefully supported in resuming their lives in public (Mayhew 157). Patients were, for example, allowed to leave 31
the hospital to join the community of East Grinstead, who warmly welcomed them into their houses. In the end, the patients were successfully accepted in the community of the town, which “provided an initial first step between hospital ward and public life, easing the re-entry of the facially disfigured into society”
(Mayhew 161).
McIndoe also founded a patient support group called the ‘Guinea Pig
Club’ consisting of patients as well as surgeons. The facially disfigured and reconstructed soldiers became famous and accepted with the aid of this group and received a sustained level of public interest (Mayhew 18). Following
McIndoe’s example, the RAF (Royal Air Force) started to not hide the severely disfigured faces of war but to make them as visible as their uninjured companions (Mayhew 18).
Visibility could be achieved in the form of photography. Photographs were, on the one hand, crucial for the mental state of the wounded soldiers. Serial photographs of their faces were taken for the men to take home so they could compare “their original appearance with their final state and be reminded of how much worse they might have been” (Bamji 1375). This helped them establish a more positive attitude towards their situation and their new appearance. On the other hand, visibility of the wounded soldiers in the form of photographs was also crucial for the public. Photographs served the purpose of directly showing the horrors of war because photographic evidence “captures in detail a brutal reality that would otherwise be difficult to imagine” (Kubicki 187). Photographs of war are close-ups, confrontational, and fixed upon the sight of trauma. These features do not let the viewer escape the reality of war and remind them that they are confronted with images of soldiers who were husbands, fiancés, brothers, or sons (Kubicki 192). 32
Before the First World War, especially after the British Civil War, photographic histories were of great importance for the general public because they confronted them with the various aspects of war. The disfigured face, however, rarely appeared on these visual memories of the war (Gilman 161). It was during and after the First World War that photographs of facially disfigured soldiers became more popular. The surgeon Harold Gillies recognized the value of such photographs, and especially of medical photography. His interest in the field of photography and his conjunction with Kodak led to the creation of the first color film of a reconstructive operation (Petty 64).
Postwar iconography, however, was not concerned with documenting medical steps during a surgery but aimed at picturing European pacifism. The facially wounded assumed a major function in the postwar iconography because they were particularly marked by war. The photographs of their mutilated faces were the most horrible representation of the result of war to be shown to the public sphere. They were shocking but compelling at the same time because they did not only show the horrors of war but also “how the hand of the surgeon as artist was able to restore these faces to the semblance of humanity” (Gilman
160).
The face has been and continues to be the most significant image in art.
Kings and queens commissioned portraits of themselves to outlive centuries and to remind future generations of their great victories and achievements. A positive side effect of portraiture is that it hints at eternity (McNeill 122). Through making the image of oneself available for the living in the present as well as for the future, the person depicted in the portrait becomes immortal as long as the portrait is preserved.
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Portraiture changed with the discovery of photographic images and the invention of the first box camera in 1888. Suddenly, it was feasible to capture a moment which could only truly be taken out of life because taking the photo only took a few seconds, or even just a split second, in comparison to a painted portrait, which often took weeks to finish. Therefore, people began to believe in the objectivity of photography as photographs could be taken so fast and because they did not require an artist. People could even take photos of themselves, which again raised objectivity as there was no artist influencing the picture (Belting
196). This feature of photography has developed into an interesting phenomenon of the present young generation called ‘taking selfies’, the face always in the center of the selfie. However, the belief in the objectivity of photography did not last long as people began to doubt the poses and because every photo was repeatable and therefore could not depict a unique image (Belting 196).
With the onset of new technologies like the computer and the heyday of the cell phone, it is nowadays possible to manipulate and alter the face in photos.
Flaws are covered, skin appears smoother, hair is shinier – the face is changed completely, being altered to perfection only for the viewer. Hence, mostly it is not the real face which is depicted in photos but rather a mask which the face is forced to put on in order to meet the expectations of the viewer. Photos of war and disfigured soldiers, in contrast, should show the unaltered truth and served the purpose of making post-war society aware of the psychological traumata the soldiers had suffered but that they survived the war nevertheless.
Reconstructive surgery helps severely disfigured people to experience a feeling of normalcy again. Nevertheless, the psychological scars often remain, which makes psychological care and support indispensable. Especially soldiers who served and got wounded in war have to face numerous challenges after 34
having been operated. Not only do they have to come to terms with their new appearance but additionally they have to cope with the repercussions of the war on their psyche and the events they had to witness. Thus, reconstructive surgery is only the first step back into a normal life followed by many others which are often even more challenging to take.
3. Disfigured Faces of War in Literature
Literature has often been and still is a tool for people to express their feelings, their doubts, or their anger. Literature can be a way of spreading awareness and of criticizing the way of thinking of the respective society.
However, not every piece of literature has been approved by the masses or the ruling government. In post-war years, especially, anti-war literature often did not appear to be appropriately written and was therefore censored and banned from the canon. It blurred categorical binaries and challenged the notions of the distinction between the ‘living’ and the ‘dead’ or the ‘speakable’ and the
‘unspeakable’ (Abel 76).
According to Abel, such literary pieces “are taboo in periods when the maintenance of [these] distinctions is most important and canonical when the blurring of [these] distinctions is favored” (76). In post-war societies, the distinction between soldiers that survived and soldiers that died was essential
(despite many soldiers returning home as living dead people who were still alive but barely recognizable as human beings, let alone able to reenter society). The portrayal of the injury to the body offended patriotic wartime sensibilities, which is why the texts, which could not exist without the violence committed to the body, were often censored (Abel 80).
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In addition, authors who wrote or write about the wounded of the First
World War can only draw from their imagination or from what was photographed or written down by literate people as they lack records of the experiences of injured soldiers. Largely, the only sources that exist of that time are government and hospital records, texts and images produced by sufficiently literate people who had a notion for historical record, and the texts of doctors and journalists (Atkin 29).
Yet, the injured and disfigured body of war was and still is a powerful tool for writers to blur the line between life and death and shock people into a greater awareness of how severely disfigured soldiers suffered, not only at the time of the war but also after having survived its horrors and returning back home facing the challenge of having to cope with their new appearance and the judgement of society that came with it.
3.1. All Means of Communication Gone: The Totally Disfigured Body
in Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun
Dalton Trumbo was born in Colorado in 1905, died in Los Angeles in
1976, and was an American screenwriter and novelist. He was a member of the
‘Hollywood Ten’, a group consisting of ten screenwriters, directors, and producers who refused to testify about their alleged Communist affiliations before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Trumbo’s antiwar novel Johnny Got His Gun was published in 1939 and won a National Book
Award. In 1971 he turned the book into a movie.
Dalton Trumbo was a highly skilled writer and an even more skilled critic of war policies. He shocks the readers into a greater awareness of how modern society manages to successfully ignore the horrors of war and makes them aware
36
of what exactly people are ignoring. In his introduction to Johnny Got His Gun from 1970, for example, he mentions the 40,000 dead Americans in Vietnam and how people do not think about these men because they simply do not care.
However, with a shocking equation he makes clear that these soldiers should be remembered and recognized: “An equation: 40,000 dead young men = 3,000 tons of bone and flesh, 124,000 pounds of brain matter, 50,000 gallons of blood,
1,840,000 years of life that will never be lived, 100,000 children who will never be born” (Trumbo xix).
Trumbo also makes clear that many soldiers were able to return home, but their lives had changed forever because of their disabilities and the fact that they also seemed to be ignored and forgotten just like the thousands of dead men.
He writes that “[i]f the dead mean nothing to us […], what of our 300,000 wounded? […] How many arms, legs, ears, noses, mouths, faces, penises [have they] lost? How many are deaf or dumb or blind or all three? How many are single or double or triple or quadruple amputees?” (Trumbo xix f.). So, the disfigured soldiers and their lives after returning from war is of great importance to Trumbo and he criticizes how society deals with the fact that so many men are crippled for the rest of their lives: “But exactly how many hundreds or thousands of the dead-while-living does that give us? We don’t know. We don’t ask. We turn away from them; we avert the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, face” (xxi).
Trumbo’s attitude to war and his interest in the disfigured soldiers then explains why the storyline of Johnny Got His Gun evolves around the dead-while-living soldier Joe Bonham, who served in World War One.
Joe Bonham is the brother of two sisters and a loved son who is recruited by the American government for military service in the First World War and will never be able to return home. He lies in a hospital, severely hurt and constantly 37
drifting in and out of consciousness. The memories of his past blend with the realization that his body is merely a pile of living flesh. His face has been completely blown away and both his arms and legs have been amputated. As a result, he lacks any means of communication and is totally left to himself and his perfectly functioning mind. At the point when he finds a way to communicate with a nurse, his wish to be shown in public as an example of the horrors of war is denied and he is left to ‘live’ in the hospital. The book is written in the stream- of-consciousness technique without much punctuation. This technique emphasizes Joe’s consciousness about his situation and makes it hard for the reader to distinguish between Joe’s memories and the actual present he lives in.
The reader gets to know Joe’s deepest emotions and feelings and the writing style puts emphasis on his anger, fear, desperation, and his hope, all of which eventually result in the desire for human contact and social interaction.
Johnny Got His Gun is a powerfully written anti-war novel and Trumbo’s attitude towards war and its horrors becomes clear throughout the book every time Joe’s mind wanders to thinking how he ultimately ended up in the hospital, being totally disfigured. Joe was, as many other young men, forced to join the army and fight in the First World War and in the course of the book he makes it very clear that he did not want to be part of the fight. Yet, he had no other option.
Young men were forced to join the army because various governments promised a quick victory for which they needed a high number of men but which many people, like the reconstructive surgeon Harold Gillies and many others, knew was over-optimistic (Petty 14).
Joe spends the night before he has to leave his home country with the love of his life, Kareen, and when they run late for the train, her father reminds them that if Joe misses the train, he “will be shot by Americans instead of 38
Germans”1. Thus, the situation is very serious for Joe and he and the other young men do not really have any chance but to join the army and sacrifice their lives for their home country and its allies, even if they do not know what they will actually fight for:
This was no war for you. This thing wasn’t any of your business. What
do you care about making the world safe for democracy? All you wanted
to do Joe was to live. […] Because it wasn’t your fight Joe. You never
really knew what the fight was all about. (JGG 25)
Furthermore, Joe wonders why people do not have any chance to choose what they want when it comes to war. He thinks that
[i]t was kind of duty you owed yourself that when anybody said come
on son do this or do that you should stand up and say look mister why
should I do this […]? But when a guy comes along and says here come
with me and risk your life and maybe die or be crippled why then you’ve
got no rights. (JGG 113f)
One day, when Joe receives a medal, his anger is directed towards those who send the young men to war but are themselves not willing to actively fight in the war: “How many generals got killed in the war? […] How many of them had got all shot up so they had to live wrapped in a sheet for the rest of their lives? They had a lot of guts coming around and giving medals” (JGG 166).
