Nancy Mairs: On Being a Cripple

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This activity contains 3 questions.

Mairs’s essay exhibits a variety of shifts in tone, reflecting shifts in her own feelings about being crippled. Analyze “On Being a Cripple” to explore such shifts and their effect on your response to the essay as a whole.

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type at the beginning of the paragraph, and at the end.

The purpose of Mairs’s essay is to provide first-hand insight into what it means to live with multiple sclerosis. What have you learned from her experiences and reflections? Explain what you find most intriguing, surprising, and moving about the life she presents.

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type at the beginning of the paragraph, and at the end.

If you are close to someone with a debilitating condition or disease, describe that person and how he or she copes with the difficulties and limitations that condition imposes. If you yourself have such a condition, focus on your own life. You may wish to compare the subject of your essay with Mairs as she presents herself in hers. Alternatively, you may imagine how a condition such as Mairs’s would affect your life.

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type at the beginning of the paragraph, and at the end.

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