The Laughing Man (Salinger)

"The Laughing Man" is a short story written by J. D. Salinger and originally published in The New Yorker magazine on March 19, 1949. It largely takes the structure of a story within a story and is thematically occupied with the relationship between narrative and narrator, and the end of youth. The story also appears in Salinger's short story collection "Nine Stories".

Plot summary

The short story is told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator recounting his experience as a nine-year-old living in New York City in 1928, but largely takes the structure of a story within a story. As a member of a Boy Scout-like troop called the Comanche Club, the narrator comes into contact with a Scout leader called "The Chief," a young law student at New York University (NYU) acting as caretaker in his spare time. The Chief is described as somewhat absurd in appearance, but is widely respected by his troop for his athletic strength and storytelling ability.

Every day, after the troop has completed its activities for the afternoon, The Chief gathers the boys for the next episode in an ongoing story he tells them about the eponymous Laughing Man. Very much in the format of a serial adventure novel, The Chief's story-within-a-story describes The Laughing Man as the child of missionaries but kidnapped by bandits in China, grotesquely deformed in his face and obliged to wear a mask, but profoundly athletic and possessed of a great Robin Hood-like charm and the ability to speak with animals.

Salinger's narrator summarizes the Chief's ever more fantastical installments of The Laughing Man's escapades, presenting him as a sort of comic book hero crossing "the Chinese-Paris" border to commit acts of heroic larceny and tweaking his nose at his archenemy "Marcel Dufarge, the internationally famous detective and witty consumptive."

Eventually The Chief takes up with a young woman, Mary Hudson, who is described as both very beautiful and something of a tomboy. Unwilling to break the aura of machoism he has built up with his troop, the Chief introduces her into the boys' baseball games as a sort of associate coach.

As the Chief's relationship with his lover waxes and wanes, so too do the fortunes of The Laughing Man in the stories he tells the Comanches. One day the Chief presents an installment where The Laughing Man is taken prisoner by his archrival through a deception and betrayal, bound to a tree and in mortal danger; then he ends the episode on a cliffhanger. Immediately afterwards, the Chief brings his troop to a baseball diamond where Mary Hudson arrives. The Chief and Mary have a conversation out of earshot from the boys, both return together but distraught.

Why the couple is distraught is ambiguous, as the couple's conversation occurs away from the story's narrator. In any case, Salinger does not explicitly tell the reader. However, Salinger does give some subtle hints when Mary Hudson comes to the baseball field for the last time. First, when she is first seen, she is sitting between two baby carriages. Second, the narrator nearly trips over a baby carriage after viewing The Chief and Mary fight. The implication is that either Mary has gotten pregnant, or is worried she might be pregnant, or was pregnant and received an abortion. The last interpretation might be supported by the frequent visits to the city, as mentioned by the narrator, since these may not be dentists visits, but rather doctor's visits.

In the final installment of his Laughing Man story, the Chief kills off the character, a symbol of the end of his own innocence and a sort of memento mori for his boys as well.

Literary significance and criticism

"The Laughing Man" presents several themes that were to become the centerpiece of Salinger's work, such as the relationship between narrator and story, the end of innocence, the increasing androgyny of modern society, and the idea of literature as a daily activity of life.

The Laughing Man himself suggests both a symbol of youthful machismo and an escape from the Chief's own personal ineffectuality: where the Chief is a meek law student shy around even his own lover, his character the Laughing Man is a dashing rogue with a devoted handmaiden. In addition the primary conceit that the narrator is in effect relating someone else telling him a story in his childhood illustrates the importance of such stories in life: each of the Comanche Club see in themselves some of the Laughing Man, appreciating him as hero, role model, and myth. By destroying the Laughing Man, Salinger presents his characters with their own mortality: if the Laughing Man is at heart the boys' own story, then his death reminds the listeners that their boyhood will end one day, and they will need to step from the world of innocence and fantasy and face the real world before them.

Others view the laughing man as an idea, rather than a person. The story of the laughing man told of a criminal that was viewed as a hero, not some vigilante as most are used to hearing about. It's Salinger's thinking that it's ideas, not people, that change the world. People create ideas, but just by killing the person who created the idea, doesn't mean that you've killed the idea. Notice how all the boys were certain they were direct descendants of the laughing man. Holding on to every last word that they were told of him. They were holding onto an idea. Ideas change the world. Ideas can't die, this is reason that the laughing man was shot 4 times, 2 through the heart, and still lived. He was an idea, someone that the common people, the poor, and the refugees looked up to (all of the animals in the story). Though the laughing man did end up dying in the end of the story, notice how it was the laughing man's choice to die. He could have kept living had he chosen to, but he could see how his actions hurt those that were close to him, and for thus he gave up his life.

In a more schematic way Mary Hudson alludes to the theme of androgyny that would fascinate Salinger in later works such as "The Catcher in the Rye" and "". At once tomboyish and feminine, Mary is both a young lady of striking beauty and a player in the troop's baseball games. She enters the story as a sort of action-woman icon in the eyes of the young boys, and ends it with an essentially female act -- the inception of motherhood. Alternatively, the Mary character could be analyzed as perhaps a self-imposed deception. Life then, arrives unbidden, slyly and inconspicuously, forcing a transformation where the narrator had once only expected the stillness of a never ending summer.

The Chief's narration of the story of The Laughing Man is often considered to be inspired by The Man Who Laughs, a Victor Hugo novel.

Cultural references

The anime series "" prominently features a character referred to as The Laughing Man, for his masked appearance and other similarities. This Laughing Man uses a quote from the 25th chapter of Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye": "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes." The themes of childhood and the end of wonder accompanying adulthood are also echoed by the laughing man (who is, incidentally also known as The Chief, as a throwback to the fact that The Chief and The Laughing Man are the same in Salinger's novel). The Laughing Man hates adults, and wipes others' memories in the same way a childhood is forgotten. When he wipes his friends' memories however, he also leaves a catcher's mitt with another reference to Salinger. On the mitt is written "You know what I'd like to be? I mean if I had the goddamn choice? I'd just go ahead and be the Catcher in the Rye and all."

External links

* [http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/laughingman.html Online copy of the story]
*