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.
