Boyarsky 1

Briana Boyarsky

Mr. Mcfarlin

American Literature, Period 2

15 March 2011

Accepting One’s Differences

Young adults like Chris Colfer, who plays Kurt Hummel on the hits series Glee, had to

come to terms with his homosexuality. Homosexuality is misunderstood and those who struggle

have a hard time gaining acceptance and feel isolated from family and peers. Truman Capote,

born on September 30, 1924 in New Orleans, Louisiana, struggled with homosexuality and

isolation (Fahy 2). Capote connects the concept of homosexuality, isolation, and acceptance in

his novel Other Voices, Other Rooms. Written about the 1930’s, critics often say the book is

centered on Gothic Love in the south. There are also many modern day connections that can be

made to Capote’s novel about homosexual love and accepting one for who they are. Isolation for

Capote meant the feeling of not having someone to look up to and the feeling of being looked at

differently. It was the same way for Capote’s main character Joel Knox. Truman Capote grew up

during a time period when many people began to accept homosexuality. In his novel Other

Voices, Other Rooms Capote argues that isolation from family and others makes it difficult to

gain acceptance.
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During the early years of Capote’s life, he was considered an orphan because he was

always being moved around, which added to his isolation and hard time gaining self acceptance.

Just like his character Joel Knox, from Other Voices, Other Rooms, Capote felt a strong sense of

isolation and a slight sense of self-acceptance because of his being a homosexual. Capote’s life

was dramatically changed during his parent’s bitter divorce when he was just four years old.

After this event in his life he was sent to live with his cousin Miss Sook Faulk (Fahy 1). This is

very similar to his character Joel Knox. Joel Knox had lived with his mother up until her death,

and at first he never knew his father until, after several years of living with his aunt he was sent

off to live with his estranged father in Skully’s Landing in New Orleans. In an interview with

Fleming Capote stated, “I was so different from everyone, so much more intelligent and sensitive

and perceptive. I always felt that nobody was going to understand me, going to understand what I

felt about thinks. I guess that’s why I started writing. At least on paper I could put down what I

thought” (Flemming 4). This was Capote’s way of escaping his feelings of isolation and self-

denial. Joel, like Capote, in the end found ways to accept himself by seeing everyone else acting

different and not caring what others thought, which made him believe that it was alright to be

whomever he wanted to be. Truman Capote and Joel Knox were one in the same; both of them

had felt completely isolated from their families and society. They both felt that if they came out

with their secret of being homosexual they would be shunned and looked down upon in society

because they were not self-accepting. Neither of them wanted to even admit this truth to

themselves. In the novel there was a point when it was stated, “Joel felt as though they

interpreted his presence here as somehow indecent, but it was impossible to withdraw,
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impossible to advance” (Capote 121). Joel was very different from everyone in society and he

didn’t quit know how to embrace that or how everyone would accept him. Capote began

accepting his difference towards his early teens and Joel Knox was just thirteen years old when

he first admitted to himself that he was different and there was nothing to be afraid of.

Around his mid-teens, Capote began to accept the idea of same sex love and this

encouraged him to write, Other Voices, Other Rooms, a novel about accepting the concept of

homosexuality. Capote had once claimed: “I always had a marked homosexual preference, and I

never had any guilt about it at all. As time goes on, you finally settle down on one side or

another, homosexual or heterosexual. And I was homosexual” (Fahy, Clark 1). Throughout the

entire novel Joel was running into different hints’ that being different was acceptable. Fahy

states, “At first Joel is repulsed by her strangeness (referring to Idabel) and that the other

townspeople, such as the one-armed barber, he crippled dwarf, and Randolph’s bearded mother.

This reaction reflects Joel’s desire to feel normal – to “go away to a school where everybody was

like everybody else” (Fahy 1). Joel had been repulsed by anything that was not normal and he

felt he could not let anyone know he was different because he didn’t want anyone to look at him

differently. Later on, Joel was sitting around with Randolph talking about Randolph’s love life.

