Show Me a Sign

“While I walk, I make up a story to please myself. It’s something I’ve done for as long as I can remember. If I’m restless in bed, it helps me fall asleep. If I’m bored, it entertains me. Sometimes it helps me make sense of things that lack sense.”

Mary is a natural storyteller. Over the course of the novel, she will contend with many situations that do not make sense. This is especially true when she’s faced with the contrasting culture of Boston. She uses stories to maintain her balance in an illogical world.

“It’s not just about blood. My wife, daughter, and I belong in the town of Aquinnah. We share the same beliefs and customs. We participate in ceremonies to honor the Great Being Moshup. We work hard to sustain our small community.”

Thomas is trying to explain why he identifies as a member of the Wampanoag tribe. Mary has been taught to categorize people based on skin color, so she doesn’t understand his explanation. Ironically, Andrew will use this same superficial classification system against Mary later, when he separates people who are deaf from people who are hearing. 

“Silence. I’m sure that many hearing people, especially those who don’t know the deaf, imagine our lives are filled with silence. That’s not true. If my mind and heart are full of energy and fun, and I’m looking ahead with excitement, I don’t feel silent at all. I buzz like a bee in good times. Only in bad times, when I am numb and full of sadness, does everything turn silent. Like our house with just Mama and me in it.”

Mary provides insight into the mind of a person who is deaf. Emotion and imagination play as large a role in her life as in the lives of people who are hearing. Mary equates total silence with sadness; it is not her natural state. 

“He turns away from Papa and directs his response toward Mama and Reverend Lee. That is considered rude in our society. I’ll excuse him because he is unaware of our customs. There must be fewer deaf people where he comes from.”

Andrew is already exhibiting his contempt for people who are deaf when Mr. Lambert asks a question, and Andrew turns to the hearing members of the party to answer it. Mary is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, a courtesy he would never extend toward her.

“Now I think Andrew Noble is the one telling stories. Why should the deaf be different anywhere else? Why shouldn’t they be seamen like Ezra Brewer or run sheep farms like Papa and Mr. Skiffe?”

Andrew has just explained that people who are deaf in the outside world are incapable of making a living, which he cites as the cause of their poverty and admission to psychiatric facilities. Mary is astonished and does not believe him. Her question is a reasonable one, but it won’t receive a reasonable answer in Boston. 

“Mr. Pye, who is hearing, signs and speaks to Andrew. ‘We all use the signs. I can’t always remember who is deaf and who isn’t. What difference does it make?’ ‘You are being courteous,’ Andrew says. ‘Scientific inquiry requires exact data.’”

Andrew is giving a condescending answer to an honest question. As a scientist, he sets himself apart from others and believes that his approach is superior. Even though he claims to depend on facts, the fact of Mary’s intelligence continues to escape him. It doesn’t fit his preconceived notions about people who are deaf. 

“Do I see Ezra Brewer wince at the use of the sign for ‘infirmity’? We use a similar sign for ‘sickness’ and ‘disease.’ Deafness is not an affliction. The only thing it stops me from doing is hearing.”

Andrew has just insulted Ezra by asking about the origin of his “infirmity.” Not only does Andrew perceive hearing people as superior, but he defines deafness as a disease. Again, he pursues a line of inquiry that is intended to support his foregone conclusion.

“I imagine our shores overrun by observers, stomping through our farmlands and asking impertinent questions. Caravans of explorers will arrive to visit the land of the deaf! We have no leopard skins or ivory tusks. What trophies will they take away with them?”

Mary envisions a time when more scientists will arrive to study the curiosities on Martha’s Vineyard. Her description implies that explorers will venture to the island to gawk at its inhabitants. Her final question unknowingly foreshadows her own fate: She will become the “trophy” that is taken away. 

“‘I distrust him,’ I sign, opening my fist like I am throwing a stone. Sally nods and signs, ‘A person comes, rowing a mishoon or canoe, uninvited. He scouts the land and takes things that don’t belong to him.’”

Sally is has taken the measure of Andrew without ever having spoken to him. Even though he wears the mantle of authority as a scientist and is supported by the local clergyman, his actions are suspicious.

“‘In some ways, I have always considered my deaf neighbors luckier for the less than melodious sounds they escape. Roosters, screaming infants, and the like.’ Papa laughs broadly. I stifle a giggle. It is common deaf humor on the island to name all the ways that the hearing are disadvantaged.”

Mr. Pye is speaking to Andrew in defense of his neighbors who are deaf. In a world that defines worth in terms of the dominant group, the sense of hearing would be valued above deafness. Therefore, Mr. Pye tries to explain that there are benefits in not hearing discordant noises.

“For the first time, I wonder, Does being deaf determine my worth? Will deafness ever disappear from the world? Are there really perfect men?”

Andrew has just left the dinner party, but his strange ideas remain behind. He has made it clear that he aspires to perfect the human race by weeding out those who don’t conform to his ideal. Andrew doesn’t want to trace the cause of deafness to expand human understanding; he wants to find the origin so he can eradicate deafness.

“I have been tossed among the ship’s tackle on deck. I gasp for breath and try to sit up. I have never felt so helpless. I cannot even ask a question. He took my voice when he tied my hands.”

