House Rules by Jodi Picoult

              In the book House Rules by Jodi Picoult, the issue of the abilities of people with learning disabilities is raised. In the text, one of the main characters has Aspergers, a high-functioning form of autism. Jacob, I believe, is a brilliantly gifted child. He can memorize all the scripts of the movies he sees, and when he has an obsession, such as dinosaurs or forensics, he studies that obsession so carefully that he becomes an expert at it, surpassing a lot of knowledge that humans could not gather in that amount of time. But this condition also has it's drawbacks. Jacob cannot understand people at all. He interprets what people say very literally, and wants to be accepted so very badly, but doesn't know how. Also, certain things can upset him very greatly, such as the color orange or even the crinkling of paper. Jacob is also slightly OCD; order is extremely important to him. All these things ultimately label Jacob a "retard" and stupid. But I believe Jacob is very talented, but nobody realizes it because of his social awkwardness.
           A reason that I think Jacob is very gifted intellectually because of his skills to become a genius in any subject he wants. For example, in the book, he is very interested in forensics. He is constantly setting up fake crime scenes and he can recite any laws regarding the justice system off the top of his head. At one point in the text, Jacob shows up at an actual crime scene where a hiker was found dead in a snowbank. The police were struggling to identify the cause of death, and Jacob discovered the actual cause of death before the authorities did. Also, he is obsessed with a TV show called Crimebusters, in which he solves all the cases before the "detectives" can. This may not seem like a prodigious feat, but an average human could probably not accomplish that. As well in the book, there are flashbacks to his other obsessions in the past and he just seems to know everything about them. As you can see, Jacob, even though he has Aspergers, is a very talented individual.
        Though Jacob is very intelligent, the drawback of his smartness is his issues with people. People with Aspergers often have trouble reading people, and take things very literally. People would think Jacob was a genius if he wasn't so socially awkward. For example, a casual conversation starter for Jacob would be an outrageous fact about forensics that only experts would seem to know. This causes rejection from his peers and frustration in Jacob. And even though Jacob is 18, he still throws temper tantrums. And these temper tantrums are over very specific things, such as too much of the color orange, or if his schedule is out of order by the tiniest thing. This gives Jacob the label "stupid" and "retard" but only because of his lack of social skills. Yet in actuality, he is a very smart person.
        In conclusion, House Rules by Jodi Picoult makes a very interesting comment on the abilities of people with learning disabilities. Jacob, intellectually, is beyond the average person. Yet socially, he struggles. Only because of his bad interactions with people, Jacob is labeled as a stupid person, when he truly isn't.