The Silence Between Us

Gervais has added an appendix at the end of the book titled, “A Note About Cochlear Implants and Different Opinions in the Deaf Community.” She uses this appendix to explain that cochlear implants are one method for treating hearing loss that hundreds of thousands of people have chosen. There is controversy within the Deaf community about cochlear implants, however. Many people do not approve of having children undergo the surgery and lengthy period of speech therapy that the devices require; instead, they argue, this is a decision that people should make for themselves when they are old enough to understand the pros and cons. Throughout much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Deaf education focused almost exclusively on teaching students to read lips and speak aloud. Education in sign language was often suppressed for fear that it would isolate the Deaf community. This “oralist” approach amounted to a demand that Deaf people change themselves in order to accommodate the hearing world, and it had measurable and devastating consequences. The enormous investment of time and effort required to teach Deaf children to speak aloud meant that other aspects of their education were often neglected, resulting in an educational deficit. Some people and institutions maintain this “oralist” approach even today, and cochlear implants feel to some Deaf people like a part of this pernicious ideology.

The cochlear implants motif in The Silence Between Us supports the novel’s themes of The Role of Deafness in Shaping Identity and Resilience in the Face of Discrimination. Maya first discusses cochlear implants in Chapter 17, when her hopes of having a local Deaf community are frustrated by the discovery that all the teens in the group have cochlear implants and cannot communicate with her in sign language. The teens do not even consider themselves Deaf. This shocks and saddens Maya, because she is proud of her Deaf identity and does not understand why someone might reject it. Maya’s mother’s reaction to this incident and later when Maya’s new doctor raises the possibility of cochlear implants helps to characterize Maya’s mother. She models the kind of respectful attitude toward Deafness and Deaf people that the novel advocates when she affirms Maya’s pride in her Deafness and assures her that the choice to get cochlear implants or not is entirely up to Maya. It is clear that Beau still has a little distance to travel in this regard when, in Chapter 33, he offers Maya information about the implants as part of her birthday present. Maya is hurt and angry that he assumes she is not able to investigate and make a decision without his help and that he seems not to accept her Deaf identity. After the two reconcile, they agree that life is imperfect whether a person is hearing or Deaf and that their job as romantic partners and friends is to support one another as equals, not try to “fix” one another. This ending supports the point that Maya has been making all along: For her, there is nothing wrong with being Deaf, and her condition therefore does not require a solution like cochlear implants.