CFR_2000Fall.pdf


"UNAWARE TO HER EARS": 

WHEN THE STORYTELLER CANNOT SPEAK 

ELIZABETH E. WEIN 

Jared Wein. a young man who is under continual nursing care in 

a rehabilitation facility in Philadelphia. is diagnosed as a spas­

tic quadriplegic. He suffered a severe head injury in an automo­
bile accident that occurred over twenty years ago and. as a con­
sequence. has \'Cry litllc motor control. Tbe effects of his injury 

are continually fascinating: most of the damage was to his left 
brain. and consequently it is the right side of his bod) and those 
left brain-oriented activities that arc most impaired. His right 

brain seems to function as if ii were intact: he remains creative 

and sensitive. He can remember and recogniLc people from both 
his present and his past. and is continually constructing fantasy 
worlds and possibilities for himself. while he is often unable to 

remember simple mathematical functions or even what year it 
is. Though he is able lo rncalizc al will he cannot talk. and com­
municates by pointing to lctlcrs writlcn on a board or else by 
typing messages on an electronic communicator. And though the 
only limb he has control o,·er is his left arm. Jared is able to 

express his needs and desires in a ,my that is both articulate 

and inventive. 

Jared's "stories" are typical of his creativity. His case is unique; 

he was injured when he was eleven, was in a coma for a year, and 

basically has "learned" very little since that time. Both his short­

term memory and his attention span are very poor, and although 

he was twenty-one when these tales were collected ( 1987-88), 

his interests and tastes were, and are, generally those of an ado­

lescent or eleven-year-old. He was still attending high school when 

these stories were recorded, and his peers were generally in their 

teens. Many of the disabled, particularly the mentally disabled, do 

in a way "lose" their adulthood-their disabilities and the atten­

tion they command makes them childlike. Because of Jared's short 

attention span, Jared's tales, when compared with the stories in 

Brian Sutton-Smith's The Folkstories <�/ Children, are usually no 

more consistent or structured than those of a four-year-old. Yet 

Jared has inevitably picked up pieces of information since his ac­

cident, and inevitably matured in his own way (he graduated from 

high school in 1989-with a real diploma, not merely a certificate