Oliver Sacks free essay sample

The world can be perceived in many different ways. The blind, the deaf, children, adults, teenagers, parents, all â€Å"see† the world in a different way. It is an author’s job to convey how he â€Å"sees† the world to his readers. Oliver Sacks does this quite well. Through his use of analogies and other rhetorical strategies, Oliver Sacks greatly enhances the reader’s view of a newly sighted man’s life and in turn, the reader’s view of the world. In the beginning of â€Å"To See and Not See,† by Oliver Sacks, the reader is introduced to the subject of the essay, a fifty-year-old man named Virgil, who has been blind from early childhood. Virgil, at the urging of his fiancee, submits himself to a surgery that will help him regain his sight. When Sacks hears about Virgil’s case, he is immediately interested and wants to fly to Oklahoma to meet Virgil as soon as possible. We will write a custom essay sample on Oliver Sacks or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Sacks had read of a few other cases, such as Valvo’s patient H. S. and Gregory’s patient S. B. , in which the subjects had a great deal of difficulty adjusting from the world of the blind to the world of sighted. It is Sacks’ intent to visit Virgil and â€Å"not just test Virgil, but to see how he managed in real life. It was only later that Virgil explained that this feat was his â€Å"showpiece. They might have seen something totally different. In this essay, Sacks’ goal is to show the reader Virgil’s life and how he is adapting to the visual world. Reading the case studies of other doctors may have affected Sacks’ view of Virgil. Sacks recounts how Virgil interacts with the world while at the zoo, at a restaurant, and in his own home. Everything is â€Å"seen† in a different way by different people. By reading about these other patients’ problems adapting to the seeing world, Sacks may have flown to Oklahoma to meet Virgil with several preconceptions about what he would find. Robert Coles states, â€Å"Events are filtered through a person’s awareness, itself not uninfluenced by a history of private experience† (177). Sacks compares Virgil to an infant, â€Å"moving his hand to and fro before his eyes, waggling his head, turning it this way and that,† as he explores the rooms of his house (127). He does this by leaving the clinical settings of hospitals and offices. So in a way, there is no â€Å"true† story. When Sacks first steps off the plane, he begins observing Virgil, describing him as being â€Å"of medium height, but exceedingly fat† (116). This analogy is further enhanced by the image of Virgil concentrating on the â€Å"child’s wooden formboard, with large, simple blockssquare, triangle, circle, and rectangle† (Sacks 126). Oliver Sacks wrote a collection of narratives titled, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, we see the suffering of those with neurological diseases, their attempts to cope with these diseases and the conclusions that Sacks makes on their conditions. Sacks is the physician in these narrative stories that tell about his studies of the person behind neurological deficits. Sacks’ interests are not only in the disease itself but also in the person. He writes these stories to teach the reader about the identity of the victims of neurological diseases. He describes the experience of the victim as he or she struggles to survive their disease. Oliver Sacks presents numerous stories where neurological disorders have completely impaired a person’s physical ability; the ability to remember, the ability to comprehend, the ability to speak and hear. These patients, despite their losses, never lost their spiritual ability. The ability to rejoice, to appear spiritually fulfilled, was never lost, just hidden. An example of this was seen in â€Å"The Lost Mariner†. Jimmie had suffered from amnesia and could not remember anything for more than two minutes, except things that were 30 years old. Jimmie had no continuity, no reality. He lived in the eighties, but his mind was in the thirties. Jimmie would erupt in panic attacks of confusion and disbelief, only to forget them a few minutes later. After frequent visits with Dr. Sacks, however, Jimmie began to find some continuity, some reality, in what Dr. Sacks referred to as â€Å"absoluteness of spiritual attention and act† , Jimmie’s spirit, regardless of the brain disorders, was never completely lost. The narrative â€Å"The Lost Mariner† proved to me that there really is a person beneath these neurological diseases. I had always believed that the disease almost became whom the person was and took over their life.

