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Autobiography of a Face is a memoir written by award-winning poet Lucy Grealy. It describes her childhood struggles with jaw cancer and the resulting disfigurement that she considers the true tragedy of her life. With the exception of the prologue, the memoir employs a linear narrative, detailing Grealy’s life from early childhood into adulthood.
The prologue begins several years after Grealy’s cancer treatment, with an account of an adolescent Grealy helping a local stable with a ‘pony party’ in a nearby suburb. As she works the party, we see how acutely aware Grealy is of the partygoers curious and disturbed gazes at her disfigured jaw, which she attempts to hide behind her long hair. Even from the brief anecdote, we can see clearly how ashamed Grealy is at her own disfigurement.
The memoir then moves back in time to Grealy’s early childhood and the accident that led to the discovery of her cancer. Fourth-grade Lucy sustains a minor injury while playing dodgeball in school. This injury leads her to the dentist who is the first t
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These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.
Written by Ratna Bajpai
Grealy's memoir is a sensitive account of the relationship between physical appearance and self-esteem. It is a story of courage and resilience in the face of adversity. It describes the psychological, social, and cultural implications of an ailment.
At nine years of age, Lucy loses half her jaw to Ewing's sarcoma. In the early stages of the disease and treatment, she does not comprehend the significance or the implications of her condition. After more than two years of surgeries, radiation treatment, and intensive chemotherapy, she realizes the impact of the illness and disfigurement. The narrative incorporates several childhood events. Her awareness of people staring at her face, her attempts to hide her face with her hair, and a feeling of joy on Halloween, when she could mask her face are heart-wrenching.
The book describes the impact of Lucy's disease on her family relationships. Lucy belongs to an Irish immigrant family that cop
Autobiography of a Face Themes
Courage
Though Lucy's level of courage can largely be attributed to her mother, there's no doubt that she does withstand a great deal of pain and suffering and seems to do so generally without complaint. Even at a young age, Lucy is aware that what she's withstanding isn't normal and draws comfort from that fact. For example, when children are teasing her or adults are staring, she sometimes draws strength from the fact that she has undergone painful surgeries and treatments that most other people couldn't have withstood. Her knowledge that this is so seems to come from her mother.
From the very first trip to the hospital, Lucy's mother tells her that she's brave and reinforces the idea that crying is shameful. Her mother says that Lucy's sister would not have been so brave. Just as Lucy is to undergo a bone marrow test, her parents prepare to
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Symbols & Motifs
Crying
Unable to truly help her daughter, Lucy’s mother attempts to do so by telling her to be brave and encouraging her not to show pain or fear about her illness and medical treatment. Lucy accepts this and makes every effort to suppress her emotions when she is around her mother, remembering her “first visit to the emergency room” where she had “been praised as good for being brave” which she took as “a formula for gaining acceptance” (30). Symbolically, this is highlighted by her attempts to not cry, with her again focusing on the time when she was “courageous and didn’t cry and thus was good” (21). She develops this into the most important component of her adopted code of conduct, that “[o]ne had to be good. One must never complain or struggle. One must never, under any circumstances, show fear and, prime directive above all, one must never, ever cry” (). Time after time, she fails to stop herself from crying before, near the end of her two and half years of treatment, she finally stops weeping during chemotherapy. However, this comes at a cost. While her mother praises her “for being so good,” Lucy’s repeated efforts to deny her need to engage
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