act 1

I had never really thought about mentally disabled people before. I mean I know about them and I know life tends to be harder for them but really I’ve never taken the time to see how they really take life. After reading the first act I realize how being mentally disabled can really affect the life that you live. Lucien is a 50 year old man who is slow in his thinking. He often repeats things over and over again, and he doesn’t understand the most basic things in life. He has a hard time understanding the world around him. “I stand before you, a middle-aged man in an uncomfortable suit, a man whose capacity for rational thought is somewhere between a five-year old and an oyster. I am retarded. I am damaged. I am sick inside from so many hours and days and months and years of confusion, utter and profound confusion. I am mystified by faucets and radios and elevators and newspapers and popular songs.”
This is a man how feels so much but cannot understand. All of the people he lives with are also mentally disabled. Living from day to day is a struggle for them. They struggle to understand why buying 17 boxes of wheaties at the grocery store is overkill. They talk over each other and don’t listen to each other. The life that they live are chaotic and confusing while they live together; they don’t truly understand each other. It’s like they are just living, they can’t function on their own. How hard is it to be this way but then again when you are in this stage…do you really know? We sympathize because we compare ourselves to them but they don’t know to do that. To them, they are “normal” living a blissful and happy life (for the most part).