Another day, when his only means of communication does not seem to be recognized by any of the nurses, Joe compares his situation to slavery, only that in his opinion he is far worse off than the Carthaginian slaves:
Only the slaves could always die but he couldn’t and he was mutilated
1 Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2009) 37. Hereafter abbreviated as JGG with page number in parentheses. 39
far beyond any slave who ever lived. Yet he was one of them he was part
of them he too was a slave. He too had been taken away from his home.
He too had been put into the service of another without his consent.
(JGG 191)
When a new nurse finally manages to recognize Joe’s means of communication, he comes up with the idea of being shown in public. However, the answer to his request is that it would be against regulations to let him out of the hospital and show him to the public although “[h]e was the future he was a perfect picture of the future […]” (JGG 249). The “people who plan for war”
(JGG 250) are only “afraid to let anyone see what the future was like […] and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn’t fight. So they were […] keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret” (JGG 249).
Each of these memories or thoughts shows that Joe is a victim of a war that he was not willing to fight and risk his life for. Consequently, he does not only lose his limbs but also the one part of the body which is the most important means of communication and mirrors the character and identity of a person – he loses his face. When people have face-to-face encounters, the first glance is directed at the face because it is “a showcase of the self […]” and “marks us as individuals” (McNeill 4). For Joe, it is not only painful that he will never be able to return home but also that “[h]e would never again be able to see the faces of people who made you glad just to look at them […]” (JGG 84).
Joe basically has no face left. He has no jaws, no tongue, no teeth, no roof to his mouth, and no mouth itself. Furthermore, he has no palate left, no muscles to swallow with, no nose, no ears, and no eyes – only a big hole where his face was supposed to be. All parts that define a human face are missing and 40
as the face contains many parts that are essential for living, Joe is right when he thinks that “[…] a man in that shape would be dead” (JGG 65). In fact, soldiers like Joe with such horrendous facial wounds came to the clinics of the Allies and the Central powers during the First World War. “Faces were literally blown away, jaws ripped off, skulls crushed, and soldiers with such wounds lived”
(Gilman 159). Similarly, Joe is not dead and he soon realizes that he is alive because “[…] if you knew you had lost [so many parts of your body] and were thinking about it why then you must be alive because dead men don’t think”
(JGG 65). This argumentation resembles Descartes’s ‘cogito, ergo sum’ – I think therefore I am. As long as Joe is able to think about his condition he is alive because, according to Descartes, people who think are alive and people who are dead are not capable of thinking any more (20). So, Joe’s brain functions perfectly but he lacks any means of communication. He thinks of himself as a
“thing [that is] living meat” (JGG 238) but “[b]elieve it or not this thing thinks and it is alive […]” (JGG 235) even if its face is only “[…] that red gash there with mucus hanging to it” (JGG 237).
Joe himself does not consider his condition to be one any human being can be in and that is why he often refers to himself as a ‘thing’. The fact that he has no face left is crucial for this feeling because the face is the one part of the body which defines our identity, our personality, and is pivotal in this as it enables us to connect and socialize with other people. If this ability is gone, there is not much left to hold on to, but Joe nevertheless finds a way and tries to come to terms with his situation later in the book.
Joe’s lack of face equals a lack of identity because of the “obvious relationship between the face and identity” (Pichel 29). People are identified based on their facial features but “a blast strong enough to tear [the] arms and 41
legs off must have blown all identification to hell and gone. When you have only a back and a stomach and half a head you probably look as much like a
Frenchman or a German or an Englishman as an American” (JGG 151).
Consequently, Joe is stuck in the hospital and has to cope with the lack of a face and of an identity. Joe had never been much obsessed about his identity but with the loss of it, he begins to think that there is nothing left which defines him:
“He’d never had any particular ideas about Amerca [sic]. He’d never been patriotic. It was something you took without even thinking. But now it seemed to him that if he were really lying in an English hospital he had lost something he could never hope to get back” (JGG 152).
Even if there is no face left, Joe’s “mind is unaffected he speaks like you and me he is a person he has identity he is part of the world” (JGG 223). So, Joe makes clear that although the most important marker of identity, his face, is missing, he still has an identity because identity is only shown through the face but has its roots in the mind, in the land one was raised in, and in the part of the brain which is responsible for forming an identity with all the memories and experiences people collect throughout the years. Joe is able to overcome his initial feeling of loss of identity due to the fact that people with facial disfigurement are often able to accept their impairment and incorporate it into their sense of self (Meisenbach 278). Yet, the significance of the face is further emphasized when Joe describes his experience with the new nurses, whom he can differentiate due to the vibrations of their steps, the number of steps they need to approach him, and their touching:
When a new nurse came in he always knew what she would do first. She
would pull the covers off him and then she would make no movements
for a minute or two and he would know she was looking at him and 42
probably getting a little sick. One of them turned and ran out of the room
and didn’t come back. […] Another one cried. He felt her tears on the
chest of his night shirt. (JGG 148)
The sight of a human being with half of the face missing is hard to imagine and even if men were able to return home despite their immense facial disfigurements and injuries, their loved ones did not necessarily react in a way they would have expected. They often did not recognize their relatives because
“[t]he main interest in the facial reconstructions and the plastic surgery innovations was to repair facial damage, and to give back human features to the soldiers” (Pichel 29), not necessarily restoring the soldiers’ facial features back to how they were before the war.
The war situation and the tense feeling that came with it added to the disappointment, anger, and rage when husbands, fathers, or brothers returned home not being the same as on the day they left for the battle. Joe tells a story of which he asks himself, “[h]ow could you believe or disbelieve anything any more? Four maybe five million men killed and none of them wanting to die while hundreds maybe thousands were left crazy or blind or crippled and couldn’t die no matter how hard they tried” (JGG 88). He heard of a place in Southern France where they kept the supposedly crazy ones and “[t]here was a guy a coal miner
[who] went back to his wife and three kids in Cardiff. His face had been burned off by a flare one night and when his wife saw him she let out a screech and grabbed a hatchet and chopped his head off […]” (JGG 88). She could not bear the sight of her husband’s disfigured face and would probably have reacted in another way if he had returned with only a leg or an arm missing. Joe, however, does not have the option of returning home, of ever seeing, hearing, or talking
43
again. He has to find a way to cope with his situation and he does so by focusing on the one thing he wants most – the ability to communicate.
When Joe begins to realize how badly hurt he is, at first he tries to direct his thoughts to the advantages, for example, of not having to hear “the biting little castanet sound of a machine gun or the high whistle of a .75 coming down fast […] or the yells of a guy trying to explain to somebody that he’s got a bullet in his belly and that his breakfast is coming out through the front of him […]”
(JGG 11). His positive thoughts prevail even when he realizes that they had cut off both his arms: “He thought well kid you’re deaf as a post but there isn’t the pain. You’ve got no arms but you don’t hurt. […] You’re alive and you don’t hurt and that’s much better than being alive and hurting. There are lots of things a deaf guy without arms can do […]” (JGG 60). So, Joe’s first strategy to cope with his disfigurement is to focus on positive thinking, which Kish and
Lansdown describe as a common cognitive-behavioral coping strategy for people with facial disfigurement (505), and to not panic on the realization how hurt he really is.
It is only when he becomes aware of both his legs and half his face missing, that desperation sets in. Nevertheless, his mind stays strong and he soon goes back to fighting the reality that he is completely helpless and tries to figure out a way to communicate. Before that, however, he has to recognize the times when he is in or out of consciousness and able to use his perfectly functioning mind. Joe focuses on the nurses and their touches because when he can feel the nurses’ hands, he is surely awake. Next, he tells himself to use his mind whenever he knows that he is awake: “That meant no more dreaming about the past. That meant no more of anything but thinking thinking thinking. […] He
44
had a mind left by god and that was all. It was the only thing he could use so he must use it every minute he was awake” (JGG 102).
This is where Book II starts, which is called ‘The Living’. As Joe develops hope to find a way of communicating, he turns from belonging to ‘The
Dead’ to belonging to ‘The Living’ and the fight against his situation begins. In order to keep his mind occupied, he first tries to remember facts and figures.
Then he becomes obsessed with keeping track of time by first trying to count seconds and minutes, then shifting to counting the visits of the nurses and special events like bathing or changing his bed cloths, until he tries to recognize and feel the heat of the sunrise with the only organ of perception he has left – his skin.
This strategy resembles the sub-strategy ‘refocusing’ suggested by Meisenbach
(283). He shifts the focus from his disfigurement to the parts of his body which function normally. Thus, his first great achievement is the ability to finally keep track of time: “He had recaptured time−he had won his fight. The muscles of his body relaxed. In his mind in his heart in whatever parts of him that were left he was singing singing singing” (JGG 142).
After this, Joe is eager to achieve his next and most important goal, namely to establish a new, unconventional means of communication without the traditional tools that the face or his arms would normally provide. Thus, he applies the coping strategy ‘countering’ by “acquiring skills not normally seen to be within the grasp of […]” (Hughes 21) people with certain impairments. He remembers that he constantly feels vibrations and then has the idea that vibrations could also be triggered by himself:
The fall of a foot on the floor is one kind of vibration. The tap of a
telegraph key is simply another kind. […] He still remembered the Morse
code. All he had to do in order to break through to people in the outside 45
world was to lie in his bed and dot dash to the nurse. Then he could talk.
(JGG 168)
However, the nurses do not understand what Joe is trying to do and therefore he becomes so obsessed with the idea of tapping a message with his head that “[t]he instant he awakened he began to tap and he continued until the moment when drowsiness overcame him” (JGG 172). Consequently, the hospital staff inject sedatives so that Joe would be still.
