People With Disabilities Essay, Research Paper

My Left Foot, The Elephant Man, and Mask are all movies about people with

disabilities. These three movies depict the lives of three men and the way

society treats them and their disabilities. My Left Foot is about a man who can

only use his left foot because of cerebral palsy and alcoholism. The Elephant

Man is about a man who has very large, severe tumors on his whole body. Mask is

about a young man who has a very large face that looks almost like he’s wearing

a mask. Society doesn’t realize how important the little things are to people

with disabilities. The Elephant Man, John Merrick, was displayed in a freak show

as a beast. He was really a very gentle man who loved everyone, the only thing

wrong with him, was he wasn’t as healthy or pretty as everyone else in society.

Society basically avoided him, and when they did see him, they ran, screamed,

pointed, or stared. John dealt with his disability by locking himself out from

the world. One day, he went to the opera, and that was the most important thing

in his life. Many people take things like going to the opera for granted, but to

John, there couldn’t have been a greater pleasure. In the movie Mask, Rocky was

a boy with a disfigured face. Doctor’s told him that he was going to die, since

he was three, but he lived for much longer than three years. Rocky was a very

nice boy, and a lot of people liked him. Society looked at him as a funny

creature because of his large face, but because of his strength, he made most

people get past that and see the real him. Rocky had a great attitude and was

very big on joking around, so he used comedy as his defense in tough situations.

I think to Rocky one of the most important things he got to do was go to a

school with normal children. Most people don’t realize how important being with

"normal" people is when you’re disadvantaged. In the movie My Left

Foot, Christy Brown was forced to overcome cerebral palsy and alcoholism.

Society was very rude to Christy and many people looked down upon him in the

beginning. He became a world-renowned author and artist. The most important

thing to Christy was being able to write and draw due to his disability of only

using his left foot. Many people can write, but few are forced to do it with

only their left foot. Society doesn’t realize how important the little things

are to people with disabilities. All three of these movies were very good. I

think they depicted the disabilities of the characters well. I believed that

every one of these actors had the disabilities that they were acting the part

of. Movies like this kind of make you think about how good you have things and

how lucky you are. Many of us take too many things for granted and these movies

make you step back and look at life and how good you have things.