Hysterical: Broken Laughter in the Literature of Chicago
By Danilo Zak
It’s curious what we find to be funny. Laughter is often associated with
enjoyment; we laugh pleasantly at something relatable, something trivial. But
laughter can also be analyzed as a response: an unthinking, intuitive reaction to
being overwhelmed by life’s inescapable turmoil. We laugh at incongruence; we
laugh in embarrassment; we laugh at what we fear; we laugh at our hopes and
dreams; and we laugh to defend ourselves from hopelessness.
In Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift and Richard Wright’s Native Son, laughter is
explored through this unconventional lens, as a way to delve into the broken, the
hopeless, and even the hysterical. Bellow’s Citrine lives the privileged life of a
respected intellectual, but his laughter reveals the specter of sensitivity and
detachment that haunts him. Meanwhile, the silent and manic laughter of Humboldt
first predicts and than embodies his more palpable paranoia. The laughter of
Richard Wright’s protagonist Bigger represents a similar progression in a far less
privileged setting; he at first laughs to defend himself from the reality of his racist
and imprisoning environment before his helplessness inevitably plummets him
towards rage and violence. Across both books, laughter is predictive of this
evolution of damaged psyches, from Citrine’s more mild sensitivity to Bigger’s
panicked, preordained violence.
Humboldt’s Gift revolves around the Chicago elite. Even the mobsters drive
Thunderbirds, play racquetball, and carry around gym memberships. But despite
their relatively comfortable lives, all of the central characters suffer from
exceedingly fragile mental states. The novel is full of intellectuals that are mired in
their own thoughts, detached from the outside world. Issues of death and purpose
plague Charlie Citrine, an accomplished playwright, to the point of sensitivity and
isolation. Humboldt, Citrine’s poet-mentor, is driven to paranoia and even death by
a simultaneous envy and hatred of the academic sphere. Laughter serves as an
expression of these characters’ inner disorder, a manifestation of Citrine’s
sensitivity and Humboldt’s mania.
Citrine’s nervous self-consciousness, which can be analyzed through
laughter, stems from a life that has fallen into total disarray: His once vivacious
mentor, Humboldt, has died ignominiously in a decrepit New York apartment; he
has not yet recovered from the passing of his lover and muse, Demmie, in a
mysterious South American plane crash; and he is in the midst of a brutal divorce in
which his lawyers are colluding with his scheming ex-wife to acquire his dwindling
assets. Adding to this, his Mercedes was destroyed by a vengeful and egotistical
mobster, named Cantabile, who felt slighted by Citrine’s failure to repay a minor
poker debt. When Citrine laughs, it is a window into this insecure and collapsing
world, one even further muddled by his confused musings on boredom, purpose,
Citrine often laughs at inopportune times, drawing ire from those around
him and emphasizing his insecurity. When Cantabile calls snarling for the return of
his money, Citrine responds by laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Following
this bizarre reaction, Citrine reiterates his growing self-doubt by proclaiming, “My
way of laughing has always been criticized” (Bellow 37). Later, he recalls a scene
from his collapsing marriage in which he laughs in response to his wife’s “warlike
and shrill” tone. “I laughed,” he narrates, “Partly from embarrassment. I am
normally a baritone…but under certain kinds of provocation my voice disappears
into the higher registers, perhaps into the bat range” (42). Citrine’s laughter is a
window into his shame and his inner discomfiture, a provoked defense mechanism
that responds to and evokes the realities of his collapsing life.
Another part of Citrine’s unrest and sensitivity is that he is forced to confront
his current life as a privileged, wealthy academic with remaining anxiety over his
artistic purpose. Despite his elite status, Citrine still has major concerns about his
mission as a writer and the lasting impact he hopes to leave on the philosophical
and intellectual world. His laughter demonstrates tensions that arise for him
because his standing in society belies what he feels to be a dearth of achievement
and impact. Denise, his perceptive ex-wife, tells him, “You give yourself away when
you laugh…you were born in a coal scuttle. Brought up in a parrot-house” (Bellow
42). While Denise is prone to heavy criticisms of Citrine, most of her judgments are
grounded in real insight (43). At his core, Citrine is still just another common
Chicagoan, much more concerned with his unfulfilled creative mission than his
impressive academic and economic surroundings.
This failure to connect with his current social sphere can be advanced
through an exploration of laughter and his general detachment from the outside
world. Cantabile decries Citrine’s laugh as “not a normal sound”; it exemplifies his
separation from those around him (Bellow 38). Laughter is often a tool for him to
isolate himself from the realities of his flawed world. Of his weakening romantic
relationship, he states, “Renata made me laugh, I was willing to deal later with the
terror implicit in her words”. In the academic realm as well, despite his
accomplishments, he is mostly detached. When Humboldt asks him to consider
taking a position at Princeton, Citrine’s first reaction is stunned laughter; shocked
the idea would even be brought up (129). Through all facets of his life, Citrine’s
laughter represents not only sensitivity and doubt, but also detachment.
