Summary Of Richard Bourne's Essay The Handicapped

Bourne begins his essay The Handicapped by expressing his negative feelings towards the way society views people with physical disadvantages He being a handicapped himself, feels that his early life was a distasteful experience. Although, as the essay proceeds there is an obvious change of perspective, the author seems more content about his life. He has accepted who he is and what he can do. Throughout this essay Bourne describes the bitter and the sweet of living a handicapped life. Furthermore, Bourne believes that the handicapped have a more challenging life than someone without physical disadvantage. "For he has all the battles of a stronger man to fight, and he is at a double disadvantage in fighting them. He has constantly with him …show more content…
"I do not want to look on my life as an eternal making the best of a bad bargain. Granting all the circumstances, admitting all my disabilities, I want too to "warm both hands before the fire of life." What satisfactions I have, and they are many and precious, I do not want to look on as compensations, but as positive goods." He defines the trigger that led to his change in perspective to be maturity. He feels that as people get older, specifically disadvantage people, they start to finally understand what matters the most to them and thus finding satisfaction within themselves. By finding satisfaction in whom they are they learn to no longer care about what other people think or push themselves to extremes to fitting in within their society. "He must not think of "resigning himself to his fate"; above all he must insist on his own personality. For once really grown up, he will find that he has acquired self-respect and personality. Grown-up-ness, I think, is not a mere question of age, but of being able to look back and understand and find satisfaction in one's experience, no matter how bitter it may have been." Bourne at the end of his essay finds peace in his fate in life by accepting his