Music, fire alarms, emergency sirens, phone calls, spoken conversations, movies. Imagine if you became sick or had an accident and you were no longer able to hear. You would likely be full of fear, anxiety, and confusion. Now imagine you were born that way. You had never heard your parents voice, the sound of the rain, or the sweet intonation of a violin. Hearing was something you learned existed but that was just for others, not for yourself. What if you were the parent of a child without hearing, whether deaf or hearing yourself? Now picture that someone conveyed to you that there was a way for you to hear. What reactions would you have? How would you feel? Would you request more information so as to become hearing? This paper is going to analyze these questions in reference to cochlear implants. It will discuss how they work, the rate at which they are used, and the differing views on the necessity of said implants. "A cochlear implant is an electronic device made of several different parts. External components are worn outside the body; internal components are surgically implanted under the skin and within the cochlea" (Dalebout 157). An ear-level microphone picks up sounds from the environment. Sound information is sent to a speech processor. The processor contains a tiny computer that digitizes sound information and organizes it into patterns according to a code. The patterned information travels through a cable to a transmitter, which is worn...behind the ear. The transmitter sends the information to a receiver implanted under the skin. The receiver converts digitized information into patterned electrical pulses and sends them through tiny wires to the electrode array that winds through the cochlea. The array has tiny electrodes attached to it. The electrodes deliver the coded electrical pulses at very high rates to auditory nerve fibers located in different frequency regions of the cochlea. The nerve fibers come together...and carry the bioelectrical information to auditory centers in the brain. There are varying degrees to deafness and not all fit the conditions necessary to receive implants. These conditions have changed and be