American Pastoral
Many people stutter; however people usually outgrow stuttering. But it is not something that people just do for a short while to attract attention. People who do stutter are actually really embarrassed by it and the attention they receive from stuttering and fear the next time that it will happen. They will often avoid situations in which stuttering will be a problem. Stutterers have no control over when they stutter or don't. Contrary to the therapist in the novel American Pastoral, stuttering is not an idea conjured up in ones head to gain attention. It is not a psychological problem that comes and goes as one needs it, or when it would be beneficial to a person. Because the truth is, a stutterer never finds it beneficial to have. Research has shown that stuttering is one hundred percent physiological, and not at all psychological. The psychiatrist "got Merry thinking that the stutter was a choice she made, a way of being special that she had chosen and then locked into when she had realized how well it worked"(95). The belief that you will not stutter has no effect on your speech. The anticipation of stuttering does not cause stuttering (5). Stuttering is a developmental disorder that st
arts in the early childhood and nothing Merry did could change that. It develops at the same time as children learn "grammar, accents, and other fundamentals of speech and language"(1). When children fail to learn "speech breathing, vocal fold control, and how to articulate sounds"(1) that is when they develop disfluencies, which can turn into stuttering or stammering. If children do not learn these fundamentals at the right critical time, it is difficult or impossible to learn later. Children will develop these problems between the ages of two and six, when development is most crucial. Which is around the age that Merry developed the stutter in the novel. Usually people will not develop speech problems past the age of eleven. More boys than girls develop speech disorders. Which is why it was even more rare for Merry to have the stutter because it's not as common in girls. Even then, the girls tend to outgrow their problems, up until their forties. . It is difficult to determine who will outgrow and who will not (4). Merry did eventually outgrow her stutter though. The first time her dad saw her again after the long absence, he couldn't believe "she had attained control, mental and physical, over every sound she uttered"(246). At the time of his realization he attributes it to a change in her mental state. He thinks "everything she could not achieve with a speech therapist and a psychiatrist and a speech diary she had beautifully realized by going mad"(246). Merry did not lose her stutter because she was suddenly psychologically healthy. Merry is finally in control of her vocal muscles enough to speak free of her stutter. Stutterers are not more nervous, do not have worse self-esteem, and are not "shcizo," as some movies have portrayed stutterers. There are moments or times when stutters are completely fluent. This is when they are by themselves, when they read out loud, saying something over and over, singing, speaking in another language or with an accent, or when pretending to be a different person or persona (1). Also, many stutterers report being "so scared" that they couldn't stutter (4). Emotional stress often reduces stuttering too (5). Some stutterers are fluent when they try to stutter while others stutter more. Merry has many periods in the novel when she adopts some of these ideas and speaks fluently. One time, she walks in o
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Approximate Word count = 1600
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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