Yet he never loses hope, and hope appears one day when a new nurse is assigned to Joe. She begins to write letters on the skin of his breast and when he realizes what she is doing, this is the first time Joe is excessively happy: “It was like a dazzling white light in the midst of darkness. It was like a great beautiful sound in the midst of silence. It was like an enormous laugh in the midst of death” (JGG 207).
Additionally, his new nurse is the one who finally understands what Joe is trying to achieve with the tapping of his head. She realizes that he tries to communicate with her and when people come to see him, he successfully counters the stigma that is imprinted on him: “[…] [H]ere is a man who can think here is a man who lay in his bed with only a cut of meat to hold him together and yet he thought of a way to talk. Listen to him speak” (JGG 223). The new nurse can therefore be considered as belonging to the group of ‘The Wise’ suggested by Goffman (41) because she understands Joe and sympathizes with him.
When they ask Joe what he wants, his thoughts instantly drift to the idea that his wish is to be shown in public and “sense other men around him” (JGG
230). He wants to be a living example of the horrors of war and wants society to know that cases like him exist and that despite his terrible condition he is alive:
46
People were always willing to pay to see a curiosity they were always
interested in terrible sights and probably nowhere on the face of the earth
was there any living thing quite so terrible as he was. […] He would be
an educational exhibit. People wouldn’t learn much about anatomy from
him but they would learn all there was to know about war. (JGG 232)
His obsession shifts from tapping to the idea of concentrating “the whole war into such a small piece of meat and bone and hair that they would never forget it as long as they lived” (JGG 233). In fact, photographs of facially disfigured men resulted in exactly what Joe wants to achieve by being shown to the public.
Photographs of disfigured soldiers were shown to the public because “[n]o more horrible result of war could be represented in the public sphere than the mutilation of the face” (Gilman 159) and even repaired faces were still so grotesque that they shocked the viewer into an awareness of the horrors of war.
However, to Joe’s disappointment and desperation, the people he communicates his wish to deny what he asks for because it would be against regulations and they ask about Joe’s identity and name, which he will not answer as his rage and desperation overwhelm him and the book ends with Joe’s thoughts of warning the generals, masters, and makers of war that it will be them who will ultimately die of their actions: “It will be you−you who urge us on to battle you who incite us against ourselves […] you who would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live”
(JGG 250). They deny Joe’s wish in spite of the fact that after having survived war, “[t]he process of integrating the facially disfigured into a variety of public contexts was […] a complex [but necessary] mixture of medical and military imperatives […]” (Mayhew 155f).
47
Summing up, Joe can cope with his situation because his thoughts stay positive and his mind functions perfectly despite only his torso and half of his face being left of his whole body. His obsession with keeping his mind occupied further helps him to come to terms with his helplessness. In addition, he fights against his situation and the reality that he basically should not be able to live and tries to establish a new, unconventional character in his mind. Furthermore, he counters the stigma that the hospital staff probably impose on him by achieving skills which would normally not be associated with a person in Joe’s condition – he finds a way to communicate without a voice and arms. He never really accepts his situation until he is told that his wish to be shown in public cannot be granted.
In Johnny Got His Gun reconstructive surgery is not a strategy that helps
Joe cope with his disfigurement but the actions the doctors have taken are described and Joe criticizes the surgeons to a certain extent. Before Joe realizes that his arms, legs, and half of his face are missing, he can feel bandages in which he is wrapped from top to bottom, even his head. What Joe only realizes later is that the doctors have amputated both of his arms and legs and he is angry about this decision because “[y]ou can’t just go out and cut a man’s arm off without asking him without getting permission because a man’s arm is his own and he needs it” (JGG 26). Furthermore, they have to give him artificial respiration because “[t]here wasn’t any air in his throat […]. His lungs were sucking it in somewhere below his throat” (JGG 62).
If facial injuries involved substantial loss of tissue, the surgeons often could not deal with them and thus gave the men a thin metal mask in order to disguise the disfigurement (Kubicki 187f). The mask as a tool of covering his injury to the face is also an issue when Joe recognizes that they 48
had put a mask over his face and it was tied at the top around his
forehead. […] The mask was just a square of cloth tied securely and
pulled down toward his throat so that the nurse in her comings and goings
wouldn’t vomit at the sight of her patient. It was a very thoughtful
arrangement. (JGG 90)
Joe thinks of the mask not as a medical tool to help his face heal and be protected, but rather as a cover-up for his severely disfigured face, which the nurses could not be asked to bear. However, after World War One the thin metal “[…] masks were an ingenious response to a terrible problem but they could not fill the vacuum of a missing face” (Kubicki 190).
Finally, Joe criticizes the surgeons, or rather what the war had made of them because “[t]he war had been a wonderful thing for the doctors and he was the lucky guy who had profited by everything they learned” (JGG 89) as “[t]he doctors were getting pretty smart especially now that they had had three or four years in the army with plenty of raw material to experiment on. If they got to you quickly enough so you didn’t bleed to death they could save you from almost any kind of injury” (JGG 85). Joe does not see the surgeons as saviors of life but rather blames them for actively experimenting on human beings in order to establish new skills, even if “[s]uddenly there were patients where before there had only been corpses […]” (Mayhew 33). Furthermore, he is sure of the fact that the surgeons “had rolled up their sleeves and rubbed their hands together and said well boys here’s a very interesting problem let’s see what we can do.
[…] Now they had come upon something that was a challenge […]” (JGG 86).
However, he does not appreciate their effort of trying everything to keep him alive despite the fact that the surgeons’ duty “was to the patient, to do all that was in his power to give back that which had been lost and to restore morale and 49
self-respect” (Petty 24). Nevertheless, Joe would rather die than be a living pile of dead flesh which the doctors can experiment on because he is as helpless, voiceless, and still as any person, or any test object, can be.
3.2. Hercules Turning into Frankenstein’s Monster: War Changing a
Young Soldier’s Face from Beauty to Beast in Amy Harmon’s
Making Faces
Amy Harmon was born in Utah in 1968. She is a New York Times, Wall
Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author. Making Faces was published in 2013 and evolves around the cousins Fern and Bailey, Fern’s best friend Rita, and Ambrose.
Fern is desperately in love with Ambrose, who is the school’s recently most successful and most beautiful wrestler and Bailey is in love with Rita.
However, due to Bailey’s muscular dystrophy, he is bound to the wheelchair and diagnosed to not get older than twenty-one, which reduces his chances with Rita.
Fern has a similar problem with Ambrose because he looks like “one of those guys on the cover of a romance novel. […] Alpha males, tight abs, smoldering looks […]. To Fern, Ambrose Young was absolutely beautiful, a Greek god among mortals, the stuff of fairy tales and movie screens”2. Fern, in contrast, is
“[s]mall and pale, with bright-red hair and forgettable features […]” (MF 6) and that is why she knows that she is the kind of girl “who [is] easily overlooked, easily ignored, and never dreamed about” (MF 6). Rita, on the other hand, has an angelic face, blonde hair, and perfect breasts and every time Fern looks at
2 Amy Harmon, Making Faces (New York: Spencer Hill Press, 2013) 4. Hereafter abbreviated as MF with page number in parentheses. Flashbacks in the book are indicated through italics. Therefore, quotations with an emphasis in italics in this diploma thesis are adopted as such from the original. 50
Rita she feels “a pang of despair” (MF 25). At first it seems that Ambrose is not really interested in Fern but after joining the army and serving in Iraq, where he loses all four friends he had convinced to join him, and from which he returns home with a disfigured face and a broken personality, Ambrose slowly falls in love with Fern, who helps him to come to terms with his situation.
Harmon draws the characters of this book mostly from her social environment. Fern, like Harmon herself, writes books and is eventually able to score a three-book deal with a respected romance publisher, and Bailey has muscular dystrophy, just like the husband of Harmon’s cousin. Furthermore,
Harmon has a personal interest in war, and especially in the war in Iraq, because in the acknowledgments at the end of the book it becomes clear that her younger brother served in Iraq: “To Eric Shepherd, thank you for your military service and for looking out for my little brother in Iraq. And thank you for giving me a glimpse of what it’s really like for the soldiers when they’re gone and when they come home” (Harmon 309). So, Ambrose, his sufferings and experiences, as well as the other characters are inspired by persons who are near to Harmon.
One day in school, on which a calculus assignment had been planned,
Mr. Hildy’s math class watches history unfold when he turns on the TV and the whole class watches the two towers of the World Trade Center collapse on 11th
September 2001. “Mr. Hildy was an old Vietnam vet […]. He knew, maybe better than anyone, what the cost would be. It would be young lives. War was coming” (MF 14). Soon after the attack, an army recruiter visits Hannah Lake
High School and Ambrose cannot get the pictures of 9/11 out of his head. That is why he decides to join the army: “Like the whole country, he wanted someone to pay for the deaths of three thousand people on 9/11. […] Someone had to go.
Someone had to fight. If not him, then who? What if nobody went? Would it 51
happen again?” (MF 45) So, at first it seems that Ambrose has a patriotic motivation in mind when he decides to join the army. He does not want an attack like the one on 9/11 to happen again and he is afraid that if young men like he did not go to war, they would fail the duty to serve their country. Later, it becomes clear that Ambrose feared his future and what might become of his friendship to the four boys if they all went to different colleges.
Furthermore, the whole town expects him to succeed in his wrestling career, which puts a lot of pressure on him: “For me [signing up] felt like a chance to get away, to be with the guys just a little longer. I didn’t really want to go to college. Not yet. I felt like the whole town was depending on me […]. I liked the idea of being a different kind of hero” (MF 157). The pressure of having to succeed and being a hero for the town is a burden for Ambrose because
“[e]verybody who is somebody becomes nobody the moment they fail” (MF 31) and he tries not to fail people’s expectations by trying to escape and come back another kind of hero than the kind everybody anticipates.
However, he does not feel like a hero because “[h]is pride in being a soldier had been decimated by the loss of his friends and the responsibility he felt for their deaths” (MF 176). His four friends, Paulie, Grant, Beans, and Jesse do not understand his decision at first, but eventually they all agree to going to
Iraq together. In the end, only Ambrose is able to return back as Paulie’s forecast of “[j]oining the army [seeming] like a good way to get [himself] killed” (MF
58) becomes true and the four friends get killed by a roadside bomb.
