Disability Is a Literary Device

Disabled people have always been represented in storytelling. And not as some minority interest. We’re talking the bighitters: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens. So, I’m not here to argue for more disability rep, per se. The question is how are disabled people represented? And by whom? And to what end?

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Once you’ve answered those questions, the conclusion you come to—or at least, the conclusion I come to, as a disabled literary agent and author and reader—is not that we need more disability rep. Actually, less would be fine. We just need different. A whole bunch of different.

What do the blind man, the hunchback, and the cripple have in common? No joke …

One way to answer that would be that the disabilities of Tiresias, Richard III, and Tiny Tim act as a shortcut for character.

Tiresias is blind, and that gives him the gift of prophecy; of seeing the future. Makes sense, no? Well, no, not at all, but it feels like it does somehow, and that’s enough to make us believe in him. (See also: Daredevil with his danger radar, and Pinball Wizard who was deaf and blind and played by sense of smell. He was “dumb,” too—but I think that was just to do with the scansion).

Richard III is deformed, and therefore evil. Naturally. Has deformity embittered him? Or has some kind of innate evil within him twisted his body? Who cares! BOOOO! HISS!

Tiny Tim is just so tiny. Poor little diddy Timkins. He’s probably deformed too, but he’s a child and likely won’t survive to adulthood in Victorian poverty, so that makes his deformity OK. In fact, that makes him the anti-Richard. He’s feeble and pitiable and powerless, and just so damn cheerful! Such a good sport. Well done, Tim—now, off you pop, cough cough.

They’re quite different, these disability-based character types. And there are probably as many as there are disabilities. Let’s see … Wheelchair-users: clever, bitter, despotic. Amputees: heroic, creepy, funny! (hop hop). Deaf: usually funny too, because they, like, misunderstand stuff lolz. That’s probably enough to make the point … But what do these types have in common?

I’d argue they’re all literary devices. Disability is a literary device.

And it’s such an effective literary device because disability provokes the strongest of emotions.

Disabled people don’t need to read stories to know this. We see it in our lives, every day. The mere sight of us can move people to tears of pity or wonder, or muttered prayers or laughter or horror or worse. Those famous stories that make use of this device, like Antigone and Richard the Third and A Christmas Carol and Treasure Island and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Secret Garden (and more recently, Me Before You and Wonder) have managed to conjure that everyday, visceral, emotional response to disability, and cast it over their millions of readers like a spell.

It’s quite a trick. And as an agent, I can only doff my cap to their authors.

As an amputee though, I have to say it sucks. Imagine having people respond to you, every time you leave your house, like you’re some awkward splice of Tiny Tim, Long John Silver, and Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump.

Here’s the rub. None of these characters bear much—if any—resemblance to the reality of disabled people. Why would they? They’re not intended to cast light on those realities, but to generate an emotional response and drive the narrative. I should probably spare Auggie Pullman this charge, as I suspect RJ Palacio was trying to cast light on a true disabled experience, and partially succeeded. But then, she seems to have done no first-hand research before writing Auggie, and however insightfully his story begins, he pretty much morphs into Tiny Tim by the end, when he’s gratefully accepting his standing ovation for being disabled. And don’t get me started on the film…

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And, of course, it goes without saying that none of them were written by disabled people. (Unless a reader of Writer’s Digest is going to tell me that Sophocles had gout. He may have done. It was a long time ago. Sue me.)

There have always been successful disabled authors, but historically they haven’t tended to write disabled characters. This may be because the disabled characters they might have written aren’t the ones that hit those emotional buttons and sell books. Too nuanced. Too real by half.

Disabled writers are allowed—encouraged, in fact—to write memoirs. But by and large only if, as the disabled main character, they can conform to a particular tragedy-to-triumph narrative. They must invoke the readers’ pity, and then inspire them. Inspiration is big bucks. (I mean, serious money, if you can turn that memoir into corporate motivational speaking. You need the right look though. Missing a leg isn’t really enough—and nor is this carping crip schtick, to be fair—so my day job is safe for now.)

But novels written by disabled authors and featuring disabled characters? Still vanishingly rare. And part of the reason for that must surely be that the narrow patch of sunlight those stories might occupy is already taken.

All in all then, less disability rep would be absolutely fine, if it meant fewer non-disabled authors resorting to the literary device of writing fake disabled characters. We need to weed the garden. Realistically, we may need to scorch the earth (sorry, Auggie).

But what might then have room to grow?

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