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Masterplots, Fourth Edition

Children of a Lesser God

by Gerald S. Argetsinger

First produced: 1979; first published, 1980

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: Late 1970’s

Locale: A state school for the hearing impaired

The Story:

James Leeds, a new speech teacher at a state school for the deaf, is working with Orin Dennis to improve his ability to pronounce English. The superintendent, Mr. Franklin, introduces James to Sarah Norman, a twenty-six-year-old deaf woman who does not read lips or use speech, preferring to communicate exclusively in American Sign Language(ASL). Even though James’s charm intrigues her, she informs him, with deliberate rudeness, that speech therapy is a waste of time. Sarah’s hearing mother, Mrs. Norman, chides James for trying to get Sarah to speak and read lips so that she can pass for a hearing person. James responds that he is only trying to help Sarah function in the hearing world.

In his next meeting with her, James tries reaching Sarah with humor. When she is not amused, James apologizes for using hearing idioms and promises to remember that she is deaf. She is skeptical but accepts his offer to go out for Italian food. In the restaurant James asks Sarah why she does not want speech therapy. She responds that ASL is just as good as English, but James counters that ASL is good only among the deaf. Sarah accuses him of wanting to be God, making her over in his own image. The next day, James discovers that Orin knows everything about his date with Sarah. Orin complains that deaf students do not want to be changed simply because hearing teachers want to change them. Orin vows that someday he will change the deaf education system.

Sarah and James are becoming attracted to each other. When Lydia, a teenage student, tries to join them by the duck pond, Sarah chases her away. James is oblivious to Lydia’s infatuation with him. After Sarah leaves, Mr. Franklin appears from behind the trees and warns James that having sex with a student will lead to dismissal. James learns from Mrs. Norman that Sarah stopped trying to speak because she believes people will think she is retarded. James nevertheless tries again to convince Sarah to use her voice. Sarah retorts that the only successful “communication” she ever has with hearing boys is in bed. James realizes that he wants to communicate with her no matter what the language. He and Sarah begin an affair in her dorm room. Orin is outraged. He wants Sarah for his political agenda. Lydia is jealous and informs Mr. Franklin, who again threatens to terminate James, so James and Sarah decide to get married. She confides that she wants to become a teacher for the deaf and to have deaf children. Orin tries to tell Sarah, and Mr. Franklin tries to tell James, why their marriage cannot work. James proclaims that communication will cause no problems but immediately catches himself trying to censor the conversation for Sarah. He realizes he has no right to decide what she can and cannot “hear.” The next day, alone, they are married. Sarah and James move into faculty housing and Sarah begins to enjoy life in the hearing world. When Orin visits her, he urges Sarah not to turn her back on the deaf and informs her that his lawyer is investigating injustices perpetrated by the school. Sarah is beginning to feel caught between the deaf and hearing worlds. Orin’s lawyer decides to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because of the lack of deaf teachers at the school. Orin wants Sarah to join his cause because she is “pure deaf.” He argues that deaf rights are more important than her marriage. When the lawyer arrives, Sarah and James decide to support Orin’s complaint. During their meeting, Sarah realizes that James wants to change her into a hearing person, that Orin wants her to remain “pure deaf,” and that the lawyer wants her to be angry about her deafness so that the commission will feel sorry for her. Orin and Sarah are both unhappy when they read the lawyer’s brief because it is written from a hearing perspective. James suggests that the deaf protesters be allowed to speak for themselves, but Orin wants to speak for Sarah, too. Outraged by the hypocrisy, Sarah storms off to write her speech alone.

James finds Sarah and tries to make up with her. She asks him to watch her speech, but James is devastated when Sarah tells him he cannot interpret for her before the commission because she cannot say, through a hearing person, how she feels as a deaf person. Deeply hurt, James resorts to bitter accusations, finally goading Sarah into speaking—an eruption of passionate, unintelligible sounds that shocks and repulses him. Humiliated by James’s reaction to her voice, she explodes in ASL and runs away.

Even without Sarah’s testimony, Orin wins the grievance, but it is a hollow victory. When James finds Sarah at home with her mother, Sarah explains that she finally realizes that it is she who does not have the right to change him. She no longer wants deaf children, believing that people do not have the right to create others in their own image. James leaves, hoping that someday they might be able to help each other.

Critical Evaluation:

Children of a Lesser God followed William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker, the last Broadway play to include a major deaf character, by twenty years. The two plays can be seen as metaphors for the deaf cultures of their time. In 1960, America was becoming aware of the deaf community, just as Helen Keller became aware of language. The intervening years brought the National Theatre for the Deaf, improved educational opportunities such as the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, the cultural attention of such groups as the American Theatre Association, which established the Program on Drama and Theatre by, with, and for the Handicapped, and civil rights legislation which included protection for individuals with challenging conditions. In 1980, deaf political activists, such as Orin in Children of a Lesser God, were beginning to have the impact that would lead to the 1988 Deaf President Now protest at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Just as Sarah does in the play, the deaf community was demanding the right to represent and speak for itself.

Ostensibly a love story, one of Children of a Lesser God’s most significant contributions is the accurate portrayal of the complex issues facing the deaf community. Not all deaf people are the same. Two students are portrayed using residual hearing, reading lips, and having the ability to speak. Sarah, on the other hand, refuses to use her voice, wear a hearing aid, or read lips, preferring American Sign Language (ASL), the language of the manual deaf community. There is a hearing-impaired hierarchy; the hard-of-hearing think they’re better than the “pure deaf.” The goal of hearing teachers is to force deaf students to speak so they will be able to function in the hearing world, whether they want to or not. Several scenes in the play, such as the depiction of Sarah responding to music, are included merely to inform the audience about deafness.