Yet, Ambrose is the one who is worst off because in a conversation with
Mr. Hildy after graduation the teacher tells him that “[t]he lucky ones are the ones who don’t come back” (MF 70), and that is exactly how Ambrose feels the first months after his return. Nevertheless, Mr. Hildy reinforces his decision 52
when Ambrose asks him why he had gone to Vietnam. Mr. Hildy had been drafted and he would not have gone if, at the time, he had had a choice. However, he would not change his past either: “The things I fought for, I’d fight for again.
I’d fight for my family, my freedom to say whatever the hell I want, and for the guys I fought beside. That, most of all. You fight for the guys you serve with. In the middle of a firefight, that’s all you think about” (MF 70).
Every soldier has an individual history and when they fight together for months, they get to know each other and often become close friends.
Individuality and identity are mostly defined by the facial features and the hair.
Thus, the face is not only a significant social stimulus but it is “regarded as a clue to [people’s] identity, and as such it has far-reaching implications for what
[they are], for what [they do], and for [their] life chances” (Macgregor 124). Fern is then maybe right when she says that by cutting off the hair and presenting the boys in the mass of the whole army unit, the faces are deprived of their individuality and it is easier for family members to let go as they cannot recognize their loved ones in the mass: “Every soldier blended with the next, a swarm of the same, and Fern wondered if that was somehow merciful−take away their individuality so saying good-bye wasn’t so personal” (MF 84).
However, ultimately saying good-bye becomes a personal issue when the family members are not allowed to see their dead husband’s, brother’s, or friend’s face once more. The face as a marker of identity is often blown away to unrecognizability in war, which is why soldiers’ caskets remain closed when they die in war and are buried in their home towns: “No open caskets for soldiers returning from war, for soldiers who had died from an improvised explosive device that blew a two-ton Humvee into the air and sent another one careening.
[…] Judging from the damage to his own face, they would have been ravaged, 53
unrecognizable” (MF 245). The significance of the face for identification and the justification for keeping the caskets of fallen soldiers shut is shown when
Ambrose remembers the first dead body that he and his friends saw in Iraq:
His face was a swollen mass of black and blue, blood was dried at the
corners of his mouth and beneath his nostrils. He wouldn’t have been
recognizable if not for his hair. When they realized who it was, Paulie
had walked away from the dead man they all knew and thrown up the
breakfast he’d consumed only an hour before. (MF 244)
So, war is able to deprive soldiers of their most important part of identity, and for a beautiful young man like Ambrose, whom Fern compares to a Greek god, it is even harder to cope with the fact that his face is disfigured and with the new identity he has to develop because people whose faces are changed, either voluntarily or involuntarily, “often feel they’ve lost part of themselves”
(McNeill 7f) and therefore part of their identity.
The significance of the face and of one’s outward appearance for human beings is of great interest in the book because of the contrast of beautiful
Ambrose and Rita to ordinary Fern and Bailey suffering from an incurable disease. Ambrose’s face is described as “a strong face, a face more prone to introspection than jest” (MF 55), and a face “the girls [are] drawn to and the guys secretly [covet]” (MF 55). Fern, in contrast, is described by her mother as not being pretty the way that Rita is and although Fern’s aunt then maintains that one could not find a better kid than Fern and that she is actually a blessing, the only words that stick to Fern’s mind are the ones that describe her appearance:
“But Fern was rooted to the spot. She didn’t hear the word blessing. […] She’s not pretty. The words clanged around in her head like pots and pans being jostled and banged” (MF 26, emphasis in original). When Bailey asks Fern who 54
she would like to be if she had the choice, she answers that she would not mind looking like Rita. However, she then corrects her wish and says that she would just like to trade faces and would still like to be herself on the inside (MF 144).
This clearly shows Fern’s strong character, which her face, in her opinion, does not mirror. Fern wishes for a face that mirrors her character and identity better because often people treat the face as the self (McNeill 6) and because of the ancient but still vital association of ugliness with bad character (Gilman 26).
Fern and her father, who is a pastor, have similar views on beauty and that the outward appearance does not say anything about the character of the respective person. Her father thinks that “beauty can be a deterrent to love […]
[b]ecause sometimes we fall in love with a face and not what’s behind it” (MF
99). “[…] [S]ometimes a beautiful face is false advertising […] and too many of us don’t take the time to look beneath the lid” (MF 100) because people tend to
“read character in the face […]” (McNeill 282). He also maintains that Jesus was not beautiful and that God did not make his outside match his inside because
“[i]f he had been beautiful or powerful, people would have followed him for that alone−they would have been drawn to him for all the wrong reasons” (MF 100).
Fern seems to be able to see the beautiful even in supposedly ugly and scary things. For example, when she and Bailey observe a spider with his gangly legs,
Fern is surprised by the thought that crosses her mind: “They watched him, entranced by his terrifying beauty. The thought took Fern by surprise. He was beautiful even though he frightened her” (MF 8). In fact, she thanks God for
“making even ugly things beautiful” (MF 10).
The fact that Fern does not focus on the beauty of a person and sees beauty in every living creature in consequence significantly helps Ambrose to come to terms with his disfigurement as it seems that while “[l]ife had given 55
[him] another face […]” Fern wonders “if he would ever be able to accept it”
(MF 111). She does not follow the instinctive reaction to a severely disfigured human face, namely to be repelled, to turn away, or to ignore (Mayhew 156).
One side of Ambrose’s face is unchanged and still contains his old facial features, his strong jaw, perfect lips, smooth skin, and dark eyes (MF 84) while the other side is completely disfigured and dysfunctional. Consequently, “[…] his life [is] as unrecognizable as his face” (MF 115), and moments in which he only wants to hide or vanish make “him long for the face that he used to see when he looked in the mirror, a face that he’d taken for granted. A face that had smoothed his way more than once with a pretty girl that caught his eye. […] But it was a face he would never have again, and he found he was lost without it”
(MF 127). Ambrose does not want to be seen in public, especially not in daylight, because of his “newly acquired fight-or-flight reaction that [floods] him anytime someone [looks] at him directly” (MF 130). He hates being stared at and being the center of attention, which he cannot avoid because of his face deviating from his old looks and deviating from the normalcy and beauty that people expect of him and he expects of himself. In general, stares are difficult to cope with for facially disfigured people because it is usually rude and invades people psychologically and physiologically (McNeill 230) which results in either fighting the stare or fleeing the upcoming quiver of warning (McNeill 228).
So, suddenly Ambrose can relate to Fern’s feeling of not being seen the way she wants to be seen and the significance of his face takes on a new meaning.
Fern’s poem then speaks for both of them, trying to find someone to blame for the faces they have to live with:
If God makes all our faces, did he laugh when he made me?
Does he make the legs that cannot walk and eyes that cannot see? 56
Does he curl the hair upon my head ‘til it rebels in wild defiance?
Does he close the ears of the deaf man to make him more reliant?
Is the way I look coincidence or just a twist of fate?
If he made me this way, is it okay to blame him for the things I hate?
For the flaws that seem to worsen every time I see a mirror,
For the ugliness I see in me, for the loathing and the fear?
Does he sculpt us for his pleasure, for a reason I can’t see?
If God makes all our faces, did he laugh when he made me? (MF 68)
Ambrose finds various strategies to come to terms with his disfigured face but Fern is pivotal in this as she is the first person to succeed in breaking through to him, making him live his life to the fullest again, and supporting him in every possible way she can.
At first, Ambrose tries to cope with his facial disfigurement by avoiding social situations and covering his face. Avoidance and covering are common coping strategies suggested by Hughes (21) because facially disfigured people feel less sociable, have a strong desire to be alone, and try hard to hide their impairment (Brown et al. 1052). When Fern first meets him after he has returned from war, she drives her bike home from work late at night and nearly collides with Ambrose, who is working out. Ambrose wears a snug and a black sweatshirt with a hood that hangs low on his forehead. He also keeps his face averted as he speaks to Fern, hoping that she does not recognize his damaged face (MF 113).
Ambrose does not show in public at daylight because he feels safer at night. That is why he only works at night in the bakery that his father owns because “[t]he work was comforting and quiet−safe” (MF 126). Rogers maintains that
“Veterans burned during the war, for example, have been known to seek
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employment only at night time, working as helpers in loading trucks, because they were ashamed to be seen in the daylight […]” (45).
Fern tries to break through to Ambrose and show him that “[t]he people who cared about him still cared about him […]” (MF 123) by communicating with the aid of the bakery’s blackboard on which she writes either/or questions at first, just like she did in her first letters to Ambrose. When this way does not result in Ambrose opening up to her, she switches to Shakespeare quotes, which only makes him even more angry because he does not want to be encouraged and “[…] he sure as hell [does not] want to keep finding Shakespeare quotes to write on that damn whiteboard” (MF 125). Ambrose’s anger is not directed at
Fern, the surgical success, or the people who want to help him but, as it is often the case with facially disfigured people, is directed at the unfulfilled past or the difficult future ahead because people with facial disfigurement “mourn not only the loss of an attractive face but possibly a career and a whole way of life”
(Jeppson 138). However, Fern, with the aid of Bailey and his great humor, ultimately manages to become friends with Ambrose and involve him in their lives and activities.
Social contact and involvement are extremely important for Ambrose as he has so far avoided to be seen in public and even had his father send any visitors away because of his “fear of curious stares [or] the attempts people
[make] to act like there [is] nothing wrong with his appearance” (MF 147). Being part of a community and socializing with other people again was also of great importance for disfigured soldiers after the two World Wars. That is why the reconstructive surgeon McIndoe put great effort in reintegrating his patients into society and heavily focused on post-surgical support and guidance (Mayhew
157). The humor that the weird couple of Fern and Bailey bring with them 58
increases Ambrose’s mood as he does not think “he had laughed. Not once in an entire year” (MF 132) and makes reintegration into society easier for him.
Furthermore, Ambrose then also copes with his disfigurement by making jokes about it, which Fern and Bailey had made so much easier. Newton et al. maintain that people with facial protheses commonly reported jokes as a method for dealing with people’s questions about the facial prosthesis (587). Kish and
Lansdown as well as Meisenbach also found that a sense of humor and making jokes about the disfigurement are common coping strategies and show that facially disfigured people start to accept their new appearance.
