Introduction
You often struggle to understand how minority communities maintain their unique identity when pressured by dominant external cultures. You want to see how individuals preserve autonomy and dignity when facing exploitation by those who view differences as mere curiosities.
Ann Clare LeZotte argues in Show Me a Sign that deaf people possess complete self-determination and rich cultural systems that outsiders cannot dismantle without fierce resistance.
You will explore this through four distinct stages:
- How isolated communities develop natural adaptations to hereditary traits.
- How external scientific prejudices disrupt self-reliant ways of life.
- How vulnerable individuals survive abduction by unscrupulous actors.
- How returning home allows captives to heal and confront their own prejudices.
1. Historical Background and Island Life
Isolated communities with high rates of intermarriage can develop their own village sign languages as a natural adaptation to hereditary traits, while maintaining traditional subsistence practices.
Deafness on Martha's Vineyard
You discover that hereditary deafness was common on Martha's Vineyard, especially in Chilmark. Early settlers from Kent, England, brought the recessive genetic trait and likely Old Kentish Sign Language. The lack of modern genetic knowledge led to various superstitious theories about its origin.
From 1640 through the late 1800s, one in twenty-five residents of Chilmark was born deaf. In Squibnocket, the ratio was as high as one in four.
Ezra Brewer recounts that the island's deafness originated from the Weald, a wooded region in Kent, England, where many people were born deaf. The first recorded deaf person to settle on the island was Jonathan Lambert in 1692.
In 1694, Jonathan Lambert bought land from Sachem Josias Wompatuck for seven pounds, a location still known today as Lambert's Cove near Christiantown.
Wampanoag Heritage and Survival
You learn that the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) maintained a long indigenous history on Martha's Vineyard despite displacement, discrimination, and forced cultural shifts by English settlers. The ancestors of the Wampanoag have inhabited Noepe for at least ten thousand years.
Thomas explains that the Wampanoag use ancestral place names like Aquinnah instead of Gay Head and Noepe instead of Martha's Vineyard, viewing land collectively rather than through private parcels.
Mary and her friend Nancy Skiffe discovered a dead humpback whale on the beach, which local men flensed to harvest meat, lamp oil, and baleen after it lay on the shore for 4 days.
Mary helps prepare food by rinsing corn, beans, and squash grown in their garden. You can follow these agricultural guidelines:
- Plant corn to provide height for bean stalks.
- Plant squash to serve as ground mulch.
- Plant beans to provide beneficial gasses to the soil.
In 1902, Amos Smalley, an Aquinnah whaler, became the only man to ever harpoon his own great white sperm whale.
2. Scientific Intrusion and Social Conflict
Outsiders approached the island's high rate of hereditary deafness through emerging scientific inquiry, attempting to trace genealogies and environmental causes. Andrew Noble arrives on the island to conduct a census, interview residents, collect soil and water samples, and study genealogies to determine if a local impurity causes deafness.
The introduction of external scientific attitudes toward disability can create profound social friction within a self-reliant community that views deafness simply as a natural way of life.
Andrew Noble interviews Ezra Brewer to map out island family trees like the Lamberts and Skiffes. Ezra Brewer starts his genealogy recitation from the arrival year of Jonathan Lambert in 1692.
The Arrival of Outsiders
While islanders view their deafness as a normal human variation with its own cultural humor, scientific interlopers often frame it as an infirmity that needs eradication. Andrew Noble claims that deaf individuals elsewhere mostly reside in asylums or beg on streets and are incapable of earning their keep, revealing a stark contrast to the integrated lives led by deaf people on the Vineyard.
During dinner at Mary's house, Andrew Noble expresses his astonishment at the local population and dismisses the idea that deaf people can live normal, independent lives. Mr. Pye and Andrew Noble clash over whether deafness is a tragic affliction to be eliminated or merely a neutral trait that allows people to escape unpleasant noises.
