Author: Michelle Z.

Relationships in Troubleshooting: Tom Webster, the Mistake, and CAN

Michelle Zillioux

ENG 384

Final Essay

30 April, 2019

I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received any unauthorized help on this assignment. Michelle Zillioux

 Relationships in Troubleshooting: Tom Webster, the Mistake and CAN

            In Selene de Packh’s novel, Troubleshooting, the protagonist, Dax Archer, often finds herself at the mercy of her circumstances. As an autistic woman in a society that devalues her assistance, Dax must navigate her circumstances in order to survive. She is often presented with fewer options to do so due to her lower status within her society, and therefore is regularly pushed to rely on others despite being shown as a perfectly capable and independent individual throughout the novel. Because of this, she encounters and suffers several relationships through the course of the novel with characters and groups who act as though they care for her when, in reality, they only have their own best interests in mind. Paralleling how advocacy groups such as Cure Autism Now (which has now merged with Autism Speaks) treat autistic people, these relationships, which include those she forms with Tom Webster and the Mistake, attempt to “cure” her, strip her of her agency and devalue her existence as a human being.

According to Ralph James Savarese in “Toward a Postcolonial Neurology: Autism, Tito Mukhopadhyay, and a New Geo-poetics of the Body,” the advocacy group CAN “was all too happy to champion Tito as evidence of what is possible for ‘severely autistic children, [but] its primary focus was to raise funds to develop a cure […]” (6). Although Tom Webster endures as one of the more empathetic characters in dePackh’s novel, he ends up emulating this statement at times as he supports Dax’s maturation and assimilation into society in the hopes that she will learn to suppress her autism. A father figure to Dax after she escapes from Thunderbird Mountain and seeks refuge among his family, Tom gives her access to opportunities that she had been barred from in the past due to her being an autistic woman, including a chance at an education from a trade school and access to a job afterwards. Due to these opportunities, Dax is able to mature and grow as a person, and, at first, Tom appears to readers as an ally who supplies her with accessibility. However, it later becomes apparent that Tom has attempted to force Dax to overcome her autism while maintaining control over her life in a similar fashion to CAN.

Tom’s intentions become clear towards the end of the novel when he expresses his disapproval over Dax’s sexual relationship with Chill Dark: “You were doing so well, Dax. You were beating the autism” (dePackh, 211). Here, after seeing that Dax has strayed from the path he intended for her, he reacts negatively because he has lost control over her. It becomes clear that, although he cares for as a father, his intentions in giving her access to responsibility over non-automatic bill payments, a home and a job, were to integrate her into society as someone who beat or suppressed her autism so that she could pass as allistic, or “normal.” Whether these intentions are born from father-like love or not, they disregard Dax’s agency over herself while diminishing her autism to something that must be overcome, just as when advocacy groups like CAN and Autism Speaks pretend they are acting in the best interests of autistic people despite really only seek to cure them.

Later in the novel, Dax also forms a relationship with a man she role-names the Mistake, who, similar to Tom, displays initially helpful behavior that is misleading and eventually becomes detrimental to Dax. However, The Mistake, who begins as a seemingly kind and patient character (even with Dax’s narration warning otherwise), ends up being a far more violent and antagonistic character than Tom. Similar to CAN’s beliefs considering autistic people, the Mistake fails to respect Dax’s existence entirely; at times, he even sees her autism as an embarrassment, such as when he says, “You. Have. Humiliated. Me. for the Last. Fucking. Time — Freak!” (155) after she has an emotional outburst at CareWell. Here, in expressing his view of her as a “freak,” he is essentially admitting that he believes her status as an autistic person makes her inferior to him. This is a belief that may have influenced his violence against her because, if he believes she is inferior and a “freak,” then he most likely views her as undeserving of being treated as a human being, just as CAN’s belief that autism is a disease leads them to dehumanize autistic people and search for a cure to eradicate autism.

After a while, The Mistake also slowly renders Dax reliant on him. After the two are forced to live together following an incident at their workplace and the destruction of his home, the Mistake begins to ease his way into Dax’s life by helping her pay her bills and serving as a source of protection. Additionally, the Mistake’s status as an allistic and able-bodied man makes it easier for him to take control, as Dax legally has few rights. Eventually, Dax, herself, starts to both believe she relies on him and owes him. This is a state of mind that ultimately makes her feel trapped in her relationship with him: “As a solitary autistic, I needed him and he knew it” (115). Comparably, famed autistic self-advocate Tito Mukhopadhyay, along with his mother, felt trapped after they were manipulated and taken advantage of by CAN, who served as their sponsor and continually “policed [their] every move, prevented opportunities for interviews, and signed away rights to [their] story on [their] behalf” (Savarese, 6-7). Mirroring this behavior, the Mistake strips Dax of her independence by preventing her from driving and by controlling her bank account so that only he can make use of her money. He therefore acts almost like an analogy for the abusive and controlling behavior of advocacy groups like CAN.

