LIKE THE PANTHER BEHIND THE BARS AND ITS DESIRE TO JUMP OUTSIDE THE JAIL TO REDISCOVER THE REALITY: A REFLECTION AROUND “AWAKENINGS”

By

Leidy Marcela Chacón Vargas

THE PANTHER

In the Jardin des Plantes Paris

His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in circles, over and over,

The movement of his powerful soft strides

Is like a ritual dance around a centre in which a mighty will stands paralysed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts quietly- An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875)

Awakenings, the visual version of a true story encompasses a group of patients’ situation who are victims of an illness that attacks their brain causing limitations in speech and motricity.

However they like the Panther of the poem are physically captive in the bars of a jail but completely free to imagine, think and perceive what is going on outside.  

So the hardest challenge and the most sensible attitude emerge here: showing them that the outsiders’ eyes can perceive all what they want to draw their attention to. It is precisely what Dr. Sayers does. He discovers through an attentive and devoting engagement, observation and search on their patients’ uniqueness that they are alive, awake, and totally conscious of their reality. He can recognize their individual interests and abilities. That is why he starts looking for strategies to understand them, and their heart images to culminate the process of rediscovering their own reality. Like this group of patients, there are many other people in our societies, immediate communities and classrooms who deserve special attention. Sadly they become confined and isolated in different contexts like the panther that is not able to break the bars by itself and needs the support of someone.

This is totally related to the following excerpt from the movie.   “What we do know is that, as the chemical window closed, another awakening took place; that the human spirit is more powerful than any drug - and THAT is what needs to be nourished: with work, play, friendship, family. THESE are the things that matter. This is what we'd forgotten - the simplest things” (Dr. Sayers). From this point it is possible to say that we teachers as change generators in our contexts should interiorize and start thinking about what to do and how to address situations where our students’ uniqueness with its multiple variables take place. This by means of inclusion and better opportunities for those ones who are the brave panthers trying to go outside the bars that block  their path to experience the world, a experience that has been stolen from them. It is our responsibility to give it back to them.  

It is true that professionals like teachers are not specialists and that this should be a responsibility or duty just for doctors; however teachers are certainly facing educational contexts where disabilities regarding language acquisition and production are taking place. So the big challenge is to take the risk just like Dr Sayers and get training on it looking for “antidotes” that contrast intolerance, indifference and rejectedness towards difference. It is necessary to interiorize Dr. Sayers’ thought, “You'd think at a certain point all these atypical somethings would amount to a typical something”. Then do not give up on you and on your chance to transform the reality and allow others to experience it, the panther needs to run outside.

REFERENCES

Oliver Sacks 1973, 1976, 1982, 1983, 1987, 1990. The revised edition of ‘Awakenings’ is published by Picador.