Children Of A Lesser God Analysis

Children of a Lesser God (Sugarman, B. & Palmer, P., 1986) is a motion picture portraying the hurtful disconnect between the hearing and deaf communities. The character Sarah Norman, who is deaf, falls in love with a hearing man whom teaches deaf individuals to speak. The movie is an original with screenplay written by Hesper Anderson and Mark Medoff, whom also later wrote the stage play (Children of a Lesser God, 2016). As the film progresses, it very clear that Sarah Norman wants to live as independently as she can. She is striving to become her own person whom is able to express thoughts and feelings of her own separate from the hearing world. When we first meet Sarah, she is employed as a cleaning lady at a school for the deaf that she …show more content…
Through daily run-ins and constant interactions, he quickly becomes smitten with her. The central conflict of the plot is whether he should further push Sarah to learn to speak or if he should let her live her life the way she wants, only signing. At his new job, James has a class of about six students, all of which eventually open up to speech except two. After understanding that not all of his class understands lip reading, we begin to see James speak and sign simultaneously around the classroom. The students who are open to speech and make effort towards improving their skills are rewarded with drawing or writing on the board, while students who do not try are not able to do so. After much encouragement, we see one of the students scared to speak before, Glen, make his first sound, and through the film we follow his progress to see him very receptive towards learning spoken language. However, the other student who has not tried speak, Johnny, makes it clear that he does not ever intend to. By the end of the film, James tries less and less to force Johnny into speaking, and lets him watch while his classmates have an interactive class. In the midst of his job, James is struggling in his relationship with Sarah. She makes it very clear that her intent is never to speak, as she wants to only sign for herself and communicate for herself. Losing her after an argument about Sarah feeling …show more content…
The very first influence we see Sarah have is on James when we first see her in the film. James is drawn to her fiery attitude and by simply seeing her make a scene is how he decides he wants to know her. This is the very start of James’ change of heart because without this interaction he would 've never met her. The second significant influence we see her have is also upon James. We hear Dr. Franklin state throughout the movie many times that James is a highly respected teacher and is supposed to be very good at his job. When Sarah comes in with Dr. Franklin after she agrees to a one-hour lesson, she teaches James quickly that no matter how good he may be at his job, he cannot force her to do anything. The third influence is on Dr. Franklin at his home. Sarah and James are invited over to play poker, which Sarah teaches herself from a book. When she beats everyone at the get-together, it proves to Dr. Franklin how truly smart she is. Sarah also influences her mother when she decides to move back in with her after she leaves James. She asks to stay with her mother and in doing so, she forgives her and they both decide to look passed their tumultuous past. This strengthens their relationship and opens the door for Sarah to ask her advice when she is struggling with missing James. The final and possibly most significant influence see is again upon James