Title: writer's choice you can read it online THE BOOK IS http://www.isbnlib.com/preview/0674018257/One-of-Us-Conjoined-Twins-and-the-Future-of-Normal The lens essay uses one text to shed light on another in order to show readers something they would

John Doe

Mr. Lane

English 102 - One of Us Essay, Final Draft

14 February 2011

The Composite Creature Comment by IT Services: Great title!

Leslie Fiedler in his article “Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self” discusses the disparity with which denizens of the freak shows of old were both revered and looked down upon by members of “normal” society. It is by applying Fiedler’s concept of the composite creature, the monstre double, to Alice Dreger’s discussion of the Bijani twins that we can begin to understand the choice of Ladan and Laleh Bijani, the first and only conjoined twins in history to choose separation of their own volition after living healthy and fulfilling adult lives. Comment by IT Services: Great set-up. It’s clear here that you are ‘lensing’ and I can’t wait to see what your analysis brings out of the Dreger!

Fiedler uses the visual image of a composite creature to describe the concept of a being that is at the same time both lacking in humanity and yet also rising above, “a monstre par defaut, lacking one leg and foot, but also a monstre par exces, possessing an oddly displaced third eye, as well as a supernumerary horn on its otherwise human head” (20). This concept is used in Fiedler’s article to explain the way freaks have always been viewed by society, both as inhuman creatures to be looked down on for their abnormalities and as amazing beings to be looked up to, idolized and placed on pedestals.

Dreger tells the story of Ladan and Laleh Bijani, 29-year-old conjoined twins who opted in 2003 to seek out a team of surgeons to separate them, despite the knowledge that it could quite likely lead to one or both of their deaths. The Bijani twins are thought to be the only pair in known history to actively choose separation for themselves. Dreger tells us that “the Bijanis were unlike all their predecessors in one important respect: they decided that their conjoinment intolerably limited their lives” (41). In fact, Ladan and Laleh spent at least eight years looking for a medical team willing to perform the surgery before finding a doctor at a Singaporean hospital who reluctantly agreed.

First, Fiedler’s image of the monstre double, a hybrid of two creatures stuck together by biology, seems almost by design a reference to conjoined twins as a “quite human attempt to sum up in a single iconic form the essential nature of all Freaks” (20). It cannot be argued that conjoined twins are among the most celebrated participants of the freak shows of old. The Bijanis, “risking their lives to try to achieve physical independence” (Dreger 43), had lived their entire lives as craniopagus twins, joined at the back of the head. They had never even seen each other’s faces without the aid of a mirror, and yet they could not get away from each other’s company even for a few minutes at a time, nor (as it turns out) could they live without each other. Two women sharing one body, each both enhanced and limited by the presence of the other. Comment by IT Services: I love this commentary. You’re doing a terrific job of integrating quotes seamlessly and smoothly into your own argument.

While the creatures in Fiedler’s monster are related and biologically conjoined, they feature very different characteristics. The monster is intersex, featuring organs of both man and woman. One leg is scaly and birdlike in nature while the other is more human. Similarly, the Bijani twins “had developed psychosocially as two distinct individuals, with notably different personalities, interests and tastes” (Dreger, 43). Ladan was more outgoing and assertive and enjoyed studying the law, while Laleh passed her time playing video games and caring for animals, and wished after the separation to become a journalist. Laleh had taken a law degree alongside her sister, but also wished to pursue her own interests. Again, like the extra eye in its inhuman limb enhanced the composite creature, each twin was offered experiences and opportunities she might not have had otherwise by virtue of being conjoined. Comment by IT Services: I would have never thought that the Bijani twins could function as an embodiment of the monstre double this way—way to go with your lens analysis!

Even as they were choosing separation, the Bijani twins did not express the wish that their parents had opted to separate them as children, claiming to reporters that “We have enjoyed being together” (Dreger 67). However, as a man and woman cannot always follow the exact same path, and as a bird must of necessity fly a different road than a person, the Bijanis knew that, while they had enjoyed their time together, they had come to a time in their lives where in order to be happy, they needed to separate and have their own experiences. Ultimately, Laleh and Ladan Bijani did not survive their surgery. In the final stage of the process by which their monstre double would be divided into its inherent and beautifully individual parts, they both suffered uncontrollable hemorrhage and died within two hours of each other. But on their return home from Singapore to Iran, they were transported in separate coffins, allowing them the separation in death that they were never able to attain in life. Comment by IT Services: Maybe ‘on the return of their bodies…” Comment by IT Services: Outstanding job with the lens analysis! Your work shows the results of arriving at insights impossible if you read the Dreger by itself. Great job with commas, great job with integrating quotes in PIE structure, and great job with works cited page. All goals accomplished!

Works Cited

Fiedler, Leslie A. "Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self." The Tyranny of the Normal. Ed. Carol Donley and Sheryl Buckley. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996. 11-26. Print.

Dreger, Alice Domurat. One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal. Boston, MA: Harvard UP, 2004. Print.