One day, when Fern is attacked by Becker, Rita’s violent husband,
Ambrose has to save her and has to confront the fear of being exposed in public at daylight. Becker’s reaction when seeing his face adds to his despair when he says: “’Ambrose Young! You look like shit, man! Better run before the townsfolk mistake you for an ogre and come after you with pitchforks!” (MF
138). However, in this situation Ambrose manages to overcome his shame and counters the stigma that he feels being imposed on him because of his facial disfigurement and tells Becker to not be fooled by his “ugly mug” as “[…] there isn’t anything wrong with [his] fists” (MF 139). The fact that Ambrose has not lost his strength and fitness also helps him to come to terms with his new facial features. Macgregor also claims that “[…] the deprivations of facially disfigured persons are minimized because they are able-bodied […]” (124).
In the presence of Fern, he becomes more and more relaxed and when he at first positions himself so that his left side, his beautiful side, is facing her (MF
140), he then stops ducking his head and turning away from her (MF 141). Fern sees the beauty in Ambrose despite his disfigurement and does not only focus on his outward appearance but on his character and inner beauty. She looks at him 59
“as if there [is] nothing wrong with his face, as if his very presence [makes] her happy” (MF 186) and she makes him feel safe and forget the horrors of his experiences at war (MF 201).
Ambrose also sees a psychologist, who helps him through the time after his return and tells him “that he [needs] to learn to adjust to his ‘new reality,’ to
‘come to terms with what had happened to him,’ to ‘find new pursuits and associations’” (MF 129). Psychologists, self-help groups, or charities are pivotal for the coping process of people with facial disfigurement as they offer patients who need to grieve an opportunity to cry, to be angry, and to talk about their feelings (Jeppson 138). Consequently, Ambrose’s psychologist is “floored by the ‘improvements in his mental health’ […] all due to a little pill called Fern”
(MF 227). Fern does not only make him laugh again but she also gives him purpose as she is still insecure about how he feels about her. When she reveals her despair and her strong feelings for him, he is “amazed at how much better it
[feels] to give comfort than receive it. He’d been on the receiving end of care and comfort […] [b]ut since the attack, he had never given comfort, never offered a shoulder to cry on, never burdened himself with the weight of someone else’s grief” (MF 162).
However, before he can help someone grieve, he has to overcome his own grief, which consequently also helps him to cope with his disfigurement as
“Ambrose’s inability to face what had happened to him and to his friends
[makes] it impossible for anyone else to come to terms with it, either” (MF 259).
He feels responsible for the deaths of his four friends and the next step, after being socially able again, is to face this feeling. He starts by taking small steps, climbing “the hill that [leads] to the pretty overlook where his four friends [are] buried” (MF 173). Furthermore, “[…] the names of Ambrose’s fallen friends 60
[are] inked across the left side [of] his chest” (MF 225) because his face “is a reminder every day of their deaths” (MF 226) and he just wants something that reminds him of their lives. Finally, he is able to “[make] the rounds to all the families of his fallen friends [although] [i]t hadn’t been easy for any of them, but the healing process had begun […]” (MF 294f). The fact that he is able to come to terms with his feelings of guilt also makes it easier for Ambrose to cope with his facial disfigurement because he thinks that he deserves this face, which constantly reminds him of his four friends.
Later, countering also becomes a coping strategy of Ambrose. By countering, he shows skills that are normally not associated with the respective impairment (Hughes 21). Ambrose has lost his eyesight and his ability to hear on the disfigured side of his face, which makes wrestling more difficult.
Nevertheless, he manages, with the aid of his trainer and his own commitment, to be a successful wrestler again. Wrestling also greatly helps him to get back a feeling of normalcy, although
some days, Ambrose [fears] he more closely [resembles] a monster than
a hero. The four lives he [feels] responsible for [are] lost, and no amount
of labor or penance would bring them back. […] [But] he could wrestle,
and if there was a place beyond this life where young men lived on and
heroes like Bailey walked again […] they would smile and know he
wrestled for them. (MF 269)
Ambrose even goes one step further and starts “his own foundation called
Making Faces, a charity that works with returning vets who need facial reconstruction after sustaining injuries, much like Ambrose himself experienced in Iraq” (MF 303). Ambrose uses his own experiences after having to adjust to
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a new life with a totally disfigured face and hence helps others who have to face the same challenges to come to terms with their difficult situations.
To sum up, Ambrose undergoes several stages in his coping process.
First, he avoids social encounters, hides at home, only works at night, and tries to cover his disfigurement. Then he starts to engage with Fern and Bailey and their humor helps him to accept the new appearance of his face. Fern is the key in Ambrose’s coping process as she supports him in every situation and decision he makes. In addition, Ambrose’s psychologist and the fact that his strength and fitness have been preserved add to his increasing contentment. Probably the most important step in order to successfully come to terms with his facial disfigurement is the ability to cope with the feeling of guilt because he feels responsible for the death of his four friends. Furthermore, countering is also helpful in that this strategy gives Ambrose a strong sense of intrinsic value because he is able to successfully wrestle despite his hearing and seeing impairments. He is eventually able to finish his coping process when he starts his own foundation, helping soldiers who suffered the same trauma as he did.
Of course, removal is also a strategy that Ambrose uses in order to cope with his disfigurement. He can eliminate part of the stigma, or rather reduce the severity of his disfigurement, through reconstructive surgery. Ambrose is gravely injured and treated in the “Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he [has to] stay until he [is] stable enough to bring back to the United States. If he [lives] that long” (MF 109) and after he survives the time he has “surgery after surgery to repair his damaged face” (MF 109).
During the time in the hospital, Ambrose wonders why no one would let him see a mirror. There deliberately are no mirrors in his room so that he cannot see how gravely injured he really is and get shocked at the sight of his own face. 62
Pichel maintains that also during the First World War, “[…] mirrors were banned in the hospital wards because they could discourage the patients and delay their recovery” (25). Mirrors are important for humankind because we “search our selves in mirrors” (McNeill 112) and they “show the riddle we present to others and ask us to scry our souls, an exercise that is doomed and irresistible” (McNeill
112). Mirrors show the image of people, which is both true and deceptive, and make them think about who they want to be and how they want to be seen. People want to find themselves in the image that the mirror projects but often they only react to the presented “photon clone as if it were a distinct person” (McNeill
110). Ambrose finds a way to look at his image despite the missing mirrors and he reacts as if it were not the image of his own face staring back at him:
There wasn’t a mirror in the room. […] But the window, with its thin
blinds, would work almost as well. […] Three faces stared back at
Ambrose from the glass. He registered his father’s face first, a mask of
despair just behind his right shoulder, and then he saw his own face,
gaunt and swollen, but still recognizable. But merged with the
recognizable half of his reflection was a pulpy, misshapen mess of ruined
skin, Frankenstein stitching, and missing parts−someone Ambrose didn’t
know at all. (MF 116)
After having survived the surgeries and the despair that came with the reflection, which was presented to Ambrose through the glass of the window,
[t]he skin on the right side of his face [is] rippled […] Where there
[aren’t] ripples, there [are] pock marks, and the right side of his face and
neck [is] spotted with black marks […]. A long thick scar [runs] from the
corner of his mouth and up the side of his face […]. His right eye [is]
glassy and fixed, and a scar [runs] vertically through his eyelid, extending 63
above his eye through his eyebrow and below his eye in a straight line
with his nose intersecting the scar that [starts] at the corner of his mouth.
(MF 118f)
Furthermore, Ambrose can feel the pieces of shrapnel that are still buried in his skin working their way out which bothers him. However, “[t]he doctors told him some of the shrapnel, the pieces buried deep in his right arm and shoulder, and some of the pieces in his skull would probably never work themselves out” (MF
125).
The doctors were able to save Ambrose’s right eyeball, which was also injured by a piece of shrapnel, but not his eyesight. In addition, he describes the procedures that the doctors took as follows:
‘There’s a steel plate on the side of my head that attaches to my
cheekbone and my jaw. The skin on my face was peeled back here and
here,’ Ambrose indicated the long scars that crisscrossed his cheek. […]
‘The skin they put back was like Swiss cheese and I had shrapnel buried
in the soft tissue of my face. That’s why the skin is so bumpy and
pockmarked. Some of the shrapnel is still working its way out’. (MF 210)
Nevertheless, living with a pockmarked half of a face which is marked by two long scars is better than having to live with only one side of the face, the other side being a hole or non-existent.
Reconstructive surgery helps Ambrose to cope with his disfigurement also because it manages to successfully hide the parts of his face that are missing and only artificially replaced. His right ear was blown off during the attack and he now wears a prosthetic, which Bailey, for example, does not recognize until
Ambrose “[pulls] the prosthetic ear from the magnets that [hold] it in place” (MF
209). Valauri also argues that “[t]he use of a prosthesis is of utmost importance 64
in the successful care of many patients who have oral or facial deformities […]”
(70) and that “[t]he prosthesis assures immediate and early rehabilitations, and is of great importance to the morale of the patient” (81). Furthermore, Cleaver mentions the technique with a magnet being positioned, in his patient’s case,
“vertically behind the nasal opening and a similar magnet [also being] used in the nasal prosthesis” (90). Therefore, this is a common technique to hide that parts of the face are missing, and Cleaver further argues that when this patient is wearing his prosthesis, there is no indication of ear loss except for the small scars from the burns (98). Prostheses that appear like actual body parts thus greatly help patients to remove a possible stigma that would come with the visibility of the loss of an ear, eye, or the nose.
4. Conclusion
Human beauty is mostly defined through the face and people with a disability are often pushed to the margins of society due to the assumption that they are incapable of social functioning. Facial disfigurement is a disability which is hard to cope with, not only because of its immediate visibility and the fact that the face is the part of the body that first draws attention to people in social encounters, but also because it is pivotal for people’s physical functioning, health, and their identity. Already throughout the past centuries, people with facial disfigurement were perceived more negatively than ‘normal’ people, sometimes even more so than nowadays. Hence, they have to face various challenges ranging from coping with negative perceptions and judgements to finding a job or simply proving that they are still capable of social functioning.
People with facial disfigurement have to develop certain coping strategies in order to successfully reintegrate into society. The general aim of
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every coping strategy is to shift the attention away from the discrediting stigma to characteristics that are more favorable. Some avoid social situations wherever possible and withdraw from society, others counter a stigma by acquiring skills that astonish ‘normal’ people because they do not associate the skill with the stigma. However, most people with facial disfigurement first try to remove their visible deviation with the aid of, for example, reconstructive surgery.
