Word: robin
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...Robin Starling is living in a contradiction. As the disabled victim of technology he is society's greatest shame. But as the person who overcomes his handicap with the help of technology, he is society's pride. On one hand, he has the right to be among society's most bitter critics. But on the other, he must be among its most cheerful proponents, to be sure that he--the painful reminder of society's failing--is not locked away...
...writing about Robin, I was also caught in a contradiction. I was the guilty partner-in-crime with all of those people who didn't want to know the truth, who were satisfied with my half-honest news story. But I was also the unreproachable Good Samaritan to Robin Starling, who had to convince these same people that he was a success and not to be abandoned...
...Robin Starling was an important part of my education. I learned from him something about success in this society. I learned that what it really amounts to is acceptance, to not having people desert...
...Robin Starling, success meant becoming the perfectly adjusted boy. His fear of being abandoned was very tangible, not the intellectual crisis it is for the rest of us. His relative success was achieved by repressing the alienation he must have felt, forgetting about the contradiction in which he was caught--dependent on the very society which nearly killed him--and proceeding as if it didn't exist. He was, in a sense, fooling himself and, of course, fooling everyone else. But all of us--the readers, the newspaper which published his story, and myself, the person who wrote the story...
...upsetting scenes from one's life. We learn to look at life single-mindedly and edit out the bad footage in our vision and perceptions. We learn not to see certain contradictions. For instance, we learn not to see, not to notice the stilted "legs" and mechanical arm of Robin Starling standing next to his prize-winning cow with its perfect loins. We learn to see only the blue ribbon on the animal--the badge of success--and the smile on the boy's face--the sign of acquiescence...