John Hockenberry's Autobiography Moving Violations

John Hockenberry's autobiography Moving Violations, A Memoir: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence is successful for a variety of reasons. He is a gifted writer, a masterful storyteller, and a man who has overcome an automobile accident at the age of nineteen which left him paralyzed from the waist down. He has lived a remarkable and fascinating life as a world-travelling journalist, and, most importantly, demonstrates not only a powerful determination to succeed at his profession and enjoy life, but also an inspirational sense of humor in the most harrowing of situations. He never uses his disability as an excuse, but instead paints a self-portrait which finally transcends that disability. As he writes in the final words of the book, referring to a Somalian boy who is on the verge of starving to death: "The thin boy could not have survived for long after I left the village. Or perhaps he is living now. I can still see him watching me. When he looks into my eyes, he sees no wheelchair" (367).

Hockenberry does not say so, but it is clear that there is an identification which passes back and forth between the starving boy and himself. The boy, Hockenberry says, has accepted the nearness, the possibility, the inevitability of death. Perhaps Hockenberry has not accepted death, but he has certainly accepted his paralysis, and has learned to deal with it successfully and with abundant good humor.

It is ironic that Hockenberry emphasizes the role of h

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rizon. It is with pain and resentment preceding wisdom that we gradually discover the doors that have been closed behind us and how the straight path ahead is not ours, though we may claim it as our own dream. Life removes possibilities one by one from the pillows beneath our sleeping heads (41). Hockenberry comes to a sense of peace and wisdom not through overcoming every obstacle, but through accepting that humanity is flawed, that life is full of disappointments and lost opportunities, and that, nevertheless, we can fulfill ourselves and enjoy life. This acceptance of reality is at the heart of Hockenberry's life, just as acceptance of death is at the heart of the understanding of the starving boy in Somalia. Hockenberry knows and shows that life can be hard, cruel, horrific and immensely unfair, but he never allows this harsh reality to stop him from his work and his joy at being alive. He does not romanticize his disability, but he is capable is using his writer's imagination to transcend that disability. Ironically, in the following passage, a meditation on the wheelchair itself leads to a reverie leaving the wheelchair far behind: Sometimes in my wheelchair I achieve a moment of unity between the chair, the arms th

Category: Literature - J