Back in the 1930s, society grouped and showed prejudice against those who weren’t the “perfects” that society visualized. Everyone with defects, disabilities, etc. were put underneath one label that expressed society’s feelings about them. Laura Hillenbrand, the author, used several very strongly connotated words to describe a majority of the nation’s view and attitude towards these people such as “undesirable”. The disabled or “feeble-minded” were seen as keeping the nation back from achieving its full potential. This was several decades ago, and many of us say and many hear politicians say that “we have come a long way since then”. Even though we as a nation might have pulled away from their past revulsion towards those grouped, we haven’t