He learned how Randolph had loved not Dolores, but Pepé, a young Mexican teenager; this

showed Joel that it was perfectly alright to love whomever you wanted. Randolph stated, “The

brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries:

weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface” (Capote 147). This only

further proved to Joel that he was allowed to love whomever he wanted and even if he denied the
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love of someone it would still come back to him. By the end of the novel Joel had finally

accepted who he was and whom he loved. It took seeing Randolph, his transgendered, drag

queen cousin, dressed as a woman to make him realize this. Capote wrote, “she beckoned to him,

shining and silver, and he knew he must go: unafraid, not hesitating, he paused only at the

garden’s edge where, as though he’d forgotten something, he stopped and looked back at the

bloomless, descending blue, at the boy he had left behind” (231). This really urged Joel to accept

himself as a homosexual because now he knew that his cousin Randolph led a life and wasn’t

ashamed of it. He now knew that he could and should be open about whom he is.

People, besides Capote, have different views on whether the story of Other Voices, Other

Rooms, focused on the homosexuality of the characters or the gothic elements within the novel.

Critics such as Stephen Adams, William L. Howard, and William White Tison, all perceived

Other Voices, Other Rooms, as a novel with a strong connection to the aspects of Southern

Gothicism and acceptance of ones sexuality. Other critics like David Remnick and Jack Kroll

believed the ostentatious and sexual photograph of Capote overshadowed the novel itself.

The gothic elements of Other Voices, Other Rooms are represented by ruin and decay.

When the setting of the novel, Skully’s Landing, is first introduced Tison claimed, “it was

described as a place that is itself evocative of death, bones, and decay” (2). This creates a very

dark and negative feeling. Tison also stated that, “until Sam Radcliff drives him farther; the toy

skull on Radcliff’s gear shift foreshadows Joel’s destination, Skully’s Landing, which the local

townspeople refer to as “The Skulls”’ (2). The referral to the landing as “The Skulls” really

exemplifies the feeling of decay. The word “skulls” usually refers to someone after they have
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passed on, which makes one question what has gone on in the house and foreshadows disaster.

The other ruinous and decaying location in the story is the garden at Skully’s Landing. “Capote

describes it as a place full of overgrown confusion, plants that were very large and had razor

sharp thorns, dry and tangled weeds, dark heavy earth, and the sky was pure blue fire” (64). This

only shows that the garden has not properly been tended too and is falling apart. The one final

location that contains those main aspects was the Cloud Hotel. This was home to the hermit,

Little Sunshine, who chose to live out his life in one of the dreariest places in New Orleans.

Adams described, “Cloud Hotel, an even more spectacularly gothic ruin complete with ghosts

and gory legends” (2). The Cloud Hotel was an old plantation home that was located deep in the

swamps. It was a couple decades since it had last been occupied and entertained in and it was

officially decaying and was now covered with weeds and other dreary plants. Aside from the

ruinous and decaying aspects of Other Voices, Other Rooms critics recognize the lack of

masculine characters throughout the novel.

Capote often uses the word “sissy” to represent Joel and Randolph to emphasize the lack

of any masculine character, which adds to the sense of isolation and self-acceptance. Joel is

described as “a boy with very girlish features and quaint manner and is cast in the cliché of the

‘sissy’” (Adams 2). Now, Joel’s Cousin Randolph is always shone with many girlish accents to

his face and he is always wearing a silk kimono. Randolph also has a face that was as round as a

coin and as smooth as a young boy. He also had a strong lemon scent to him, which is not very

masculine (Capote 84). Though besides the two distinct non-masculine characters, “most of the

characters that are supposed to be masculine were crippled, lost, or deceased” (Adams 2). Joel’s
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father was a paraplegic; he could not really talk and he couldn’t move his body, his Grandfather

was lost in the thoughts of the Civil War days, and Pepé Alvarez had vanished. The novel itself

wasn’t the only thing that the critics and readers noticed. There was the dust jacket of the novel

that had everyone talking.

Some Critics believe that Capote’s dust cover photograph for Other Voices, Other

Rooms, received just as much comment and critiques as the novel itself. Krebs claimed, “an

androgynously pretty Mr. Capote, big eyes looking up from under his blonde bangs, and

wearing a Tattersall vest, reclining on a sofa, was really prophetic” (Krebs CLC 34:322). Capote

was very open with his sexuality and this was his way of really putting it out there. Just by

Capote posing like a diva on his book cover, he knew that everyone would be talking about it for

years. Remnick described the cover as a “dreamy photograph of the young author lounging on a

plush divan like a movie starlet. Fame and fortune and reputation – all at once” (Remnick CLC

34:322). It was what Krebs said that truly described Capote as a dramatic man with “a love affair

with cameras – all cameras” (Krebs CLC 34:322). Capote’s openness with his homosexuality

really played a part in who he was as a person and what his characters were like in his novel,

Other Voices, Other Rooms.

