Sound And Fury Analysis

I watched the documentary, Sound and Fury. This movie was about a two bother’s named Peter who was born Deaf, and the other named Chris who was hearing. Peter’s wife and three children are all Deaf. Chris’s and his wife had two kids that were hearing and one that was Deaf. Peter’s five-year-old daughter, Heather wanted to get a cochlear implant, but he and his wife weren’t really sure if they wanted their daughter to have one. Chris and his wife, Mari were getting their Deaf son, Peter, an implant no matter what anyone said or thought. The extended families and Deaf Community were divided on whether these parents should get their children the cochlear implant or not. The biggest subject covered in this film was the cochlear implant. A cochlear
It seemed like for most people in the Deaf community, the cochlear implant isn’t accepted or wanted. They fear that the cochlear implant will cause the Deaf community to become extinct, or that the Deaf people getting them will no longer want to interact with their communities anymore. One man said that it was “selfish, and that parents were forcing cochlear implants on their children because they don’t have a say in if they wanted it or not.” (Weisberg) I think the biggest concern for the Deaf members of the community was that these children will lose their identity as a Deaf person if they have the cochlear implant. This was Nita and Peter’s concern too. Peter was quoted saying that if Heather got the cochlear implant, “she won’t be part of the Deaf or hearing world, she’d be part of cochlear implant world.”
After a child has been implanted, it is suggested that there be no use of ASL. Studies show that children whose parents used sign language were significantly more likely than children of non-signing parents to exhibit spoken language delays in elementary grades and to fall behind children of the same age in reading comprehension by the late elementary grade levels (AAP). This would be hard for families like Peter and Nita since their whole family is Deaf and they don’t know how to talk. I’m sure for a lot of families, just knowing that they can no longer communicate with their children would be a deciding factor on their child not getting the implant. As Deaf parent, I can’t imagine saying yes to getting my child a cochlear implant because of that. I also think this confirms the Deaf cultures worries about the cochlear implant killing the Deaf culture.
Before watching Sound and Fury, I had seen people with cochlear implants, but I didn’t really know anything about them like I do now. I didn’t know that the younger a child who was born deaf is implanted, the greater the benefit achieved in the areas of speech perception and speech and language development (ASHA). I also had no idea that by implanting a child with the cochlear implant, you’d be taking their means of communication