My Left Foot What Helped Shape Christy

Brown Into The Man He Bacame Essay, Research Paper

Christy Brown can be described as an intelligent mind trapped inside an inferior body. The immense frustration that he is put through trying to perform the simplest tasks that we, as fully functional humans, take for granted would be enough to make most people give up, and live a life of watching television all day and being wheeled to their bedrooms. It was Christy s various attributes, along with the assistance and encouragement received from prominent figures in his life, such as Dr Cole and Mrs Brown (respectively), that brought him out of the shell that he otherwise would ve hidden himself in.

Even though Christy sometimes found it hard to get his feelings across to others, he was still an affectionate person. His love for Eileen was professed many times throughout the film, and he showed his feelings for a girl by painting a picture of the two of them on a piece of paper, and writing poetry in a circle around it. In the closing scenes of My Left Foot, Mary was persistently nagged for a date after the presentation. This is also an example of Christy s stubbornness/determined nature. The intelligence he possessed was demonstrated in the plan to steal coal from a truck, and also in his mental capacity to write a book

Christy s ability to paint was the core quality in helping him out of solidarity. Things that could not be expressed through words or text could be painted using his left foot. The discovery of his talent for painting led to public exposure, which helped him to overcome his shyness.

Unfortunately, just having these qualities would not have been sufficient enough to help Christy lead a relatively normal life. If his family had possessed the same attitude to physical disability that was prominent at the time (meaning that of physically disabled people being mentally handicapped too), then there was no way that he would ever want to speak to anyone other than them for his whole life. If you are continuously told some thing about your self that you know not to be true, it ll eventually be imprinted in your mind to the point that you believe it.

Thankfully, Christy s family saw his potential and made every effort to see that it wasn t wasted. His mother, in particular, understood him and helped him to gain his independence (e.g. she believed that it was worth her family eating porridge for 2 meals every day, so that a wheel chair could be bought for Christy).

Sure, Christy was smart enough to be able to write a novel in his mind, but the help of one of his brothers was needed to put those words onto paper. No one would have wanted Christy to deliver a speech if only a handful of the guests could understand what it was that he was saying.

Dr Cole s work in giving him speech therapy made him much easier to understand, and therefore seem more normal to those who originally thought that he was inferior. Also, if Peter hadn t given Christy his own art exhibition, his gift for painting may have gone unnoticed. This brought him out into the limelight, which would have helped him to get his book published.

Even though there were people in his life who wanted to assist him, Christy needed to help himself before others could help him. It was the qualities he possessed aided by the qualities of those around him that shaped Christy Brown into the person that he turned out to be.