Analyzing Reader-Response in J.D. Salinger's "The Laughing Man"

J.D. Salinger’s “The Laughing Man” is a classic frame story which displays the parallels between a storyteller and his real life.  The narrator of the story, along with his friends, acts as the “readers” of this story and respond psychologically to it, just as a reader of Salinger’s story will respond psychologically to the events presented to them.  This article will analyze “The Laughing Man” using psychological reader-response theory to discover the similarities between Salinger’s readers and his “readers” within the story and to ascertain who the real “hero” of the story actually is.

“The Laughing Man” begins with a description of the young narrator’s after-school activity; he belongs to a group called the Comanche Club, a group of boys led by a 22-year old law student known as the Chief.  The Chief takes the boys around New York City in his dilapidated old school bus, refereeing them in games of “football or soccer or baseball, depending (very loosely) on the season,” or taking them to the Museum of Natural History or the Metropolitan Museum of Art on rainy days (Salinger 56).  The Chief always ends the day’s adventures with another installment of his ongoing story about the Laughing Man, an intelligent and cunning villain who, despite his horribly disfigured face, the boys view as their hero, and something of a surrogate father.  The reader is sufficiently drawn in by this introduction, quickly recalling memories from his or her own childhood:  days spent on the baseball diamond after school, or else time spent listening to a storyteller bring a similarly enticing tale to life for his or her imagination to consume.  This is the beginning of the “transaction” between reader and text that psychoanalytic critic Norman Holland’s method of transactive analysis is based on.

“Holland believes that we react to literary texts with the same psychological responses we bring to events in our daily lives” (Tyson 182).  So, when a reader first enters the world of “The Laughing Man” that Salinger has created, that reader responds to the story by flashing back to memories of their childhood, when life was as simple and imaginations ran as wild as they do for the nine-year old narrator in the story.  Also, since Salinger’s story is a frame story, the narrator and his friends can be thought of as “readers” of the tale of the Laughing Man as told to them by the Chief in the same way that people in the real world are able to read “The Laughing Man.”  In this way, the narrator and his friends are creating a “transaction” with the Chief through his storytelling.  This “transaction,” perhaps better thought of as a connection, is what leads the children to become so attached to the Laughing Man, and to think of him as a role model and father figure.  The further the reader, as well as the “readers,” gets into the story, however, the more this “transaction” is revealed to be a rather dangerous one.

What is unusual about the story of the Laughing Man is that the protagonist is an entirely villainous character.  Perhaps his only redeeming qualities are that he doesn’t kill his enemies if he can help it, and that he cares for his extremely loyal sidekicks:  “a glib timber wolf named Black Wing, a lovable dwarf named Omba, a giant Mongolian named Hong,…and a gorgeous Eurasian girl” (Salinger 61).  Other than that, the Laughing Man is singularly concerned with crime, thievery, and consistently outwitting the Parisian detective Marcel Dufarge and his daughter.  This is unusual for the reader not because he or she would not have encountered a hero with such unpleasant character traits (some popular Disney characters come to mind), but because those “villainous heroes,” for lack of a better term, usually always use those traits to outwit the “real” bad guys.  The reader will instantly recall examples of these heroes such as Robin Hood, who stole from the rich to give to the poor, and will compare them to the Laughing Man, who stole simply because he wanted to.  The reader, therefore, is confronted by the idea that the people who are most dangerous to them cannot always be defeated, especially when those people are made out to be the heroes they are supposed to rely on.  The reader can see this in the “readers” of the story, who are so enthralled by the idea of the Laughing Man that each of them “regard[s] [him]self not only as the Laughing Man’s direct descendant, but also as his only legitimate living one” (Salinger 61).

This idea that a villain is made into a hero is one that the reader most likely has not encountered before in his or her real life, where the people of the world are controlled by state and national laws and where the people who break those laws are punished.  So, the reader’s defenses are triggered by the Laughing Man, who the reader would fear because he is an unheard of occurrence.  This is where another of Holland’s ideas comes in:  that when the reader is put on guard by an aspect of the story they are reading, they must find a way to deal with that problem.  “When we perceive a textual threat to our psychological equilibrium, we must interpret the text in some way that will restore that equilibrium” (Tyson 183).  The reader can do this by finding a way to minimize the threat of the idea of the Laughing Man:  perhaps he’s not really as bad as he seems, maybe he is a character to be pitied instead of feared because he simply can’t stop himself from stealing things.  The reader finds this idea of minimization echoed in the text itself, when the narrator determinedly clings to the Laughing Man’s few positive qualities, and indeed, exalts them above his own:  “[The bandits] escaped from time to time and gave [the Laughing Man] a certain amount of trouble, but he refused to kill them.  (There was a compassionate side to the Laughing Man’s character that just about drove me crazy.)” (Salinger 60).