Reconstructive surgery and aesthetic surgery often use the same methods and techniques but are defined as two different professions because reconstructive surgery is necessary for restoring function and aesthetic surgery aims at altering the appearance of healthy people for the purpose of personal contentment. The roots of reconstructive surgery date back to the time of ancient
India, the Roman empire, or 16th-century Italy. However, the heyday of reconstructive surgery was triggered by the First World War and its great number of injured soldiers. Reconstructive surgery involves numerous surgeries as well as post-surgical support and guidance. The latter is nearly as important as the former because it mitigates the risk of patients’ completely withdrawing from society. That is why the soldiers of the two World Wars were send to rehabilitation centers where regular meetings between patient and surgeon or patient and counsellor were obligatory. Nowadays, psychological care and support are indispensable for the coping process, especially for soldiers who not only have to come to terms with their altered appearance but also with the horrors they had to witness during war.
Already in the introduction to his book, Trumbo criticizes that post-war society does not seem to care about the millions of husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers who have been killed in the war and about the thousands of men being disfigured for the rest of their lives. The main character of Johnny Got His Gun 66
is forced to join the army and returns from war totally disfigured, unable to communicate or leave the hospital.
Nearly no parts of Joe’s face are left and his condition rather resembles that of a dead than that of a living man, which is why he refers to himself as a
‘thing’. The nurses are shocked at the sight of his disfigurements and his lack of means of communication deprives Joe of any chance for social contact.
Furthermore, Joe claims that due to the unrecognizability of his face, he lacks identity and must look like anyone else as all means of identification was blown away.
Joe tries to cope with his situation by first keeping his thoughts positive and focusing on the fact that his mind still functions perfectly. The focus on keeping his mind busy turns into an obsession and results in Joe ‘countering’ his disfigurement because he manages to acquire the skill of successfully communicating without any facial features or limbs to articulate himself.
However, his final wish and probably most important way of coping with his situation is not granted – the wish of having a purpose in life and feeling social contact again by being released from the hospital and shown to the public.
In Johnny Got His Gun, Joe criticizes reconstructive surgeons and makes clear that he thinks they only take advantage of the many disfigured bodies to experiment on them. Thus, reconstructive surgery in the book is depicted as a profession that satisfies the surgeons’ need for experimentation and medical progress.
In Making Faces, Ambrose joins the army voluntarily after the attacks of
9/11. He is able to return home while four of his friends die in Iraq. However, he does not feel like he is the lucky one who managed to return but he agrees with his teacher, who maintains that the lucky ones are those who do not come back. 67
Although in Making Faces it becomes clear that a beautiful appearance does not equal a beautiful character, Ambrose’s mother does not want to visit him during his time in hospital because she cannot stand the look of his face.
After surgery Ambrose’s facial disfigurement can only be recognized by two long scars running along his face.
The connection of the face and identity is also briefly mentioned in
Making Faces as there is one soldier who is deprived of his marker of identity – his facial features – and is only recognizable because of his hair.
Ambrose at first avoids social situations altogether, completely withdraws from society, and every time he leaves the house, even at night, he tries to cover the disfigured side of his face. Furthermore, he sees a psychologist and uses ‘countering’ by starting to wrestle again. However, the most important
‘coping strategy’ is his relationship with Fern and the love and attraction he feels for her. She is the one who encourages him to face his feeling of guilt for the death of his four friends. In the end, he even launches a foundation that helps people who had to experience and witness the same horrors as he had to.
In Making Faces, reconstructive surgery is pivotal in this as it nearly restores Ambrose’s face to normality again, which makes his disfigurement less visible. However, the surgeons are not able to restore the function of his right eye and ear. Ambrose describes the techniques, methods, and materials the surgeons used to repair his face in detail. They even manage to hide that one of his ears got blown off by creating a prosthetic ear which resembles a natural one nearly to unrecognizability.
In both books the horrors of war and its impact on the soldiers are described. Trumbo is more critical and expresses his anger through the thoughts and feelings of Joe whereas Harmon highlights that Ambrose had a choice but 68
also shows his despair and helplessness through his feelings and his struggle of coming to terms with the experiences he had to undergo. Furthermore, the reasonability of war is constantly questioned in Johnny Got His Gun, in contrast to Making Faces, in which the focus rather lies on the complicated love story between Ambrose and Fern.
Both characters cope with their situation in different ways but Joe’s situation is more difficult to handle because of his lack of communication.
However, there is one strategy they have in common – both counter their situation by acquiring skills that normally nobody would associate with the physical condition they find themselves in.
The two literary pieces may differ in some points, be it, for example, in their extent of criticizing war or the severity of the disfigurement. However, they both show what people can accomplish even if the situation seems hopeless.
Furthermore, both highlight that beauty and a strong character do not derive from outward appearance and a flawless face but from people’s attitude towards life, their desire to live, and an awareness of who they are and how they want to present themselves to the world.
5. A Didactic Approach to the Topic of Facial Disfigurement and Amy
Harmon’s Making Faces
School is a place where numerous characters, mindsets, ethnic backgrounds, and different cultures come together – a place of multiculturality and heterogeneity. However, pupils who deviate from the norm, be it due to their cultural or ethnic background or their visual difference, often become the target of pupils who do not accept and appreciate ‘otherness’. Consequently, bullying becomes an issue, which often not only the victims but also teachers and parents
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have to struggle with. Pupils with facial disfigurement provide a special target as they cannot hide their visual ‘otherness’. The face is prone to inspection and judgement, it is the initial point of focus, and a disfigurement of the face cannot easily be concealed. If teachers or parents observe a possible case of bullying, they need to take action and raise awareness in order to ensure the pupil’s well- being at school. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the issue of visual difference and bullying in school. Since literature can be a powerful tool to raise awareness and cover a certain topic in an English classroom, Amy Harmon’s Making Faces will be part of the lesson plan which will be provided. The lesson plan illustrates a possible way of how to integrate the issue of facial disfigurement into English classes with the aid of Amy Harmon’s Making Faces.
5.1. Bullying, the Impact of Visual Difference on Pupils’ Well-Being at
School, and Suggestions for Teachers and School Staff as How to
Raise Awareness and Acceptance
Bullying cannot only occur in educational institutions but also at the workplace or within a family. It can occur in various forms, for example, as a form of individual aggression, a form of social violence, or as a form of oppressive or dysfunctional group dynamics (Schott 27). Nevertheless, bullying is mostly connected with group dynamics and often involves physical or mental aggression and harassment. Furthermore, bullying differs from occasional acts of aggression as it is done repeatedly and happens in relationships of asymmetric power in which differences in power may be real or perceived (Schott 27). Of course, also differences in physical or mental capacities may trigger asymmetric power relationships, which can lead to bullying. In school, the pupils of a class aim at maintaining the group order, which can be threatened by changes in
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position of a particular group member, which consequently becomes a source of fear and anxiety (Schott 39). Søndergaard agrees with Schott in this respect and maintains that people need a feeling of belonging to a certain community and that social exclusion anxiety arises “[…] when social embeddedness becomes jeopardized […]” (54).
As a result, “[b]ullying occurs when groups respond to this anxiety by projecting the threat to group order onto particular individuals; these individuals become systematically excluded as the ‘other’” (Schott 39). The group of the
‘other’ exists because a society is defined in terms of whom it includes and whom it excludes, and consists of individuals or groups who are excluded
(Schott 38). The possibility of exclusion and the fact that someone’s belonging may be questioned results in people feeling pressure and insecurity “[…] about whether they legitimately belong to [a] particular group or whether they risk being excluded and marginalised” (Søndergaard 55). Thus, bullying deprives individuals of the social recognition necessary for human dignity and is often experienced as a form of psychic torture (Schott 39). Summing up, bullying mostly takes place in formal institutions. Furthermore, it is the systematic exclusion of the ‘other’, involves all members of a certain group, and takes place through mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion for the purpose of securing group order when anxiety in the group becomes mobilized (Schott 39).
Bullying is difficult to handle and even more difficult to prevent because of its dynamic character. Ellwood and Davies suggest that establishing non- violent ethical practices can help to prevent bullying, “not by imposing an ethos that locates and punishes individual bullies, but rather, by developing practices that encourage and facilitate being open to differences as well as promoting the value of differences” (95). Therefore, a reflexive awareness of the ‘self’ and the 71
‘other’ as well as of similarities and differences between people needs to be developed because the concept of the ‘other’ opposed to the ‘self’ is the core concept on which bullying is based (Ellwood and Davies 95).
Consequently, teachers need to have a clear awareness of the value of differences and have to try to teach this awareness to their pupils. In order to do so, they can implement prevention strategies, which should be relevant to and engaging for young people to raise the possibility of achieving effective and sustainable implementation. In addition, the implementation process will be more likely to be successful if pupils are given responsibility for and ownership of strategy selection and implementation (Cross and Barnes 416). Self- responsibility and participation often trigger pupils’ motivation to develop something that is helpful for everyone and at the same time fosters their intrinsic value and self-confidence. Thus, pupils should also be involved in the process of developing, implementing, and evaluating intervention strategies for bullying as it raises their awareness of the process of bullying and what it does to the well- being of their peers.
Visual difference is one of the main reasons why pupils are considered to belong to the group of the ‘other’ and are put to the margins of the classroom hierarchy. Thus, facial disfigurement in school is even more difficult to cope with because of its immediate visibility and the exclusion and humiliation that come with it. Children with facial disfigurement often have difficulties at school, ranging from bullying and behavioral problems to identity issues at school and elsewhere. Most of them claim that feeling and looking different is a key issue of the problems they encounter at school. Consequently, the need for a feeling of belonging and acceptance often results in some pupils resisting offers of help due to which they could be considered even weaker (O’Dell and Prior 38). 72
However, it is not only the children who have to come to terms with their situation but the parents also recognize immediately if their children are dissatisfied and afraid to go to school. Hein interviewed parents on their opinion about whether they thought the amount of information from school on their children, who were not facially disfigured, sufficient. Each interviewee stated that they lacked information from the school and requested greater transparency in terms of the social environment within the class and their child’s position and attitudes at school (Hein 307). This shows that information exchange and transparency between school and parents are of great importance, especially if a facially disfigured child is involved. Nevertheless, many teachers still think that there is no reason for parents to be involved in matters that the teachers can take care of themselves in the classroom (Hein 307).
