Other Voices, Other Rooms †Analysis Essay

Capotes Other Voices, Other Rooms is an exploration into quality reversal, gender definitions, and the risk involved in sexuality and make love against the rough contrast of southern ideals. The novel acts as Capotes purification in developing his younger self, in the character of Joel Knox, innocent and self-exploring, as he trans earns into his of age(predicate)er, liberated self in the character of Randolph who truly is the component part carrying the books message. However, to reach his destination of Randolph, Joel must begin his journey with Idabel Tompkins.Joel sees Idabel soon afterward entering Noon City, and is so mesmerized with her boyish antics that he is oblivious(p) to the man offering him a nickle to capture her, some thing Joel would not be fitting of anyway. She notices him later as well, watching Joel in the soda shop from the entrance and asking about him in herboy-husky voice. Immediately, Joel is intrigued on the verge of infatuation and more or less often referencing her boyish attri exceptes in the same breath. On the way to the Landing, his new-fangled home, he kick downstairss Idabel on the road and picks her out from her sister as, the other travel as jerky and quick as a boy (p31).The rival become champs and later during a fishing trip, Joel learns not only the risks invilved in loving someone but excessively Idabels evaluation of what they ar together.. When she tells him to undress so they can swim naked Joel sheepishly replied, barely youre a girl (p131) Idabel, frustrated, replies, What youve got in your britches is no news to me, and no concern of mine.I neer think like Im a girl youve got to remember that, or we cant neer be friends later on proclaiming, I regard so lots to be a boy (p132). During the same trip, Joel felt he required to put his arms around Idabel as, the only means of expressing all he felt he kisses her cheek and in return she becomes so ill that he pulls his hair and fights him. Joel l earns the danger of loving someone, could mean loosing them or be betrayed by them.Idabel comes to get Joel at the Landing, in hopes of picking up a partner in crime to run away with. Joel mistakes this as tenderheartedness and suggests theyrun off and get married, picking grapes to support themselves. Idabel rebukes him sternly, I tangle witht want to get married.Who the hell said I wanted to get married? Now you listen, boy you yield decent, you be construct like were brothers, or you dont behave at all. Anyway, we dont want to do no sissy thing like pick grapes. I thought maybe we could join the navy (p174) on their way to running away, they first stop at the pleasure ground in Noon City where they meet the alluring blonde flyspeck Mrs. wistaria, a 25 year old carnival worker who also wants to be loved in a society that does not mensurate her. Idabel is immediately smitten with her and Joel notices, to his dismay, Idabel, more excited than Joel had ever seen her, rushed up and asked Miss Wisteria, please, wouldnt she have some soda pop with them (p191)Joel Later realizes Idabel is in love with the circus performer. This provokes Joel into a dream where he fears Idabels difference and tells her he loves her. He begins to realize he can never have her love. During their conversation, Miss Wisteria talks about her horrible experiences trying to find love and her sorrow that boys must grow tall and in that respectfor, never want her. We see the perfect triangle of unrequited love that can never be fulfilled and can only bring sorrow. Joel longs for Idabel who is in love with the golden curls of Miss Wisteria, who molests Joel while trapped in a ferris pedal in her attempt to find a boy who will never grow tall. In an affirming signal of Joels realization of who he is, Joel sees Randolph, the homosexual cross-dresser cousin of his step-mother, at the carnival, while being molested by Miss Wisteria. He runs off scared looking for Idabel and hides from M iss Wisteria in the old abandoned house in town.He realizes he has a home and a bed at the Landing with Randolph, while Miss Wisteria is doomed to always be searching rooms for love, as she is straight off looking for Joel in the old mansion, until she finds her final room, where death awaits. Joel realizes who he is flat and is almost comforted by it. He forgets Idabel for most of the rest of the invoice and assumes she has run off with her circus girl. Joel is content to remain at the Landing, curiously after his one connection to the real world is lost when his friend Zoo comes back to stay after a rape has set her a little crazy as well. He knows he belongs there with Randolph, the ghostly lady in the window who wears womens clothes and wig, but is more like him than whats outside. He hides from his old life in the form of a visit from hisoriginal caretaker, his aunt Ellen, and moves towards Randolph, looking back and passing his innocent self, the other Joel Knox.Works Ci tedCapote, Truman. Other Voices, Other Rooms. New York Vintage, 1994. Print.