"In the beginning, there was only silence," James Leeds says at the very beginning of Children of a Lesser God, "and out of that silence there could come only one thing: Speech. That's right. Human speech. So, speak!''' he could not have been more wrong. In this opening speech, James appears to establish silence, and by extension deafness, as "bad," and speech and sound (and hearing) as "good." This is the distinction which most …showed first 75 words of 1093 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1093 total…cannot stay with him. Maybe, she muses, they will be able to meet somewhere "not in silence or in sound but somewhere else. I don't know where that is now." Out of that silence came speech, but it was forced and pained. Out of that silence also came love, strength, self-knowledge, and beauty. James's demand that Sarah be "normal" refuses to acknowledge the idea that normalcy is in the mind and eye of the beholder.