Whose Life Is It Anyway

The physical struggles or hardships that can arise from physical handicaps are explored through the fictional play ‘Whose Life Is It Anyway?’ The text centres on Ken Harrison, a talented sculpture, who is totally paralysed as a result of severe injuries received in a car accident and he finds himself confined to a hospital bed. He has been deprived of physical, emotional, logical and artistic satisfactions he previously enjoyed. Clark uses the gardening metaphor in Act One to highlight Ken’s physical dependence on those around him for even the most basic tasks. When John the orderly comes into shave kens beard for him, ken says “come to trim the lawn”. Ken refers to Dr Emerson as the ‘head gardener’ who is responsible for “fertilizers and pruning and bedding out”. Ken sees the hospital as a place that “grows the vegetables”. Both of these metaphors reflect Kens view on his physical limitations and his general outlook on the hospital as a whole. Ken tells John that it is the ‘compost heap’ where he belongs because he knows that his situation will not change.
My left foot shares similarities with Clarks play because the main character, Christy brown, is also limited by a disability with his being cerebral palsy. The studied extract, unlike ‘Whose Life Is It Anyway’, is a real story and recalls the speaker’s difficulties and anxieties through a very personal story. The challenge for the speaker is to come to terms with his annoyance with the fact that he is unable to control his movements, and therefore cannot communicate. Brown, up until the time documented in the extract, lived in a body which sustained his able mind but did not allow free movement, much like Ken’s experiences after the accident in Clarks play. Browns use of emotive language not only shows his physical frustration but his inner turmoil at being trapped inside a “little bundle of crooked muscles and twisted nerves”. Brown also uses juxtaposition to contrast Christy’s world, where his physical...