Children who visibly deviate from the norm fall out of other children’s concept of ‘normalcy’ and are therefore often met with skepticism and caution.
In their study on ‘normal’ children’s acceptance ratings of children with a facial scar, Nabors et al. maintain that children aged five to nine provide lower peer acceptance ratings for a child with facial disfigurement than for one without a scar (86). However, they also claim that positive information about a child with facial disfigurement improves the peers’ acceptance ratings by, for example, stating that they have the same skills, by drawing attention to general similarities, and by avoiding highlighting differences in ability (Nabors et al. 88).
Consequently, teachers who provide positive information about children with facial disfigurement can lower the negative impact the deviation has on their acceptance and well-being at school.
Cline et al. also did research on how to improve children’s acceptance of peers with facial disfigurement and, in consequence, also of people with facial 73
disfigurement later in life. They evaluated an education pack designed by the organization ‘Changing Faces’ in order to “raise children's awareness about their attitudes and behaviours towards facial appearance, to get them to question their assumptions about facial looks and thus to improve the reception they give to facially disfigured children and adults” (Cline et al. 56). They briefly showed children in school photographs of facially disfigured peers aged between three and twelve years. This brief exposure had a positive impact on the children’s attitude towards facially disfigured children. However, the authors also suggest that brief exposure alone does not trigger a sufficient degree of change in children’s attitude but that a significant factor “was the children's active engagement in a task requiring the exercise of empathy […]” (Cline et al. 62).
Furthermore, Symeonidou and Loizou argue that the development of positive attitudes towards any kind of disability is often understood as a process in which adults are expected to teach children to accept disabled peers even though they are different (1235). Therefore, disability awareness programs could be established which should include interviews with people with various types of impairments who share their experiences with the children at school
(Symeonidou and Loizou 1235f). In order to develop such programs at school level, teachers need to be committed to inclusive education ideas, feel confident about their own understanding of disability, and be creative enough to design and implement disability awareness programs (Symeonidou and Loizou 1255).
There are, of course, organizations that can help teachers to develop and implement awareness programs or school services. Such services can be especially helpful for children with facial disfigurement because they provide people whom the children can talk to and raise awareness among their peers. In
1998, ‘Changing Faces’, for example, began to offer “a schools’ service which 74
provides expert advice and specialised resources for teachers and other professionals working in education who are supporting children and young people with disfigurements in school” (O’Dell and Prior 36). The support and information of ‘Changing Faces’ helped teachers in the areas of curriculum development, link with parents, and promote inclusive practices within the school (O’Dell and Prior 37). However, it did not only help teachers and school support staff but also the facially disfigured pupils themselves. The service led to an increase in self-confidence, more open communication, fewer behavioral problems, and additional confidence in communicating with others at school
(O’Dell and Prior 38).
Furthermore, O’Dell and Prior found that “by giving the child’s peers knowledge about facial disfigurement and the psychological aspects involved in being ‘different’, the disfigured child is more accepted and may have increased confidence to talk about him/herself within the peer group” (39). Thus, raising awareness about the difficulties that facially disfigured children and people have to deal with can be the key strategy of teachers in order to prevent the harassment of children that deviate from the norm. Raising awareness and fostering acceptance and empathy can consequently lead to a greater understanding and tolerance of people with disabilities, disfigurements, or people who decidedly want to be ‘different’, not only in school but also later in life.
5.2. Integrating the Topic of Facial Disfigurement and Amy Harmon’s
Making Faces into the English Classroom: A Lesson Plan
The following lesson plan gives an idea of how the topic of facial disfigurement can be approached and dealt with in an English class with the aid of Amy Harmon’s Making Faces. First, some considerations of the general
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context will be made. Second, basic didactic reflections will be discussed followed by the actual lesson plan in tabular form according to the suggestions of the Institut für LehrerInnenbildung und Schulforschung Innsbruck.
Harmon’s Making Faces is chosen because pupils can probably relate more to its storyline due to the underlying love story and the fact that the main protagonists are of the same age as the pupils. In contrast, the focus of Johnny
Got His Gun lies on Joe’s suffering and desperation and the fact that Trumbo wants to shock the reader into a greater awareness of the horrors of war.
Furthermore, the writing style of Johnny Got His Gun could be too difficult for some pupils as Trumbo makes use of the stream-of-consciousness technique with flashbacks and without much punctuation. In order to not confuse pupils’ knowledge of punctuation and sentence structure, Making Faces is chosen to aid the overall aim of raising awareness of the difficulties that people with facial disfigurement have to face. Of course, Johnny Got His Gun is also a powerful literary piece in order to achieve this overall didactic goal but for regular lessons it might be too challenging. Nevertheless, it could be used in elective courses to link the topics of facial disfigurement and the two world wars together and consequently raise awareness for the two at the same time.
(1) Considerations of the general context
The school in which the lesson will be held is a High School in a Junior
Class (11th Grade) with twenty-three pupils who are sixteen or seventeen years old. The subject is English and pupils are in their seventh or eighth year of learning in this subject, which means they should be on the level of B1/B1+ according to the CEFR (Trim et al.). The topic of the lesson is facial disfigurement and Amy Harmon’s Making Faces.
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Intercultural competence is part of the general teaching responsibilities of the first and second foreign language within the Austrian curriculum. The key competence is to raise awareness of differences and similarities between various cultures and foster an awareness for Austrian cultural values. Thus, the topic of this lesson can help to approach the broader topic of interculturality by trying to raise pupils’ awareness of the fact that they live in a world with people who might deviate from the norm and whose ‘otherness’, be it due to their appearance, their cultural background, or their different values, might be difficult for them to come to terms with. Furthermore, their acceptance for
‘otherness’ and difference can be fostered with the aid of this topic, which consequently may lead to a greater understanding when an intercultural topic is covered or a pupil from another culture joins the class. In addition, according to the curriculum, pupils should be able to read and understand long, literary texts autonomously, which is fostered by providing an authentic literary piece by the
American author Amy Harmon.
The pupils do not have prior knowledge of the topic. Some of them may have had encounters with facially disfigured people, which would be helpful for approaching the topic as they could share their experiences with their peers.
However, they may have prior knowledge or experience about disabilities as some of them may have relatives who are physically or mentally disabled. These experiences are equally important to those who have been made with facially disfigured people as they often prompt the same feelings and lead to similar reactions. However, the pupils are familiar with the didactic methods used during class as they have been applied before. Furthermore, Amy Harmon’s Making
Faces has been read by the pupils before because creating a reading diary with
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their short thoughts on the book is part of the reading assignment for their portfolio.
The topic could be interesting for most of the pupils as they probably have never encountered or talked to people with facial disfigurement before. Of course, some may be shocked or disgusted if pictures are shown, which is why the usage of images has to be thoroughly reflected on. However, pupils can be asked whether they want to see some pictures of people with facial disfigurement and those who think they cannot bear to look at the disfigured faces can possibly look away. Resistance may occur because a literary piece is used and because of its length. Nevertheless, the story of the book is one the pupils can probably relate to and it is also possible to not read the whole book but only use extracts to emphasize the arguments which are established during the lesson in terms of facial disfigurement.
(2) Basic Didactic Reflections
The key principle for my English classes is to improve aspects which are concerned with the communicative character that languages bring with them.
Nowadays, the ability to communicate in English is of great importance as
English is a language which is spoken all over the world and through which people from various countries can communicate. Therefore, part of this lesson will focus on pupils’ speaking skills as they should be able to maintain a discussion and comment on other people’s opinion at the level of B1. Thus, pupils should have the possibility of practicing and improving their speaking skills in nearly every lesson. Teachers should create and provide a sufficient number of possibilities and tasks in which pupils can speak freely and give their opinion. Consequently, a positive class climate needs to be developed to ensure that different opinions are heard and respected without much judgement and in 78
which pupils feel safe enough to state their opinions and take part in discussions even if mistakes in terms of sentence structure or use of vocabulary occur.
Teachers in this case should not correct the mistakes immediately but should rather create a climate in which pupils engage in discussions without the fear of constantly being corrected and interrupted by the teacher.
The overall goal of this lesson is to raise pupils’ awareness of the difficulties that people with facial disfigurement face and to increase their acceptance for people who deviate from the norm and consequently also for differences in character, appearance, culture, ethnicity, or race. Ideally, they should also develop and enhance their awareness of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, which, as a result, could help to prevent bullying and create a more positive and enjoyable class climate. Nevertheless, language skills will also be enhanced in this lesson, especially speaking and writing.
Concerning the five dimensions of the quality of lessons suggested by
Schratz and Weiser, the focus of this lesson will neither lie on the dimension of knowledge, comprehension/awareness, or ability/application but on the dimension of person and group, which means that the personal and social skills of the pupils are fostered. On the one hand, the topic of facial disfigurement should improve pupils’ self-awareness and should make them think about how they want to be treated and consequently also how they want to treat others, especially those who deviate from the norm. As a result, pupils’ respect, understanding, acceptance, and tolerance for both people who voluntarily deviate from the norm and for those who are different due to congenital or acquired disfigurements or disabilities should be raised. On the other hand, covering this topic and the personal development of the pupils that can come with it can lead to the improvement of their social skills as well. If pupils learn 79
about the difficulties and challenges that people with facial disfigurement are facing, they could consequently act differently the next time they encounter someone who deviates from the norm, probably with more respect and understanding and fewer prejudices and less staring.
The relationship I want to offer the pupils is one that is based on mutual respect. The pupils should know that they have to respect the teacher but that he or she is also a tutor and not only wants to help them progress with their studies but also respects the pupils and their opinions. Thus, they can always talk to the teacher about anything that is on their minds if they have the feeling that they cannot confide in any other person. Respect is not only the key for the teacher- pupil relationship but also for pupil-pupil relationships. The class climate should ensure that every pupil is free to state their opinion without judgement, counteraction, or harassment. There are basically no wrong opinions and utterings during discussions and every opinion should be respected and discussed in an appropriate manner. Furthermore, the class climate should be appreciative and the pupils should have a feeling of comfort because they are accepted the way they are, not only by the teacher but also by their peers, and are not forced to change themselves in order to fit in or to prevent themselves from being bullied.