As the story progresses, though, the reader discovers that there are some distinctly familiar, though perhaps no less threatening, aspects still to be presented by Salinger.  The Chief introduces to the boys, first through a photograph pinned to the rear view mirror of his bus, and then in person, the character of Mary Hudson, who will eventually become the downfall of the Chief as well as of the tale of the Laughing Man, for the two are irrevocably connected.  Mary Hudson represents the idea of love and relationships, both of which are things that the reader, as well as Salinger’s “readers,” has trouble comprehending.  For the reader, Mary Hudson is exactly the kind of character who would bring up psychological defenses.  The reader, upon encountering Mary Hudson, would immediately recall memories of past relationships, both good and bad.  In this case, however, she is responded to as a threat to the sanctity of the Comanche Club, which is supposed to be strictly boys-only.  Mary Hudson is an intruder, and so the reader must try to interpret her character in a way that becomes less threatening to his or her psychological equilibrium.  The reader may put her off to the side, instead focusing only on the Chief and the story of the Laughing Man; or perhaps Mary Hudson would be made into a sort of secondary villain who deserves the ending that she receives in the story.  The members of the Comanche Club, the other “readers,” must also find a way of coping with the presence of Mary Hudson, only they have a much simpler time of it:  she is regarded at first as a threat similar to the one encountered by the reader, until she proves that she is a very competent baseball player and all is forgiven.

The ways in which both the reader and Salinger’s “readers” interpret Mary Hudson, as well as other aspects of the story, are referred to by Holland as that person’s identity theme.  A person’s identity theme is “the pattern of our psychological conflicts and coping strategies,” and Holland believes that “when we read literature, we project our identity theme, or variations of it, onto the text.”  So, an identity theme isn’t so much about interpreting a text, but more about what that interpretation reveals about the reader (Tyson 183).  The narrator of “The Laughing Man,” for example, has the identity theme of a person who accepts the presence of Mary Hudson, but does not really take her seriously as a character.

At this point in “The Laughing Man,” the reader has realized that the Chief and Mary Hudson are a couple and, if he or she is reading closely, will have noticed a certain sense of foreboding about the rest of the story.  The tale of the Laughing Man has taken a turn for the worst, a direct product of the events in the Chief’s life.  The Laughing Man’s sidekick, the timber wolf Black Wing, has been captured by the Dufarges, and the Laughing Man willingly trades his own life for that of his comrade.  The Dufarges, of course, have tricked him:  they have replaced the real Black Wing, who has been killed, with a convincing fake, and the Laughing Man finds himself tied with barbed wire to a tree with no hope of rescue.  In a last-ditch effort at escape, he manages to nudge off his red poppy mask, revealing a face so horribly disfigured that Dufarge’s daughter faints immediately.  By a lucky chance, Dufarge himself is spared the sight and realizes what has caused his daughter’s collapse.  “Shielding his eyes with his hand, [Dufarge] fired the full clip in his automatic toward the sound of the Laughing Man’s heavy, sibilant breathing” (Salinger 68).  The latest installment of the story of the Laughing Man ends here, and the Comanche Club is left to wonder what is to become of their beloved hero.

The reader will respond to this part of the story by remembering other times when a hero, whether from any number of books or movies or from their own experiences, has faced such a seemingly inescapable and deadly confrontation.  He or she will instantly feel pity for the captured Laughing Man, and will wish for some miraculous escape to take place so that the legend of the character will end in tragedy.  Moreover, though the reader is caught up in all the drama and peril, he or she will never truly consider an ending where their hero does not emerge victorious.  Literary history has taught the world that the protagonist, despite all odds, can escape relatively unscathed from any situation.  After all, who would people believe in if their heroes are proven to be just as mortal as they are?  The same sentiment is reflected in Salinger’s “readers:” the narrator and his friends, though they seem to realize that all is not well with the Chief and Mary Hudson, are not aware that their hero is about to be killed off permanently.

The connection between the turmoil of the Chief and Mary Hudson’s relationship and the death of the Laughing Man is a very important one.  The Chief’s suffering is directly related to the Laughing Man’s suffering as he remains tied to a tree with the Dufarges at his feet, two bullet wounds bleeding from his chest.  This is obviously symbolic:  the Chief, in a sense, has also been shot in the heart, by the thought of Mary Hudson leaving rather than by an actual gun, and he takes it out on his characters.  The reader may well realize the significance of witnessing Mary Hudson’s departure prior to finding out what happens to the Laughing Man, for it is a very human reaction that the Chief has.  He is heartbroken, and so the Laughing Man must also be, literally, “heartbroken.”  The “readers” in the story will not realize this; they are too shocked by the loss of their hero and father figure to even begin to imagine what caused the Chief to end the story so sadly and abruptly.