Eugenics of Darwinism Essays

Eugenics of Darwinism Essays Eugenics of Darwinism Essay Eugenics of Darwinism Essay Eugenics of Darwinism In 1883, shortly after the abolishment of slavery, Francis Gallon, a cousin of Charles Darwin, expanded on Darnings theories of evolution to create a concept he called Eugenics. Eugenics is the thought that genetics and race determine intelligence, social behavior, disease, poverty and other things including characteristics such as feeble-mindedness. This belief would be used to exterminate masses of people throughout history. Many social elite around the globe accept this belief as truth and supported it whole-heartedly by funding much of the research and practices or by miming to the defense of those whom decided to use Eugenics to Justify their horrific actions. The documentary Racism a History produced by BBC details a history leading up to the development of Eugenics and then the use of Eugenics to Justify the elimination and population control of several groups of people deemed by believers of the concept to be expendable in order to preserve the fittest race. Survival of the fittest. In 1803 the British settled in Tasmania, Australia. The indigenous people of Tasmania were the aboriginal tribe. The settlers would kill an aboriginal any time they came across one. However, a missionary named George Augustus Robertson was hired to capture the indigenous people and try to civilize them according to the norm of British society instead of killing them. He convinced 300 aboriginals to move to a new settlem ent he called Point Civilization so that he could turn them into proper Christians. By the middle sass about 260 of teethe had died of exposure to disease brought by the Europeans. This fate would lend support to Darwinism and eventually Eugenics on the matter of natural selection (survival of the fittest species). Killings continued in several other countries where many other indigenous people would perish by the actions of Europeans. All would be Justified by scientific racism like Eugenics. One of the most profound Justifications the documentary uses to display this White European mindset of a favored race happened in the sass. India was under British rule and the country had climate change due to El Ion that would cause a depletion of crops. The British Raja sat back and let over 30 million Indian people die from starvation and Justified his inaction by not wanting to interfere with the natural selection. In 1904 in a colony of Germany located in Iambi, Africa, the indigenous people rebelled against the Germans. This led the Germans to build the first concentration camps. Shark Island is where one of these concentration camps was located. It is stated that every African that went to Shark Island knew they would die there. Thousands of Africans lost their lives via the Germans there. Some refer to this as the Black Holocaust. During the early sass, the United States was experiencing a massive influx of immigrants. Many in the US were concerned that this immigration combined with the abolishment of slavery would lead to racial mixing and would threaten the survival of the superior race. The Eugenics Records Office was formed. The office was run by Charles Davenport. During this venture, sterilization of the lower genetic p ool was conceived as well as marriage laws that restricting interracial marriages and forced sterilizations of several citizens deemed genetically deficient were performed. Some sterilizations were even preformed on hillier as young as 10. Germany saw what the Americans were doing and not only applauded the attempts to eradicate the weaker genetics but also adopted the sterilization process. The American Rockefeller foundation funded the building for the German Eugenics facilities. Placed in charge of the facility was Eugene Fischer whom had earlier studied the racially mixed people of Reboot in Africa concluding that racial mixing is bad for the white race because the African traits show dominance in the offspring. At the German facility, Fischer was in charge of the theorization of 400 racially mixed children. Soon the German facility moved onto gassing over 70000 mentally ill and when they ran out of mentally ill subjects, they gassed over 15000 that were considered sick. Some of these people were labeled as sick merely because they wore glasses. These actions would lead to the mass genocide of the Jewish people via Hitler. While Germany, Britain and the United States were large contributors to the atrocities linked to Eugenics, other countries also supported the movement including Sweden which sterilized over 60000 people u to race or mental illness. However, it was hard for a people that were poor, uneducated and it is probably safe to assume, non-violent to fight against Eugenics when it had such noted and powerful supporters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Charles Kinsley, George Bernard Shaw, H G Wells and Margaret Ganger Just to name a few. The many stories of Eugenics seem hidden away from history, lost in the shadows of the Jewish Holocaust. These recollections of history cant and shouldnt stay hidden. I find this documentary to be very informative and reliable. I would recommend it to a friend and also use it as an instructional aid. The reasons why I would do this are because the video gives a new perspective of global interest in race relations during the times leading up to the holocaust and lends to several questions regarding why the murders of so many blacks and mentally ill were swept under the table never to be discussed while pretty much everyone knows about the Jewish Holocaust. I rate this video a 4. 5 out of 5. I would give it a perfect 5 but I feel they had to edit content out due to time limits.