Secrets and Prejudices
Guilt over clandestine actions creates intense paranoia and fear of exposure when adults begin to investigate unusual occurrences. Reverend Lee describes hearing a loud moaning and seeing two luminous apparitions floating among the trees, causing Mary to freeze in terror. When Reverend Lee and Andrew Noble report hearing moaning and seeing luminous specters in the woods, Mary and Nancy experience immediate panic that their secret prank has been discovered.
Racial prejudice on the island easily leads dominant community members to unjustly blame Native residents for wrongdoing. Mr. Skiffe attacks Thomas in the rain and signs furiously that Thomas's family are thieving, prompting Mary to realize the stolen sheets used for their prank caused an innocent family to be blamed. Mr. Skiffe violently confronts Thomas and accuses his family of theft, demonstrating deep-seated local biases.
Mary confesses to her father that she and Nancy used discarded sheets for ghostly shrouds in the Littlewoods to clear the Richards family, which directly implicates Nancy and triggers intense anger. Mary tugs on her father's sleeve and signs that Mrs. Skiffe discarded the sheets and they used them to create winding shrouds for the spirits, shocking her family and outraging Nancy.
3. Abduction and Captivity in Boston
Vulnerable individuals can be abducted and treated as non-human scientific specimens by unscrupulous actors seeking profit or academic prestige in urban mainland society.
Andrew Noble kidnaps Mary from the island to serve as a live specimen along with soil, water, and bark samples. He exploits her deafness and isolates her completely from any means of communication or defense.
The Kidnapping
Andrew chases Mary down on the beach near Ezra Brewer's house. He subdues her by pressing a chemical-soaked handkerchief over her face and locks her in the hold of his schooner named Defiance.
Mary marks ten days in the schooner's hold using corn kernels. On the eleventh day, Andrew finally unlocks the door to bring Mary to Boston. Three weeks pass as a rough estimation of the time elapsed since her abduction, including two weeks of travel and eight days of monotonous chores at the inn.
When faced with terrifying circumstances, cold, and abuse, you can retreat into your mind to invent fairy tales and recount shanties. This strategy helps regulate your breathing and calm your physical tremors.
Mary creates a story about a fairy living in a rose who shares her home with a fly when facing the lonely walk and subsequent fear of Andrew Noble.
Upon arriving in Boston, you encounter a world where sign language is absent. People with physical differences are viewed with repugnance, subjected to physical violence like ear-boxing, and treated as objects.
The landlady at The High Tide Inn, whom Mary dubs Mrs. Muffins, boxes Mary's ear with the palm of her hand when she fails to understand spoken instructions.
When left momentarily unattended, you must seize every opportunity to communicate your distress. Hostile supervisors will aggressively suppress any attempt at reaching out.
Mary hides Martha Cummings's ledger under a laundry basket, tears out a page, and writes a crude note with charcoal, but she is caught and has the note thrown into the fire.
You can follow specific steps to communicate your distress:
- Cover unattended ledgers with laundry baskets to avoid detection.
- Tear a blank page from the back of an account book.
- Use a splinter of charred wood from the hearth as a makeshift writing implement when no quills are available.
The Beacon Hill Examination
Institutional researchers often subject captives to invasive physical measurements and examinations without regard for their emotional trauma or bodily autonomy.
Dr. Henry Minot and Andrew Noble take Mary to a grand estate on Beacon Hill after a carriage ride taking twenty minutes. They inspect her teeth, throat, eyes, and head with specialized instruments inside the four-story building.
Andrew places a metal crown-like band around Mary's head and adjusts it with tiny screws. This action draws a trickle of blood down her temple while measuring her head.
4. Escape, Return, and Moral Growth
Captives can exploit small openings to coordinate an escape, returning home to heal through traditional rituals and examining their own inherited prejudices.
Breaking Free
A large clock strikes 5 o'clock downstairs, startling Mary inside her locked room. You can escape by sliding supplies beneath the doorframe and using simple tools to reach the key.