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(3) Lesson Plan
Time Content (Structured Methods (Methodical Sequence) Goals (5 Dimensions) Media, Material How long? Didactically) How? Why? Whereby? What? 2 Minutes Welcoming greeting pupils, telling them to finish to get pupils‘ attention; to calm them down and __ their conversations and start focusing make them focus on the English lesson ahead; on the lesson; if they had a test in one trying to develop a positive class climate of the main subjects before the lesson, (appreciative and sympathetic but nevertheless let them briefly discuss the test in demanding and assertive if necessary) through order to calm down and get their briefly giving the pupils time to find their focus attention afterwards without after the 15-minute break and sending I- distracting thoughts messages when I want them to finally listen to me 5-7 Minutes Discussing reversible showing pupils the reversible figure personal and social dimension → pupils should beamer, figure of old and and asking them what they instantly become aware of the fact that there are computer, USB young woman → see see when they look at the picture; different perceptions of what the picture might memory stick appendix discussing the possibly different show and that people often only see one perceptions/also stating what I see possibility; they should realize that the picture first/discussing why we probably see with its lines stays the same whether they see young or old woman first the young or the old woman but that it is only their perception that changes; they should also learn to accept that others may see something different in the picture; this step should help
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the next one because the pupils should realize that things or people often do not follow the expectations pupils may have due to the appearance and that they should not reduce people to their appearance but get to know their character/story/fate practicing speaking skills → participating in discussions/stating one’s own opinion and giving brief comments on others’ views during discussion 15-20 Discussing picture of Think/Pair/Share (see appendix) → personal and social dimension → pupils should beamer, Minutes facially disfigured two pictures of a facially wounded share their experiences and their opinion on computer, USB soldier → see soldier before and after surgery are how they would react; they should realize that memory stick appendix briefly shown to the pupils; then they there are often many prejudices if the should think about how they would appearance differs from the norm; pupils react and what they would think about should become less judgmental towards people his trustworthiness/ability to work if with facial disfigurement; they should realize they had an encounter with a man that especially children with facial looking like the one on the disfigurement are in great danger of being picture/their experiences with facially bullied at school → their acceptance for disfigured people if they have already differences in appearance/culture/mindset had some/their reaction if a pupil with should rise facial disfigurement were to join the Think/Pair/Share because it is probably easier class; pupils quietly take notes on to first write down thoughts on their their thoughts → they share their
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ideas/notes with their neighbor → the own and discuss it in pairs → should make results are discussed in class discussion in class easier practicing speaking skills → participating in discussions/stating one’s own opinion and giving brief comments on others’ views during discussion 15-17 Elaborating on a Free Writing (see appendix) → text personal dimension → pupils should become book, beamer, Minutes passage from Amy passage is read aloud in class; pupils aware of their own attitude towards people computer, USB Harmon’s Making start writing and do not stop for 3 who deviate from the norm; they should think memory stick Faces → see appendix minutes (at this language level the about reactions/better solutions to deal with the teacher should instruct the pupils to situation; should become aware of the fact that write full sentences); results are read words can also hurt people aloud voluntarily in class without practicing writing skills → at this language comments from either the teacher or level, according to the CEFR, pupils should be the other pupils; if time is left the able to write accounts of experiences, wording of Becker should be describing feelings and reactions in simple discussed texts 3-4 Minutes Announcing handing out the Handout with the pupils should practice their writing skills at Handout (see homework; saying instructions for the homework (see home with no time pressure or the stressful and appendix) goodbye appendix); announcing until when the often demanding environment of the homework is due (when correcting classroom; through the task of creative writing the texts only correcting language they should primarily have fun writing the text; errors → no editing!); wishing the it gives them an opportunity to unfold their pupils a nice day creativity
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Appendix
Reversible Figure:
Source: https://www.welt.de/kmpkt/article181612648/Optische-Illusion-Was- du-hier-als-Erstes-siehst-ist-von-deinem-Alter-abhaengig.html
Facially Disfigured Soldier:
After Surgery Before Surgery
Source: Pichel 26 (Pichel, Beatriz. “Broken Faces: Reconstructive Surgery
During and After the Great War.” Endeavour 34.1 (2010): 25-29. Web. 28 Oct.
2019.)
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Think/Pair/Share
Requirements Duration Strengths __ 10-15 Minutes Pupils have time to think about their opinion on a topic/what they want to say first in private → independent work; First sharing opinion with a peer is easier than immediately sharing it with the whole class; Fostering discussion and team skills Implementation A topic/picture/text passage is specified by the teacher. The pupils think about it on their own and note down their thoughts/opinions/ideas → Think Pupils then get together with their neighbor or in groups of three and discuss their results/findings/opinions. Each pupil should contribute to the discussion or at least present their results/findings/opinions. → Pair The last step is to discuss the different results in class, ideally on a voluntary basis. Therefore, the aim is to create a discussion about different opinions in a respectful, appreciative, and understanding way so that no pupils have to fear being harassed for their opinion. → Share
Text Passage from Amy Harmon’s Making Faces
Suddenly, Ambrose was there, grabbing Becker by the arm and the back of his shirt […]. Then Ambrose threw him. Just tossed him away, like Becker weighed little more than a child. Becker landed on his hands and feet, twisting like a cat as he fell, and he stood up as if he’d meant to be flung ten feet, pushing his chest out like a rooster among his hens.
“Ambrose Young! You look like shit, man! Better run before the townsfolk mistake you for an ogre and come after you with pitch-forks!” […]
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Fern noticed how the patrons of the store were frozen in place, their eyes glued on Ambrose’s face. Fern realized that none of them had probably seen him, not since he’d left for Iraq two and a half years before. […] And the rumors had been exaggerated, making Ambrose out to be horrifically wounded, grotesque even, but many of the faces registered surprise and sadness, but not revulsion. […]
“You need to leave, Becker,” Ambrose said, his voice a soft rumble in the shocked silence of the grocery store. […] “Don’t let my ugly mug fool you; there isn’t anything wrong with my fists.” (pp. 138-139)
Free Writing
Requirements Duration Strengths Pupils should have a pen Changeable but has to Pupils can calm down and paper; be adapted according to and sort out their There should already be the age and the time thoughts; a basic calmness and available (everything There is neither pressure pupils should be able to from 1 to 10 minutes nor standards nor completely focus on the possible) requirements; task Writing becomes more vivacious Implementation If this method is used for the first time, the teacher should explain it and make clear that there are no limits to what the text should look like. Pupils can get creative and, for example, write a poem about the topic or simply write down their opinion or the thoughts that come to their minds. The topic/text passage/picture the pupils have to write about is briefly introduced by the teacher. The pupils then have to start writing without having thought much about the task. A natural flow of writing should set in and the written text does not even have to make sense. The fact that no pupil should stop writing is very important, even if after some time they do not specifically write about the topic anymore. Finally, their pieces of literature can be read aloud and discussed in class. Teachers can also participate in this method and can also read their results to the class in order to encourage the pupils to present theirs.
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Creative Writing
Requirements Duration Strengths Pupils should have a pen Changeable but has to Fostering pupils’ and paper; be adapted according to creativity; Pupils should not be the age and the topic Pupils can decide on afraid to let their (about 15-20 minutes or their own what they creativity flow and as a task for a larger want to write and how ignore standard textual project) they want to create their rules written piece; only a short input without many standards or requirements Implementation The teacher only gives a short input about what the pupils should write about. It is also possible to let pupils contribute to finding a topic or a suitable input. The teacher should make clear that there are no restrictions, standards to follow, or requirements to fulfil. The pupils can decide on their own how they want to create and design their texts. The texts cannot be ‘wrong’ or graded badly because this task is highly individual and primarily aims at fostering the pupils’ creativity and ideally triggering pleasure in writing a text.
Homework
Choose one of the two text passages from Amy Harmon’s Making Faces below and write a creative text. You can, for example, write down a poem that fits the passage or you can write down how you think the story could continue. You could also rewrite the passage from the viewpoint of another character or whatever other possibility you can think of. There are no limits to which sort of text you want to write, just be creative. Write between 200 and 300 words.
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Text Passage 1
Then Elliott walked through the door and saw his son standing at the window, clenching the blinds like he wanted to rip them from the wall. “Ambrose?” His voice rose in dismay. And then he flipped on the light. Ambrose stared and
Elliott froze, realizing instantly what he had done. Three faces stared back at
Ambrose from the glass. He registered his father’s face first, a mask of despair just behind his right shoulder, and then he saw his own face, gaunt and swollen, but still recognizable. But merged with the recognizable half of his reflection was a pulpy, misshapen mess of ruined skin, Frankenstein stitching, and missing parts – someone Ambrose didn’t know at all. (p. 116)
Text Passage 2
‘There’s a steel plate on the side of my head that attaches to my cheekbone and my jaw. The skin on my face was peeled back here and here,’ Ambrose indicated the long scars that crisscrossed his cheek. ‘They were actually able to put it back, but I took a bunch of shrapnel to the face before the bigger piece took the side of my head. The skin they put back was like Swiss cheese and I had shrapnel buried in the soft tissue of my face. That’s why the skin is so bumpy and pockmarked. Some of the shrapnel is still working its way out. ‘And your eye?’
‘I took a big piece of shrapnel to my eye, too. They saved the eyeball but not my sight.’ ‘A metal plate in your head? That’s pretty intense.’ Bailey’s eyes were wide. ‘Yeah. Just call me the Tin Man,’ Ambrose said softly, the memory of nicknames and old pain making it hard to breathe again. (p. 210)
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Lebenslauf
Angaben zur Person
Name: Ronja Weiskopf Adresse: Telefon: E-Mail: Geburtsdatum: Staatsbürgerschaft:
Berufserfahrung
2011-2012 Johannishütte Prägraten a. G. (Kellnerin, Küchenhilfe) 2013 Gasthof Islitzer Prägraten a. G. (Küchenhilfe) 2014-2018 SPAR Markt Prägraten a. G. (Kassiererin)
Studium seit 10/2013 Diplomstudium Lehramt (Englisch und Chemie) an der Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Schulbildung
09/2009 – 06/2013 BORG Lienz 09/2005 – 07/2009 Hauptschule Virgen 09/2001 – 07/2005 Volksschule Prägraten a. G.
Sonstige Angaben
Führerschein B, F Sprachen Deutsch, Englisch, Französisch Computerkenntnisse Microsoft Office Freizeit Skifahren, Bergsteigen, Klettern, Singen Gemeinde Prägraten a. G. Pfarrgemeinderatsmitglied Wortgottesdienstleiter
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