How Did John Singer Communicate The Deaf

The deaf-mute John Singer could not communicate with most of the world because he couldn’t speak. He strove to break out of his isolated existence because he desperately needed to communicate his feelings with somebody who understood him. The isolation from which John Singer suffered was a combination of a personal individual control and environmental factors.

John Singer, a tall man with gray eyes, and his friend Spiros Antonapoulos was an obese man of Greek descent. Both men were deaf and dumb and always together. They lived together and walked to work together.
Antonapoulos worked for his cousin, Charles Parker, who owned a fruit store; John Singer worked at a jewelry store as a silverware engraver. On their way home from work, Singer talked (using hand signs) about all that happened during his work day at the store. All Antonapoulos does was sit back lazily, incommunicado (not communicating), except when he wanted to eat, sleep, or drink. The two men had no other friends aside from their colleagues at work, they were always alone together.
One afternoon in November when Singer went to meet Antonapoulos, Charles Parker said he had arranged to have Antonapoulos taken to an insane asylum. Singer helped to pack the best things for Antonapoulos and accompanied him to the train station
where Charles Parker was waiting to take him.

The weeks that followed Antonapoulos’s departure did not seem real to Singer. He finally moved out of the apartment into a boarding house near the center of town where he made a hobby of walking through the center of the town each evening, silent, alone, and thinking about Antonapoulos. Singer would do anything for Antonapoulos, even though his friend virtually never showed any sign of acknowledgment or appreciation for all that singer did for him. For Singer, friendship with Antonapoulos was the most important thing in his life. When Antonapoulos was taken away, he was devastated. Three months later, he met Biff -the proprietor of the New York café, a restaurant where many town residents go to eat, drink, and socialize.

It was midnight as that chapter opened, and most of the patrons were drinking. John Singer sat by himself at one of the tables. A drunk man named Jake Blount went over to where Singer was sitting and began talking to him, he said to Singer “You are the only one in this town who catches what I mean.’’ Blount kept on talking for about an hour as though he couldn’t hold his insides any longer.
After a while, Singer got up and left, but Blount was so drunk he didn’t even notice.
But when he realized that Singer was gone, he got angry and left. Then Blount saw Singer walking away and he started yelling at him until he -Blount- suddenly lost his balance and fell due to a combination of his drunken stupor the tremendous effort of his yell. The police were called and after the police had carried Blount back into the café; Singer wrote on a piece of paper that Blount could come home with him, and that they should give him some soup and coffee. Blount felt that singer “knew’’ something -something that Blount himself also knew- but that almost everyone else failed to
understand.
Indeed, Blount was so intent on talking to Singer that he failed to even notice, until his second or third encounter with Singer, that the man was mute! Once Blount found his confidant, he was upset that Singer had left. He has a fit and hurts himself. This outburst demonstrates Blount’s inner torment: even words failed to express the anger he felt inside him.

It was clear that John Singer himself was a victim of circumstances beyond his own personal, individual control, and environment factors. It is not wise to let our negative life experience drag us down. Our hearts must be strong because we know the value of the human mind and soul.