- Slide a map or paper beneath the doorframe.
- Push a fire poker's pointed tip through the keyhole to drop the key.
- Pull the paper back to retrieve the key and unlock the door.
Mary uses a journal page and quill to write a confession clearing her name. She drops a key through a keyhole with a fire poker to unlock her door, and relies on Nora and a mysterious sailor to guide her to Ezra Brewer's cutter named SS Black Dog. Nora delivers Mary's written letter to Dr. Minot, which convinces him of her innocence, allowing Nora and Mary to watch for the man in the Monmouth cap.
Captain Ezra Brewer secures the wheel, reefs the mainsail by rolling its canvas edge, and replaces the smaller sail with a storm jib to keep the waves at the helm during a violent squall. The voyage on the cutter lasts for 6 days before the major storm hits open waters. During a severe storm off the Cape, Andrew Noble's schooner, the SS Defiance, is battered by towering waves and turns turtle, sinking upside down.
Healing and Reconciliation
Upon returning to Chilmark, Mary receives a warm bath, herbal balms for her injuries, clean clothes, and a dedicated writing space from her mother, while visiting George's grave to find emotional peace. Mary's mother replaces George's old papers with blank rag paper, a quill pen, and an inkwell, encouraging Mary's talent as a future schoolteacher. George died at 15 years old.
- Bathe with scented soap and apply soothing balms to injuries.
- Place a Christmas wreath on a loved one's grave while reciting prayers.
- Engage in household chores alongside family members to restore routine.
Sally and her family care for farm animals and heal injured livestock using traditional poultices and good sense, though they face risks such as the threat of being captured and sold into slavery. Sally successfully nurses George's injured horse, Bayard, back to health using poultices after the horse panics and injures itself during Mary's abduction. Wampanoag and Aquinnah members exchange traditional gifts such as white wampum beads and carved serpentine.
- Apply herbal poultices to treat animal wounds.
- Exchange traditional gifts such as white wampum beads and carved serpentine.
Papa advises Mary that instead of judging others for expressing prejudice, she should look inward, correct her own lies and biases, and live honorably, noting how his own ancestors' actions shaped their community. Papa admits that his great-grandfather Lambert, who founded their deaf-friendly community, once worked on a slave ship, proving that people cannot hide from ancestral misdeeds but must make their own choices. The local sachem sold the Allen farm land to them with colonial government permission in 1762.
Overcoming inherited prejudices requires examining one's own faults and choosing to influence others through positive personal example rather than judgment.
- Look inward first rather than judging others.
- Make yourself the best person you can be.
- Influence others through your own positive example.
10 Key Ideas
- Isolated communities with high rates of intermarriage can develop their own village sign languages as a natural adaptation to hereditary traits, while maintaining traditional subsistence practices.
- The introduction of external scientific attitudes toward disability can create profound social friction within a self-reliant community that views deafness simply as a natural way of life.
- Guilt over clandestine actions creates intense paranoia and fear of exposure when adults begin to investigate unusual occurrences.
- Racial prejudice on the island easily leads dominant community members to unjustly blame Native residents for wrongdoing.
- Vulnerable individuals can be abducted and treated as non-human scientific specimens by unscrupulous actors seeking profit or academic prestige in urban mainland society.
- When faced with terrifying circumstances, cold, and abuse, you can retreat into your mind to invent fairy tales and recount shanties.
- Institutional researchers often subject captives to invasive physical measurements and examinations without regard for their emotional trauma or bodily autonomy.
- Captives can exploit small openings to coordinate an escape, returning home to heal through traditional rituals and examining their own inherited prejudices.
- Sally and her family care for farm animals and heal injured livestock using traditional poultices and good sense, though they face risks such as the threat of being captured and sold into slavery.
- Overcoming inherited prejudices requires examining one's own faults and choosing to influence others through positive personal example rather than judgment.