Andrew has sailed away from the island with Mary as part of his live cargo. A person who is hearing might feel helpless if a gag were placed in his or her mouth. Andrew has accomplished the goal of gagging Mary by tying her hands. 

“What hurts worse is that he doesn’t see me as someone created in the Almighty’s image. I am a specimen, not a person. He never took an interest in island sign language, just our ‘infirmity.’ He could write to me, break my solitude with conversation, but he won’t lower himself.”

Andrew is aware that Mary can read and write because he will later present her with a written set of rules. However, her literacy doesn’t fit his assumptions about people who are deaf, so he does not engage in conversation with her.

“Could I escape Andrew and get lost among the sailors? But what would I do from there? It is such a strange sight to see everyone around me flapping their lips but never raising their hands to communicate with signs.”

All her life, Mary has been surrounded by people who could understand her, until now. Her dilemma is analogous to a person stranded in a country where one does not know the local language. Ironically, she is stranded in her own country and in her home state of Massachusetts.

“Is this how the world is outside of Chilmark? […] Have I been living on a cloud for eleven years? I look at the landlady as she talks at me. It’s like I’m gazing into a looking glass and believing that the reversed reflection is the truth. I don’t know what she wants.”

Mary finally begins to see the contrast between her island and the rest of the world. Because Martha’s Vineyard is cut off from other parts of the state, it would be natural to assume life is the same everywhere else. Mary feels as if she’s dropped from a cloud in the sky among creatures that are alien to her. Her perception of reality has been upended.

“I have learned too much too fast about how the world treats anyone who is different. I have to learn their rules, if I am going to beat them.”

Despite Mary’s traumatic situation, she retains a fighting spirit. Rather than resign herself to the misery of her fate in Boston, she is determined to make herself understood. To do so, she must master the rules of this strange new world. Her comment is more inclusive than her plight would indicate. People who are deaf are mistreated in Boston, but so is anyone else who’s “different.”

“It suddenly occurs to me that all I survey was once Indian land […] Outbreaks of small pox devastated their numbers. Does that mean this peaceful winter landscape also serves as a graveyard? Where are the survivors?”

As in the previous quote, Mary empathizes with the plight of other outsiders who don’t fit into the settlers’s social hierarchy. The previous Indigenous inhabitants have disappeared from Boston. The discrimination aimed at Mary has made her more understanding of discrimination leveled at others. Her chances of survival look equally bleak at this point in the story.

“‘Won’t you tell me?’ I ask. A bedtime tale told well in signs can reignite a flame in one’s soul.”

In this quote, Mary is soliciting a story from Ezra. She is already safely on board his boat. Because Andrew is still pursuing them, she isn’t quite out of danger, but she recognizes the need to revive her spirit. Her time in Boston left her nearly destitute of hope, and she believes that a good story can rekindle it.

“Somehow Ezra Brewer’s words help me see that when Mama, Papa, and I were left to cope with George’s loss, we pulled apart instead of coming together. I won’t let that happen again.”

Mary is about to go into another grief spiral over Andrew’s drowning. However, she has learned from her brother’s death not to assume the guilt for a deed that was not of her own doing. When Ezra points out the need to face forward instead of back, Mary is ready to take that message to heart.

“‘It is different in Boston,’ I tell Ezra Brewer. ‘They don’t sign. They look down on us, like we’re animals.’ ‘I’ve been there,’ he signs. ‘Watched all their lips flapping, and I don’t believe they are a wick smarter than Vineyard folk.’”

Because Ezra is an island native, he has entered the outside world with a different perspective on deafness. A person who is born deaf in Boston would have no support system or community sign language, which might diminish their sense of self-worth. Ezra is part of a community who supports him, and he knows his own worth. 

“Here there are no locked doors. No labor until my hands and knees are raw. No eating from discarded plates. No being poked and prodded. This is the place where we loved and laughed. And where we grieved and fought. This is a home.”

Mary sets up a striking contrast in this quote between her time in Boston and her life on the island. She isn’t simply talking about her personal experience but also the mistreated residents of the big city who are deaf. Although Mary has escaped their fate, she remembers the harsh lesson that Boston taught her and values her home even more. 

“Is it fine to follow my own dream, if I honor all that was you and the time we spent together? We must move ahead, never forgetting, but embracing the tangible world. And loving each other more than ever.”

Mary makes this statement while laying a wreath on her brother’s grave. Before her abduction, she obsesses over the loss of her brother and blames herself for his absence. Ironically, Boston offered a therapeutic wake-up call. If she hadn’t left, she might continue to dwell on past tragedies. Instead, she is looking forward to bettering the world for herself and other people who are deaf in America.

“It’s best not to judge others. First look inside yourself. Make yourself the best person you can be. People will be influenced by your example.”

Mr. Lambert offers this advice to his daughter. It comes at a good moment because Mary is inclined to condemn all the prejudiced people she knows on the island and in Boston. Instead, her father counsels taking the moral high road. Focusing on abusers rather than correcting the conditions of abuse would keep Mary trapped in bitterness for a lifetime.