The Laughing Man

I miss reading being a regular part of my life. There's nothing as wonderful as a good book. It's unfortunate that reading takes so much more time than watching movies. It's part of my philosophy that great things require sacrifice; we have to set aside time to experience them properly. Basically, scarcity means we have to make choices everyday about how we spend our time. Reading may take longer but I think that it provides a pleasure that cannot be replicated and is a process that cannot be truncated. I have not made that necessary sacrifice lately.

Recently I got an odd e-mail from Vanderbilt telling me to change my non-Vanderbilt Google ID. I take this to mean create a gmail account but I'm not 100% positive.

austin.e.stevens AT gmail DOT com is not available. They suggested austin.austinestevens.stevens. I thought that was kind of ridiculous and slightly narcissistic. I also feel like my old e-mail / screen name: shosty1937 needs to be updated. I have used that name for a while and want to create a new one.

Thinking up names is extremely hard for me to do. It took me 3 hours of looking at names to pick a name for my violin. (Madeline)

So one of my thoughts today was: thelaughingman. I am known for my laugh, right? Plus, it has an added reference to Ghost in the Shell, a favorite anime show of mine. I looked it up and saw that Ghost in the Shell actually takes this name from a J.D. Salinger short story of the same name. I looked it up and read it. Here it is. The e-mail address, however, is not available.

I loved The Catcher in the Rye, so I was interested in reading some of Salinger's other work. I really like his style of writing and that carries over into this short story.

It's a short story so you should spend 10 minutes and read it.

I really like the story-within-a-story. There are several layers to The Laughing Man in just a few pages. On the whole, it's a coming of age story. I guess there are two main characters, maybe three if you count the laughing man from the story the Chief tells the Comanches. The narrator learns something from watching the Chief. The Chief is the one having the important experience. The laughing man within the story is clearly symbolic of something. We just have to figure out what.

The Chief is a man in his early 20's who is kind of a camp counselor for a group of kids, called the Comanches. He takes them to parks to play football and baseball or to museums if it's raining. The kids look up to him as a real role model. The best part of their days are when he tells them parts of a story on the bus. Each time he tells an installment, making it a serial story.

The story is that of the laughing man, a gentleman-thief hero who is abducted and horribly disfigured by a group of bandits when he is a child. He wears a mask of red poppy petals to hide his terrifying face. He secretly learned all the bandits ways.

"Soon his ingenious criminal methods, coupled with his singular love of fair play, found him a warm place in the nation's heart."

He also communed with animals, learning how to speak with them.

The laughing man had many adventures, crossing the Paris-China border (a bit of nonsense that I love) frequently foiling the attempts of famous detective Marcel Dufarge and his daughter. That name reminds me of Madame Defarge from Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. I don't see too much of a special connection except that they are both the villains of the stories. It's been a long time since I've read A Tale of Two Cities, as well.

The laughing man becomes the richest man in the world, donating much of his money anonymously to monks.

The boys are enthralled by the story, and the narrator pretends that he is a direct descendant of the laughing man.

One day the bus stops early and a girl, Mary Hudson, gets on the bus. She and the Chief are obviously in a relationship, and she even turns out to be able to play baseball with the Comanches. She joins them on a regular basis and the boys begin to expect her. We learn that she comes whenever she visits for a trip to the dentist.

The laughing man turns himself over to the Dufarges in exchange for the life of his best friend, Black Wing, a timber wolf who the Dufarges captured. They have no interest in releasing Black Wing, however, and take a stand-in timber wolf instead. However, while the laughing man gives his last words of advice to who he thinks is his friend, the replacement wolf tells him he is not Black Wing.

Infuriated, the laughing man pushes off his mask to confront the Dufarges. The daughter faints immediately, but the father covers his face and shoots him.

At this time the Chief decides it's time to go. The narrator asks if they aren't going to wait for Mary Hudson, which draws an irritable response from the Chief. At the game the narrator sees Mary sitting in the stands, between two women with baby carriages. The Chief goes to talk with her for a few minutes, then returns silently. Mary comes to sit on a random bench behind third base. When asked if she wants to play, she tells the narrator to leave him alone. Walking away from her, he bumps into another baby carriage.

The story ends with the death of the laughing man.

"When the Laughing Man's small eyes finally opened, Omba eagerly raised the vial of eagles' blood up to the mask. But the Laughing Man didn't drink from it. Instead, he weakly pronounced his beloved Black Wing's name. Omba bowed his own slightly distorted head and revealed to his master that the Dufarges had killed Black Wing. A peculiar and heart-rending gasp of final sorrow came from the Laughing Man. He reached out wanly for the vial of eagles' blood and crushed it in his hand. What little blood he had left trickled thinly down his wrist. He ordered Omba to look away, and, sobbing, Omba obeyed him. The Laughing Man's last act, before turning his face to the bloodstained ground, was to pull off his mask."

(Omba is the lovable dwarf that was a close companion with the laughing man.)

The story is simply fascinating. J.D. Salinger creates a group of believable characters in just several paragraphs.

So what has extra meaning, and what is just quirky writing? That is up to the reader to decide.

The sheer number of baby carriages near the end is a not so subtle hint as to the problem between the Chief and Mary Hudson. In that respect the story reminds me of the similar situation in Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway.

The story of the laughing man that the Chief tells the Comanches could tell us a lot about him. Is the laughing man a representation of the Chief on some level? The deformation is the defining physical characteristic of the laughing man. Maybe it's representative of the shortcomings of the Chief. He is seen by the narrator as perfect, but in reality he's not. We don't know what he says to Mary when he runs up to her at the last game. We have no reason to assume he's not a nice guy. But perhaps his story is just a reflection of his humanity and his flaws.

Of course, maybe the grotesque hideousness of the laughing man simply made for a more engrossing story to tell the kids. The important thing about the story is that in the end, the laughing man is killed off by the Chief. It's interesting to note the coincidence of the two conflicts occurring simultaneously: in real life between the Chief and Mary, and in the story between the laughing man and the Dufarges. Perhaps the outcome of the story can tell us more about the end of the relationship between Mary and the Chief.

The laughing man, as a criminal-hero, can be seen to represent a certain kind of freedom. He fits the mold of vigilante, like Robin Hood. And in the comic book style story the Chief tells, the hero always gets away, no matter how tight of a jam he finds himself in. The parallel of the two stories tells us simply that actions have consequences. That's why this is a coming of age story. That's what the narrator and other boys learn. Life isn't always fair. The laughing man was good at heart but because he crossed some lines his fate was inevitable.

I don't know. It's not exactly a story with a clear moral message like "robbing is still bad even if you donate it all to a good cause" or "sex outside marriage will always end badly."

For the narrator, he doesn't even know what the fight is about. That implication and juxtaposition is for the reader to make. But the death of the laughing man is still a coming of age moment. In a simpler sense, his death is a metaphor for the end of childhood. It's now time for life without a mask.