The book Under the Eye of the Clock written by Christopher Nolan, is an autobiography written in the style of a biography about a boy named Joseph Meehan. In the novel which is written in prose form, Nolan describes his life as though he were watching it unfold rather than as a participant. The places and people identified within the novel seem to be the actual places and people from Nolan’s own life. The setting for most of the novel takes place in Dublin and Corcloon in Ireland. The title of the book, no doubt is a reference to the clock tower on the campus of Mount Temple, in which Joseph Meehan attends school through most of the book.
Through his writing Nolan delivers the experiences of an individual who is afflicted with cerebral palsy. The main character, Joseph Meehan who is a self-described mute and crippled lives at home with his family. Joseph, like Nolan, is born in Westmeath Co and lives with mother, Nora, father, Matthew, and older sister, Yvonne. As a result of his birth conditions, the family never ceases to provide Joseph with a childhood that they see as normal. Living on a farm, the family brings Joseph out to the fields so he can help in the daily family chores and moves to Dublin, so that he may participate in school with other normal bodied students.
There are three ideas that permeate throughout the book. The first is that Joseph is unable to communicate verbally, but never struggles to effectively communicate with family, teachers, or peers. A second theme that reoccurs is the sacrifice that the people around him make, so that Joseph may feel normal. The third theme is that Joseph, despite being surrounded by family and friends constantly feels isolated and trapped inside his body. Despite his handicap, Joseph is able to communicate complicated plots with various people throughout his life using his “bowing-head, eye-pointing, foot-peddling language” (Nolan, 1987, p52).
In several excerpts, Nolan attempts to demonstrate the complexity and ability of Joseph to influence people to doing things for him. There is a recalling of Joseph going into a church to ‘let God know what he thought of him” (Nolan, p. 108) following an American journalist writing an unfavorable review of Joseph’s book, Dam-Burst of Dreams and doubts his abilities as a writer of prose. Joseph is understandably upset, but when he realizes that Fr Flynn would be by the next morning to serve him Holy Communion, he immediately recognizes his need to confess his sins before he can receive Holy Communion.
Joseph is able to talk his father, Matthew into going to buy potatoes and further convinces him that he needs to stop at the church. Joseph finds Fr Flynn in the church and is able to be absolved of his sin so that he may partake in the Holy Communion the following day. There is another passage in the book in which Joseph talks his sister, Yvonne into letting him ride her horse and promptly her parents walk alongside the horse so that he may have his way. Earlier in Joseph’s years, at the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC), a student who has played a prank on him by letting the air out of his tires, dares Joseph to be able to tell the teacher.
Through Joseph’s own methods of communication, not only is he able to tell Miss Ryan, his teacher that his tires are flat, but he also is able to identify the student who was the perpetrator. Joseph is undoubtedly successful because of the support he receives from the individuals who take the time to get to know him. His family, never treats him any differently than any parent would treat their child, take him on holidays and provide him with experiences at the farm in the country, in the city, in the mountains, and even at the beach.
Some of these experiences surely are beyond what most able-bodied children are exposed. Joseph’s friends at CRC and later at Mount Temple are adept at including him on their ploys to escape class to go smoke behind the science building, to ensure that he gets from place to place, and make him feel like a normal adolescent boy. The educators that he is exposed to at CRC and Mount Temple also go out of their way to ensure that Joseph has an opportunity to be successful throughout his educational career and even take part in ensuring that he will have an opportunity to advance his learning at the university level.
Despite the ability to communicate his wishes and desires of even the most complicated schemes and the support and sacrifices of his family, friends, and teachers, Joseph still feels as though he is isolated. While enrolled as a student in the CRC, there was a performance being given in which the entire school was to attend, but as his friend and spokesman was absent that day, nobody thought to bring Joseph, so he had to sit alone in the classroom throughout the performance. Throughout the performance, Joseph is left with only his thoughts to keep him company, a skill in which he is masterful.
Joseph’s isolation is grounded not in the notion that nobody interacts with him, as that is clearly not the case, but rather in the lack of control of his own body. Joseph has an unable body, but a mind that works as beautifully as any other human being with which he comes into contact. His very dependency on others’ and their willingness to provide him with normal childhood experiences and overlook his unable body is also what fuels his feeling of isolation. Joseph certainly experiences a joyful and successful life.
He travels on holiday with family and peers and is able to experience school among other able-bodied girls and boys performing in a musical at Mount Temple school. He overcomes his inability to express his feeling beyond nodding, tapping, and eye-batting and learns to type, and as a result publishes a book of poems. He wins multiple awards for his ability to write beautiful poetry and is invited to be an inspirational speaker to large groups of people. He becomes a beacon for all severely handicapped individuals, a fact in which is not lost upon Joseph.
Joseph’s life is full of joys and successes beyond measure and certainly beyond the amount of most able-bodied young men and women. However, joyous his life has been, Joseph still suffers from isolation and the desire to be able-bodied, to truly be free. The book certainly asks me to reconsider those students who are mute or unable to express themselves in the same manner in which I, myself and other able-bodied people participate. | have built on my own limited experience through having parents that were deaf to understand that just because someone is unable to speak, does not mean that they are not thinking or capable of conversation.
But because their method of conversation, sign language was also a language that | understood, we were able to communicate with very little barrier. Thad not taken the opportunity to consider the multiple methods in which individuals can communicate and in a sense can be likened to learning a foreign language. We have a population of students at my school, Hardin Valley Academy (HVA) who spend most of their day in self-contained classrooms.
A few years ago, the student peer-tutors who work with those students held a program for the student body to showcase that talents of the CDC students. I was taken aback and brought to tears upon seeing students who struggle to speak, who were able to communicate thoughts so eloquently. Those experiences along with reading the story of Joseph Meehan, have certainly inspired me to search for the language that each student in my classroom is speaking and to listen to non-verbal cues as well as traditional verbal communication.