Mark Medoff’s recurring theme of self-discovery is developed primarily through the character of Sarah. In the beginning, she proclaims that others do not have the right to re-create her in their image. She expresses her desire to have deaf children. Later she realizes that those around her want to re-create her for their own selfish purposes. James still wants her to function as a hearing person. Orin still wants to preserve her as a dependent “pure deaf” pawn in his political movement. The lawyer-activist still wants her to be an object of pity. In the end, Sarah’s triumph is to recognize that oppressive trait within herself. She no longer wants to have deaf children, because not even she has the right to re-create someone in her own image.

When Medoff decided to write this play for deaf actress Phyllis Frelich, he did not realize he would have to devise a new literary technique to communicate to both the play’s theatrical and reading audiences. Like the actress, the play’s main character, Sarah Norman, communicates exclusively in ASL. The theater audience would not be able to understand her signing; the reader would not be able to understand a direct substitution of English words for ASL (English: “I have nothing; no hearing . . . no language . . . I have me alone.” ASL: “Me have nothing. Me deafy . . . English, blow away . . . Think myself enough”). The reader’s problem was solved when Medoff decided to write Sarah’s lines in English, instructing theaters to use sign language experts to develop their own appropriate ASL. The translation problem for performance was solved by having another character, usually James, repeat in English everything that was signed. (Sarah [ASL]: “What I really want is pasta.” James [speaking]: “What you really want is p-a—-pasta. Now we’re talking.”) That Medoff was able to write this kind of double-speak without interfering with the natural flow or emotional build of the dialogue was remarkable. This device also succeeds because the story is told in flashback, as James’s memory. Medoff uses a cinematic style of writing that blends one scene, one memory, with the next, without the need to stop the action to establish passage of time or locales. Some critics have labeled this a “feminist” play because the man who wants to help his wife becomes her oppressor. That argument can be made, but it is a rush to judgment, ignoring the author’s intent and the richness of the play’s depiction of deaf education and culture. If the gender of every character was reversed, the story would still be true, because it is a story of deafness and not one of feminism.

Further Reading

1 

Brustein, Robert. “Robert Brustein on Theater.” The New Republic, June 7, 1980. Satirizes the play as part of a new genre, the politically correct “disability play.” Argues that one cannot dislike such plays without being labeled “hearingist” or sexist.

2 

Erben, Rudolf. Mark Medoff. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1995. Provides a brief overview of Medoff’s life and work.

3 

Gill, Brendan. “Without Speech.” The New Yorker, April 14, 1980. Proclaims Children of a Lesser God to be not only successful but also a work of art. Focuses on the honesty of a story that portrays a seemingly perfect union but is destroyed by ingrained flaws that the passion of the moment had at first minimalized.

4 

Gladstein, Mimi Reisel. “Mark Medoff.” In Speaking on Stage: Interviews with Contemporary American Playwrights, edited by Philip C. Kolin and Colby H. Kullman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996. Medoff is one of twenty-seven post-World War II American playwrights who discuss their work.

5 

Guernsey, Otis L., Jr. Curtain Times: The New York Theater, 1965-1987. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987. Focuses on the uniqueness of the point of view of a minority that does not want to become part of the mainstream.

6 

Medoff, Mark. The Dramaturgy of Mark Medoff: Five Plays Dealing with Deafness and Social Issues. Compiled by Samuel J. Zachary. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004. Before the production of Children of a Lesser God, only a handful of plays featured deaf characters or dealt with the issues and culture of deaf people. Medoff has since written four other plays that deal in some way with deafness and were created for deaf actress Phyllis Frelich. In addition to the five playscripts, this volume includes an introduction by Medoff, in which he discusses the inspiration, writing, casting, production, performance, reception, and legacy of these plays; Frelich also offers her comments on the dramas.

7 

Simon, John. “April on Broadway: Indoor Showers.” New York Magazine, April 14, 1980. Describes the play’s attempt to deal with weighty issues as shallow, falling short of melodrama, and functioning as mere soap opera. Simon cannot accept that James would become involved with the deeply troubled Sarah.

8 

Weales, Gerald. “Belatedly, the Tonies.” Commonweal 107, no. 18 (October 24, 1980): 595-596. Accuses the drama of being the standard didactic play with the hearing-impaired replacing blacks or homosexuals as the new misunderstood minority.

9 

Wilson, Edwin. “Broadway: Two Openings and One Closing.” The Wall Street Journal, April 1, 1980. Reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews 41, no. 6 (March 24, 1980): 303. Points out that the play is three stories: Sarah’s life, the rights of deaf people, and the romance. Argues that the play is worthy of serious critical attention.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Argetsinger, Gerald S. "Children Of A Lesser God." Masterplots, Fourth Edition, edited by Laurence W. Mazzeno, Salem Press, 2010. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=MP4_13339820000056.
APA 7th
Argetsinger, G. S. (2010). Children of a Lesser God. In L. W. Mazzeno (Ed.), Masterplots, Fourth Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Argetsinger, Gerald S. "Children Of A Lesser God." Edited by Laurence W. Mazzeno. Masterplots, Fourth Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2010. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.