Children of a Lesser God (Characters)

Characters

Orin Dennis

Orin is two years younger than Sarah and has been a student with her at the State School for the Deaf since he was a young child. Orin, however, has some residual hearing and practices both his lip-reading and his speech. He is described as “the guardian of all. . . deaf children because he [is] an apprentice teacher and speaks.” He is also described as someone who “wants to lead a revolution against the hearing world and thinks [the deaf] can hardly wait to follow him.”

Orin is angry that Sarah appears to have abandoned him and the deaf world in favor of James and the hearing world. But he enlists both of them to join him in a complaint against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that alleges discriminatory hiring practices against teachers who are deaf. He is single-minded in pursuit of his goal, convincing a lawyer, Ms. Klein, to advise them about the case. He wants Sarah to leave her “little romance” and fight with him for deaf rights. Because of his lip-reading and speaking skills, Orin acts as a bridge between the two worlds, although it is apparent from his thoughts and actions that he feels more comfortable in the deaf community.

Mr. Franklin

Mr. Franklin is the Supervising Teacher at the State School for the Deaf. He is one of the “Great White Fathers” of deaf education. He takes a condescending attitude toward everyone. He views all the deaf, even the adults like Orin and Sarah, as needy children who need his protection and guidance. However, his compassionate, benevolent pretense is weakened when he says to James: “Mr. Leeds . . . we don’t fornicate with the students. We just screw them over. If you ever get the two confused. . . you’re gone.” Later, when James goes to him to attempt to broker a settlement in the discrimination case, Mr. Franklin refers to the deaf as his “subjects,” and promises that no matter what the commission might decide, he will make Orin and Sarah take him to court, and if they are successful there, he will appeal the ruling, tying them up in litigation for years.

Edna Klein

Ms. Klein is a lawyer who helps Orin with his claim of discrimination against the State School for the Deaf. She does not know how to sign or how to communicate with Orin or Sarah. She plans to read a speech that she has written before the commission but is accused by Sarah of writing “the same old shit” — that deaf people are helpless and need hearing people to get along in the world. Ms. Klein is well-intentioned, but recognizes neither Sarah or Orin as human beings who can speak for themselves.

James Leeds

The play takes place in the mind of James Leeds. As happens to Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, characters step from James’s memory “for anything from a full scene to several lines.” James Leeds is a speech teacher at a State School for the Deaf. He is bright and articulate, but struggles throughout the play to understand the “other language” of Sarah and her deaf counterparts. A former Peace Corps volunteer, James is attracted to support occupations “because it feels good to help people.” For the whole length of the play, James tries to “help” Sarah, to make her value speech. James wrestles with his motives, struggling to determine whether they stem from a desire to help or a desire to control.

Lydia

Lydia is a State School for the Deaf student in her late teens. She, like Orin, has some residual hearing, and she faithfully practices her speech and lip-reading skills. However, she is not as mature as Orin and throws herself at James throughout the play. As one of James’s students, Lydia has frequent contact with him, but that contact turns into a schoolgirl crush. After James and Sarah marry, Lydia is given Sarah’s former job as “maid.” Lydia often appears at the Leeds’s residence to “watch TV” and be closer to James. She wants to appear “hearing,” and even chides James after Sarah has left: “You need a girl that doesn’t go away. You need a girl that talks.”

Mrs. Norman

Mrs. Norman is Sarah’s mother, a hearing woman whose husband left her not long after Sarah was sent to the State School for the Deaf. Mrs. Norman appears to be a bitter woman at the beginning of the play. She has been frustrated and challenged in trying to parent a deaf child, and seems disinterested in what James has to say to her about Sarah and her intellectual capabilities. She complains of “feeling like another mandatory stop in some training program for new teachers at the school.” Mrs. Norman does reconcile with Sarah after James forces a visit between the two women. She attends their wedding and joins James and Sarah as Mr. Franklin’s partner for the bridge game at the beginning of Act II. She welcomes Sarah with open arms after she leaves James.

Sarah Norman

Sarah is a woman in her mid-twenties who has been deaf from birth; she works as a cleaning woman at the State School for the Deaf. She refuses to speak and rejects James’s attempts at therapy because “I don’t do things I don’t do well.” Sarah signs throughout the play, speaking only in the final climactic scene. She uses American Sign Language

(ASL; a conceptual, pictorial expression) rather than the Signed English (a word-by-word, grammatical rendition) technique favored by James.

The physicality of the language itself provides a certain eloquence to the dialogue that speech alone cannot deliver. Even though Sarah turns in a splendid performance at the card party at the beginning of Act II that tests her integration into the hearing world, she confesses to James: “I feel split down the middle, caught between two worlds.” This is the central problem for Sarah. Like Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, she declares her own identity as a separate person, telling James: “Until you let me be an individual, an I, just as you are, you will never be able to come inside my silence and know me. And until you do that, I will never let myself know you. Until that time, we cannot be joined. We cannot share a relationship.”

Media Adaptations

• Children of a Lesser God was adapted as a film in 1986. The screenplay was written by Medoff and Hesper Anderson. Randa Haines directed, and the film starred William Hurt as James Leeds, Marlee Matlin in an Oscar-winning performance as Sarah Norman, and Piper Laurie as Mrs. Norman. It is available through Facets Home Video in both VHS and Laser-Disc formats.