In writing Dax’s relationships with Tom Webster and the Mistake so that they depict the different kinds of negative relationships autistic people have experienced in their lives, Selene dePackh forms a poignant analogy for the treatment of autistic people in both the world of Troubleshooting and in real life. Tom and the Mistake are both major influences over Dax throughout most of the novel who have been thrust into her life, whether she likes it or not, due to her circumstances as an autistic woman. Just as advocacy organizations like CAN and Autism Speaks often market themselves as benign organizations who seek help for autistic people when they are, in reality, searching to eradicate autism, Tom tries to help Dax in a way that ultimately serves his own beliefs and interests over hers. Furthermore, the Mistake takes advantage of Dax’s circumstances and devalues her existence by abusing her and controlling many aspects of her life, thus paralleling CAN’s real-life treatment of Tito Mukhopadhyay. Selene dePackh’s crafting of Dax’s relationships with these two men therefore serves as a parallel to the real-world treatment of autistic people, as best characterized through so-called autistic advocacy groups’ views on autism.

Word Count: 1157

Works Cited:

dePackh, Selene. Troubleshooting. San Francisco: Reclamation Press, 2018.

Savarese, Ralph James. “Toward a Postcolonial Neurology: Autism, Tito Mukhopadhyay, and a New Geo-poetics of the Body.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, 2010, p.p. 273-289.

Michelle Zillioux’s Major Project: Invisible Disability

Invisible Disability

When I first felt the stiff pain that has nested itself beneath my knee cap, I thought to myself that it was nothing if not a nuisance. I could not recall hurting my knee in the first place, and I certainly could not bring myself to think that whatever injury I had brought upon myself warranted anything more than a diagnosis and a quick cure. For a long time, the thought did not occur to me that my pain was much more than what I was thinking — that I could consider myself disabled. In creating this short comic detailing my self-reflections over the legitimacy of the pain in my knee, as well as the term “disability,” I sought to answer for myself whether or not I consider myself disabled, and contemplate the social stigma surrounding disability itself. As I cultivated my project, I discovered that my struggle with the term “disability” stems from a problem in which disability has been conflated with social beliefs concerning sex appeal.

While planning my project, I started out with the idea that I would detail my experience with physical therapy. It made sense to me to do so. In a way, my dealings with physical therapy marked the only solid proof (to me) that I could be considered disabled, besides my recent diagnosis of chondromalacia in my left patella. Then, as I sketched and wrote, it occured to me that I had trouble with the label of disability. I could not determine what proved that I was allowed to call myself disabled. Physical therapy did not feel like enough proof the longer I worked on my preliminary sketches. I became nervous. I thought people would read my comic and think I was appropriating a label that I did not deserve to claim, so I disposed of my early sketches and sought to figure out just why I had trouble with considering myself as disabled despite having struggled with several difficulties over the past year since the pain had started.

I found the answer in Anna Mollow’s and Robert McRuer’s “Introduction” from Sex and Disability. The excerpt detailing Mollow’s encounter with a woman who chastised her for claiming disability because Mollow did not “look” disabled struck me. Mollow’s struggle with consolidating the unique experience of “looking too good to be disabled” and nevertheless still having to suffer the consequences of chronic pain felt familiar (Mollow 19). I, too, have experienced moments during my time with chondromalacia where my pain has not been taken seriously due to the fact that I look physically healthy. People have assumed that I am faking my pain, or that it is not so bad that I should refrain from the activities that aggravate the cartilage my knee cap has worn away at. What they see is the same image I see when I look in the mirror: a young woman with normal-looking knees. The only thing that sticks out is the bright pink tape hugging my kneecap — but anyone could wear that, if they wanted.

As I went to record all of this in my plan for my project, it became evident to me that the experiences of doubt and misunderstanding surrounding my disability, as well as Mollow’s, speaks of an underlying problem within society. Mollow and McRuer state that there is an “assertion of able-bodiedness as the foundation of sexiness” (1). Such a statement encapsulates a very prominent view of disability within society that Mollow and McRuer are quick to point out. Disability is not often perceived as sexy or attractive (unless it is fetishized), and, therefore, the prototypical image of a person with a disability is that of a person who does not conform to conventional beauty standards: “Rarely are disabled people regarded as either desiring subjects or objects of desire” (Mallow 1). Even now, as I write, images of twisted knees, contorted backs and missing limbs come to mind. Certainly, the image staring back at me in the mirror is none of those. My facade appears fully functioning. It makes sense to me then that I have trouble recognizing myself as disabled when I need an x-ray to prove that there is something wrong with my knee in the first place.

