Other Voices Other Rooms Essay Research Paper

Other Voices, Other Rooms Essay, Research Paper

American literature in the thirties and forties, was dominated by social consciousness. The preferred fiction was sociological prose, much of it naturalistic. Thus, when Other Voices, Other Rooms was published soon after World War II, it was criticized as being out of the main stream. Within a decade, however, as other young writers gained renown, it became apparent that Truman Capote’s novel was a piece in a new pattern of fiction, one that was described by terms such as narcissistic, grotesque, symbolic, and aesthetic. However, some reviewers dismissed Capote’s very different style of fiction, for although they were very accustomed to the fact that most southern writers used gothic elements, Capote’s work did not seem familiar. Unlike Faulkner and Tate, Capote was not concerned with the popular themes of gothic literature (Hendin 103). The destruction of a religion, the downfall of a class, and the decay of a family were popular gothic themes which Capote ventured away from (Hendin 103). Undeniably, Other Voices, Other Rooms belongs to the Southern gothic mode, but is much more than baroque fiction. The novelist has combined elements of gothicism with both a southern setting and southern characters. The work has elements of mystery and suspense, terror and horror, heavily textured description, strange episodes and people, and psychological and symbolic elements characteristic of gothic literature. The overt action of the novel seems simple enough at the first glance: thirteen year-old Joel Knox has traveled from New Orleans to Noon City en route to Scully’s Landing where he expects to be reunited with his father, Edward Samsom, who has been missing from Joel’s life for the past twelve years. Joel’s divorced mother has just died, and he is responding to an invitation, ostensibly written by Sansom himself and is sent to Joel’s aunt and guardian Ellen Kendall in New Orleans. Sansom’s letter proclaims that he is once again prepared to assume his “parental duties, forsaken, lo, these many years,” (Capote 7)1 and that he can now provide Joel with a “beautiful home, healthful food, and a cultured atmosphere.” Ellen Kendall has urged Joel to depart for Scully’s Landing on the condition that he can return to his original home if he ever becomes discontent. Joel senses however that his departure is a relief to her. In Noon City, a stop over point in his travel to the Landing, Joel arranges transportation to Paradise Chapel with a turpentine truck where he will have to make further arrangements to reach the actual Landing. He completes the trip on a buggy driven by the seemingly ancient Jesus Fever, a Negro with a curved back and face “like a black withered apple” (29). Joel arrives in Scully’s Landing asleep and is ushered sleepily to his quarters where he awakens the next morning in an “immense four-poster” (40). From the bed Joel gets his first glimpse of his father’s wife, Miss Amy, ominously killing a blue jay. There is a knock at his door, but instead of his father, it is Miss Amy, who gives him an oblique welcome, and explains that the house has neither electricity or plumbing. Joel inquires about his father, but receives no information from anyone. Instead, he makes the acquaintance of Jesus Fever’s niece Missouri, a young black servant girl who answers to the name “Zoo.” But although Joel and Zoo become friends, she admonishes him, “don’t ever ax me nothn bout Mister Sansom. Miss Amy the only one who take care of him. Ax her” (61). Bored and confused with his new residence, Joel reverts to an old childhood game he refers to as Blackmail, where, back in New Orleans, he had seen a girl walking around naked and two men kissing each other. He looks up at the yellow walls of the house, and wonders which of the top floor windows belongs to him, his father, his “Cousin” Randolph, and it is at that moment he sees a “queer lady. . .holding aside the curtains. . .smiling and nodding at him, as if in greeting or approval” (67). The queer “woman” is actually Randolph in a sexual disguise, although Joel is not yet aware of “her” identity. When Joel asks Randolph who the mysterious woman in the window was, he receives no answer. Joel then again questions Randolph of when he will meet his father, but is told when he is settled he will meet his father. Joel later discovers that it was Randolph and not his father whom had written the letter. But most importantly, he at least sees his father, who is a paralytic invalid whose only means of communication is dropping tennis balls on the floor to attract attention. Other Voices, Other Rooms is, of course, open to various kinds of explanation, but probably the most imposing of them all is that of an initiation story. Capote makes it clear during the development of the novel that his Joel Knox is one more on the lengthy list of innocent American boys, whom appear so often in the pages of literature from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caufield (Brinnin 67). Like many other literary characters, Joel has left home in search of better things: an improved living circumstance, and a father who will guide him through adolescence. The development of Other Voices, Other Rooms is therefore partly to be measured in Joel’s gradual shedding of childhood innocence and his progressive movement toward maturity and a sense of personal identity. The major theme of the novel is homosexuality, a topic rare