She carries unmitigated guilt, feeling responsible for having lured him onto the road, only to be crushed by an oncoming horse and wagon.īut nothing impacts Mary’s life as much as the incursion of a scientist who is determined to find out why there are so many deaf people in Chilmark. There is insidious prejudice between some of the white European descendants and the Wampanoag Tribe over land rights, a black freedman who turns to the Wampanoag people for acceptance because white citizens reject him, and general disdain for all Irish immigrants.īut in Mary’s own life, the recent death of her older brother is most prominent, and has left her family shattered. The storyline is infused with nuances that rip at the seemingly idyllic nature of the community. Many families had mixed hearing and deaf members, but most remarkably, everyone “spoke” Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL). In LeZotte’s afternotes, she mentions that one in every 25 people were deaf in Chilmark, versus one in 6,000 on the mainland. Chilmark’s prominent deaf community dates all the way back to the 1640s. Mary lives in Chilmark in the early 19th century - a time where Chilmark had a notably high percentage of deaf folks, both in the novel and in real life.
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