After these realizations, I made it my goal to use my project as a visual guide to depict both the pain and my worries in a way that people can see. I also wanted it to become a think-piece that would call into question my preconceptions considering disability. I focused on myself, depicting my flesh as pink to contrast the sharp pain I represented in blue, and supplemented panels with written expressions of self-reflection. In the end, my self-reflection solidified the idea in my mind that I am, in fact, disabled. It does not matter that the only time my disability is visible is when my knee swells some after the cartilage becomes inflamed. I recognize now that whether or not I look disabled is irrelevant because I can still feel the pain, and that pain has kept me from several activities, thus interrupting my work and my everyday life. With this comic, I hope that I have made it clear that disability can come in different forms, and that having an invisible impairment does not invalidate one’s experience of being disabled.

Word Count: 886

I pledge upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor receive any unauthorized help on this assignment. Michelle Zillioux

Works Cited

Linton, Simi. “Reassigning Meaning.” Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity, NYU Press,1998, pp 8-33.

Mallow, Anna, and Robert McRuer. “Introduction.” Sex and Disability, Duke University Press, edited by Anna Mallow and Robert McRuer, 2012, pp. 1-34.

Michelle Zillioux’s Response to “The Sound and the Fury” (pg. 48-95)

Early in his novel, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner explores the world of the Compson family through the eyes of the mentally disabled Benjy Compson. As events of Benjy’s life are brought forth through vivid memories as he goes about his day on his 33rd birthday, it becomes evident that Benjy’s mental disability is often infantilized and seen as a burden by most of his family, most notably his mother and his niece. Benjy’s mother and niece often antagonize him because of his disability by victimizing themselves, openly wishing not to have to deal with his disability, and infantilizing him.

Though Benjy’s mother, Caroline Compson, is introduced as a self-victimizing hypochondriac from early on, her misguided, negative views of her son’s disability become more evident farther along in the novel’s first part, “April Seventh, 1928.” When Caddy seeks to comfort Benjy while they visit their mother on her sickbed, Caroline shifts the focus of attention from her son to herself in order to claim that she is the one who is actually suffering: “You humor [Benjy] too much. […] You dont realise that I am the one who has to pay for it” (Faulkner 63). She also manages to infantilize Benjy in this quote by gaslighting his sensitivity while chiding Caddy as if her attempts to comfort him are the actions of a person spoiling a child. In other words, it is as if comforting him will only encourage his behavior as it would a testy child, and that Caroline would have to shoulder the aftermath on her own. It then becomes clear that she has no empathy for Benjy, and believes herself to be a victim, thus establishing herself as someone who believes his disability to be a burden.

Similarly, Caddy’s illegitimate daughter, Quentin, finds Benjy’s presence to be burdensome as well. Though Caroline is much more self-pitying, Quentin’s character is extremely forthright in expressing her hatred of Benjy because of his disability. After Faulkner introduces Quentin, it is immediately obvious that she carries a vitriolic grudge against Benjy due to his disability. His presence is enough to stir her up, as seen when Benjy and Luster come across her intimately involved with the man in the red tie. In fact, one of her first lines of dialogue is indicative of her attitude towards Benjy: “If you don’t take him right away this minute and keep him away, I’m going to make Jason whip you” (Faulkner 48). Quentin clearly does not want to be around Benjy, as his sensitivity and tendency to “beller” irritates her. This seems to stem from her infantilization of him, which is evident in her saying, “[…] you let him follow everywhere I go” (Faulkner 48). The image of Benjy following Quentin around evokes images of little siblings or children tailing others. Meanwhile, the fact that Quentin claims Luster “lets” Benjy do the things that irritate her erase any sense of autonomy Benjy could have; she essentially disregards the possibility that Benjy is aware and in control of his own actions. Thus, because of her behavior and her words, the reader gets the sense that Quentin feels as though Benjy’s disability makes him a burden just as Caroline does.

Throughout the first part of The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, Caroline Compson and Quentin are only two of many characters who fail to empathize with Benjy and effectively categorize his mental disability as burdensome through their words and actions. Throughout the later half of “April Seventh, 1928,” both exhibit tendencies to infantilize Benjy’s actions and draw irritation or discomfort from them, meanwhile focusing the attention upon themselves. And though their ways of reacting against Benjy’s disability differ, they grow from the same roots: a belief that a person with disability is “childlike” and a burden upon their caretaker.

Word count: 635

I pledge upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received any unauthorized help on this assignment. Michelle Zillioux

Works Cited:

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury, 1st International Edition. Vintage International, a Division of Random House, Inc., 1984.

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