Akmyrat

Why was Ludwig van Beethoven deaf? by Akmyrat Tuyliyev

(//Holding a small notebook and a pencil in the dark room with only one small window Ludwig van Beethoven started to tell something very fast to his cousin, because that was not his favorite theme//) “... I beg of you to keep the matter of my deafness a profound secret to be confided to nobody, no matter whom...” – I wrote this extract in my letter to Karl Amenda, on July 1st 1801. That’s a year when I revealed to my friends about my increasing deafness. (//He made very unhappy eyes, and sat on his old table, where he wrote a lot of his famous compositions and took a deep breath//) My father was a drunkard who abused me into being a child prodigy, similar to the childhood of Mozart. My mother died when I was just seventeen years old, leaving me to take care of a drunken father, two brothers, and my sister. In my early childhood my father battered me. I was violently forced to practice until I would become like the child Mozart (//He rolled his eyes, and his eyes welled with tears//). I was even brutally awakened in the middle of the night by my father to practice at the piano half-asleep. So my childhood has affected by health problems. That’s why when I was 17, I started a life-long practice of visiting spas and drinking the mineral water. (//After that Beethoven looked at the window where light was coming from and he looked at the very blue sky. He then made a very serious face and he stood up from the table and crossed the room. He took a glass of water and he moved his shaking hand to his face and he drank a whole glass, then he sat on his chair and looked at the empty glass//.) In my early 20s, I developed belly pain for the first time. These terrible pains tormented me throughout the rest of my life. (//Then he looked at his cousin//) I wrote letter to my friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler. In my letter I told him about the treatments a doctors suggested for my deafness and my "stomach". I guess the cause of this must be the condition of my belly, which as you know, has always been wretched and has been getting worse I am always troubled with diarrhea, which causes extraordinary weakness. (//Now his cousin could see some kind of smile, Beethoven was trying to do not show that he was not really happy to share this information//) Franz wanted to tone up my body by using tonic medicines and restore my hearing with almond oil, but nothing happened. My hearing grew worse and worse, my bowels remained as they had been. This lasted until the autumn of last year and I was often in despair. (//Beethoven remembered something, and made a face, that looked very angry//) Then came a medical “thing”, who advised me to take cold baths for my health. A more sensible one advised the usual lukewarm Danube bath. That worked wonders, my belly improved, but my deafness remained and became even worse. Because of all those medications and mineral waters I was trying to improve my health, on the contrary I made myself deaf! Now I’m 42 years old, and I don’t hear anything, only some sounds, particularly when someone yells very loudly, (//then he shook his head, like that was cold in his room, and he whispered//), which gives me a headache.

Corey-- starts decent, but needs some better direction. Your grammer needs to be fixed, try and us spell check, or something. Tiffany -- You need to work on the stage directions and some sentence structure is off. Brittany- some grammar eras but not many

Ms. Schoen -- Read some of the other pieces from the students. Your stage directions need to be short and more direct. Example: Looks at his cousin. You also need to remember the information in your stage directions are things that are tangible. You must be able to see them. They are visible. What are unhappy eyes? Who is Frank? This is all very surface and I see that you are focusing on his hardships but you don't really answer the question of the title. You need have more of a focus on what happened to him. You discuss more of his stomach issues than you do his deafness.

Akmyrat - I guess I finished