It took Joel Knox, the main character of Other Voices, Other Rooms, a full thirteen years

to come to terms with his sexuality and to accept the way he was. Today, in society, there are

many teenagers and young adults who are trying to successfully accept their sexuality too, but

they are being tormented by bullies and other people in society, who are making it difficult and

even deadly for them. This is seen in television shows, schools, and even out on the streets.
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Homosexuals live in fear of the close minded people all around them and they don’t always

know how to deal with this.

Homosexual teenagers, like Joel Knox, are faced with the fear of coming out of the closet

with their true identity and this fear leads to many young suicides. Young gay individuals feel

that they must hide what and who they are because they fear for any major downfalls that can

occur from this (Torres 1). In New York State alone there were four apparent suicides of young

teenage homosexual boys as stated in an article written by Neil Katz. Torres did research and it

was proven that one-third of all the teens who commit suicide are either lesbian or gay (1). Seth

Walsh and Asher Brown were just thirteen years old, the same age as Joel Knox, when they

committed suicide due to the bullies who picked on them because they came out of the closet.

Other gay and lesbian teens that do not come out of the closet fear that if they do they will lose

their friends or fear that their family will disown them (Torres 1).

Homosexuals face many obstacles in society that can potentially ruin their lives and that

is what the gay activists are trying to stop by fighting for laws of equality. There are a lot of

people in this world who do not like gays and discriminate them from everyday activities and

more. “Homosexuals can be fired, evicted, kept from their own biological children, restricted

from adopting children, and imprisoned for sodomy” (Torres 1). All of these things go against

the basic constitutional rights of the American citizens and the government is not doing anything

to prevent this. They look right past it as if nothing is wrong. “It is said that forty-two out of fifty

states provide absolutely no protection for the homosexual members in its society when it comes

to holding a job or purchasing houses” (Torres 1). Neil Katz performed an interview with a
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concerned citizen and she said that “This shouldn’t be a political issue any more, when it’s

affecting the lives of our students. It’s a human issue that needs to be dealt with. They can be

doing more but they’re not.” This issue will only become worse if no one does anything.

The hit television series Glee is about all different kinds of students accepting the way

they are and they are also being bullied for being different, but they stand up to bullies. The cast

of Glee hopes that by showing young adults that being different from everyone else is not a big

deal, as long as you are willing to defend yourself and others around you. This also sends out a

message of hope to everyone that being themselves is better than hiding who they are. Chris

Colfer is the youngest actor on television who is openly gay. He plays the character Kurt

Hummel on Glee, and he was interviewed by Digital Spy magazine, where he said “I hope that I

can be a role model for millions of young people who recently came out of the closet or are just

coming out. People are relieved to see someone being honest with whom they are” (Jones 1). The

screenwriter for Glee, Ryan Murphy, shows homosexuals that they can be gay and still achieve

their goals. He is another person in society who is openly gay and is not afraid to show that

(Jones 1). There are many other role models that gays and lesbians and anyone who feels they

are different, can look up to and hope to find guidance.

Homosexuality, isolation, self-acceptance, are all aspects of society that are troubling and

hard to accept, but for others it is an easy thing to fix. Truman Capote and many others help

young teens and adults realize this. They have been able to accept themselves the way they are

and not look at themselves as different or weird. Young teens, like Joel Knox, have found many
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different ways to accept themselves, whether it be through looking up to others like themselves

or just coming to terms with it.

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Works Cited

“Truman Capote.” Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Gale, 2005. Web. 11 Jan. 2011

"Boundless Hearts in a Nightmare World: Queer Sentimentalism and Southern Gothicism in

Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms." Student Resource Center. Gale. Web. 12

Jan. 2011.

Fahy, Thomas. "Other Voices, Other Rooms." Facts on File Companion to the American Novel.

Blooms Literary Reference Online, 2006. 11 Jan. 2011.

Katz, Neil. "Schools Battle Suicide Surge, Anti-Gay Bullying - Health Blog - CBS News." Web.

06 Feb. 2011

Krebs, Albin, David Remnick, Melvin Maddocks, and Jack Kroll. "Truman

Capote." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Print.

Moravia, Alberto, William L. Nance, and Lee Zacharias. "Capote, Truman 1924" Contemporary

Literary Criticism. Print.