Applying a Portable Concept as a Lens

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Portable human development concept
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

The portable concept presented is how a person’s ignorance on an issue can become a hindrance to their development.

Portable human development concept

Fadiman’s passage is about a little girl who suffered from epilepsy. Her parents’ inability to notice that their daughter’s condition was containable at an early age almost cost her life. Their ignorance is also portrayed when they fail to contact the hospital for a follow-up appointment ten days after the initial only come back to the hospital when their daughters’ condition begins to deteriorate again.

This can be compared to Tannen’s “There Is No Unmarked Woman”. She notices how most of the time we are unable to take note of many underlying issues that present themselves in our mannerisms, even before we speak (Tannen 1). For example, women sometimes may decide to dress in a certain way for a simple reason such as the availability of their choice of cloth. What they may fail to notice is that society may be using this means to judge their character.

For example, she says when she wrote that passage, she was simply doing so out of observation. She was not aware that some people would see her as a feminist and some would even brand her a male basher. While Tannen’s concept of close analysis accounts for the presence of ignorance in “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall”, it fails to account for Lia’s parents’ decision to seek modern medicine to treat their daughter.

The concept of ignorance is portrayed at the beginning of the passage when Lia is first introduced (Fadiman 20). Her parents blamed her sibling Yer for banging the door (Fadiman 23). They believed that it was this action that had triggered their younger daughter’s illness. In their village, having epilepsy was believed to be a sign that one was chosen by the gods and possessed special powers. Perhaps this is the reason why Lia’s parents did not seem so alarmed by the state.

Even the doctor was concerned because he had never handled that disease on such a young patient, and yet he detected from her parents that they did not seem to know the gravity of their daughter’s situation (Fadiman 27). In this village, instead of such diseases as epilepsy being treated, the sufferers were given a higher stature in the community as it was even believed to be able to cure other diseases. Their ignorance is also evident when we are told they signed two surgery consent forms, each seven hundred words long, without reading and translation. A close comparison to this in Tannen’s piece is when she remarks about how marked a woman always is despite the kind of makeup she uses. This shows the inability of humans to focus on the really important details (Tannen 2).

Conclusion

This concept, however, seems to be contrasted as the passage goes on when Lia’s parents finally decide to take her to a modern medical center for treatment. It is also contrasted when Dr. Murphy can diagnose the patient, even though they could not speak English and were unable to explain what is wrong with the child. Ignorance is also eliminated when Lia’s parents are accompanied to the hospital by a cousin who is fluent in English (Fadiman 27).

This enables them to get prescriptions and other instructions from the doctor correctly, something they had not been able to do. A comparison to this in Tannen’s article appears when she talks about the journalists that wanted to discuss differences between men and women. It means that they are no longer so ignorant as to judge the women only and they have started to notice the disparity in judgment between the two groups (Tannen 3).

Works Cited

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures Paperback. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2012. Print.

Tannen, Deborah. “There Is No Unmarked Woman.” The New York Times Magazine. 1993: 1-2. Print.

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Applying a Portable Concept as a Lens

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