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 ...
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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 transitive 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 ...
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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 ...
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The Laughing Man. (2011, May 30). Retrieved November 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Laughing-Man/99480
"The Laughing Man." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 30 May. 2011. Web. 23 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Laughing-Man/99480>
"The Laughing Man." Essayworld.com. May 30, 2011. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Laughing-Man/99480.
"The Laughing Man." Essayworld.com. May 30, 2011. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Laughing-Man/99480.
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