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Abstract

Disability is usually attributed to a lack. However, disability metamorphoses into differently abled at times. An individual with numerous abilities lay trapped inside the disabled body. Terry Trueman’sStuck in Neutral(2000) is a real- horrific novel that portrays the internal agitations of a “teenage boy Shawn McDaniel”, a boy who is simultaneously disabled and differently abled. A young adult fiction, the novel centers on a self-absorbed father and his own creation of imagined suffering of his son Shawn and how Shawn’s disability fuels his father’s creativity. The novel puts forward an ethical vindication to euthanasia and debates euthanasia as a permanent solution to end his sufferings. The novel reveals multiple facets of the trauma associated with disability- that of Shawn owing to cerebral palsy, his inability in expressing his real self who lays hidden inside his disabled body and his mother’s child- like treatment of him despite him having a mature mind, emotional and ethical trauma of his father because of his decision to kill his son to end his trauma. A voyage through life, death, hope, love and loneliness, the novel is a mutual quest to understand each other. The paper seeks to study disability in relation to euthanasia and explores the question of euthanasia as a solution to disability.

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