Hughes Ch.9

While reading Hughes, Chapter 9, I thought it was interesting that the topic of sight, deafness, and pain came up, especially with our class’s previous reading topics. I do agree with what he says about the power of sight. Vision is very important to all of us, and having the blessing of sight, is something that is taken for granted everyday. Just imagine what it would be like if tomorrow you lost your sight. I wouldn’t know what to do. A lot of my current dreams and goals would be out of the question now. For a person to do art, like me, they need vision when painting, or even drawing. Reading these couple paragraphs on the section about sensory deprivation really made me stop and think. I depend so much on my sight. And think about what it must be like to have such a gift taken away. You really would be forced to look at life very differently.
I loved reading about people out there who have taken a disadvantage, like loosing your vision, and created it into an advantage. It shows the strength people themselves are capable of achieving. If life gives you trouble, you just got to get yourself back up, and fight another day.
Hughes uses the example of Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, two famous musicians who probably wouldn’t have become so successful if they didn’t go blind. They used the power of their other senses and developed a talent very unique, which did not require the sense of vision.
John Milton said “to be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable.” This quote about blindness, I feel, coincides with the truth again and can be related to just about all aspects of life. If you don’t appreciate, and work with what you do have, you’ll never be happy. There are many people who give up after experiencing hard times.
The other topics were about deafness, which was said to be interpreted as another way of hearing sounds without hearing, but through vibrations, illness, Aids, eccentricity, psychotic art, manic depression, schizoid, depression, which can be altered by success and or failure, which I thought was very interesting, due to the fact I always assumed it was associated by majority of failure, conditions such as epilepsy “the sacred disease”, according to studies of Hippocrates, migraines, and alcoholism. These topics were interesting as well, but nothing hit me more than the blindness. That is probably the most important sense to me, which was why it related to me more.