“Pale Humboldt opened his mouth. Through small teeth he gave his near-silent laugh.”
-Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift
While laughter highlights serious issues within Citrine’s broken life, his
troubles are merely a silhouette of Humboldt’s much more evident anxieties.
Humboldt was once a famed and brilliant poet, but he slowly descends into mania,
depression, paranoia, and eventually death. According to Citrine, Humboldt’s decline
began with Adlai Stevenson, his supposed confidante, losing in the 1952 presidential
election. Humboldt expected to be welcomed into Stevenson’s administration, and
to be given the opportunity to shape and better the world from that perch. When
Eisenhower won, the already fragile Humboldt felt exposed and rashly attempts a
power grab for a tenured chair at Princeton. In this scene, laughter plays an overt
and complex role in portraying Humboldt’s decaying mental state; it is both
protective and predictive.
At times, Humboldt’s laughter serves as defense mechanism, a way to cope
with his rising fears and protect his still astute mind. He attempts to enlist Citrine to
help him get the seat at Princeton, and the ensuing argument is filled with just this
form of laughter. When Citrine expresses ridicule at the first full outline of the plan,
Humboldt fights for a moment of brief clarity: “His mind was executing some
earnest queer labor. It was swelling and pulsating oddly…He tried to laugh it all off
with his nearly silent panting laugh” (129). Humboldt is unable to fully recover and
cogently examine his decisions, but his laughter represents his desperate attempt to
do just that. In this instance, it is not representative of his mania, but rather it is the
only way for him to express his desire to regain equilibrium and rationality. In
another occasion when Humboldt is faced with Charlie’s criticisms, a voice he knows
to be perceptive, the reaction is striking: “Humor me, Charlie. Never mind how
ridiculous this seems” (130). When Humboldt laughs he is demonstrating he knows
his plan is coming from a place of absurdity. Humboldt is in the process of losing
himself to his anxieties, and at points his attempts at laughter are defenses; they are
an effort to synthesize this progression that he can see within himself.
But in the same scene, laughter is predictive and projective of Humboldt’s
growing sense of helplessness and fear. Its silent, panting nature is indicative of a
certain twisted insincerity. At times, his laughter represents a detachment from
reality and an affirmation of his own crazed position. In one instance, Charlie calls
him out for being conspiratorial, and, responding, “Humboldt seemed to take this as
a compliment, and laughed between his teeth, silently” (127). At this point,
Humboldt’s laughter makes his hysteria seem imminent and obvious. The silent
laugh is Humboldt’s defining eccentricity, and is again repeated when Citrine
returns with good news from Princeton. Citrine coldly observes the laugh, and
afterwards describes Humboldt for the first time as “Manic” (136). Humboldt’s
laughter is a defense and a coping mechanism, but it is also a clear predictor of his
impending emotional and spiritual decline.
Bellow uses laughter in Humboldt’s Gift to probe his characters’ wounded
psyches. Citrine’s laughter demonstrates his self-doubt and detachment, while for
Humboldt it is demonstrative of his failed struggle for rationality and composure.
The use of laughter to link both characters’ poor mental states gives rise to the fear
that Citrine will inevitably follow in Humboldt’s ill-fated footsteps, a possibility
Bellow dances with throughout. Citrine is exhibiting a milder form of the issues that
lead to Humboldt’s tragic and fatal decline.
“They guffawed, partly at themselves and partly at the vast white world that sprawled
and towered in the sun before them.”
-Richard Wright, Native Son
In Richard Wright’s Native Son, the use of laughter demonstrates significant
thematic similarities with Humboldt’s Gift that would otherwise be difficult to
examine. Bigger exists in an entirely different Chicago than the one inhabited by
Charlie and his cohort, but he faces an incredible struggle for sanity that mirrors
Humboldt’s and, to a lesser extent, Citrine’s. Bigger is a young black man living in a
small, one-room tenement in a radically racially divided Chicago. He bears constant
witness to the riches and benefits offered to the white world, but society dictates
that he has no way of ever achieving them. He wastes time shooting pool and
watching films, trying to forget the fact that he is incapable of caring for his destitute
family. Bigger has severe emotional issues that stem from the racial divide, and his
eventual loss of control results in multiple murders and his own capital punishment.
While Citrine and Humboldt struggle in spite of their surroundings, Bigger’s issues
stem directly from his environment.
Like Bellow, Wright employs the agent of laughter in a variety of ways to
depict a range of mental instability. Laughter is first used to examine milder
sensitivity and detachment. At the very start of the book, Bigger laughs while
dangling a killed rat in front of his sister, almost intentionally inciting his mother’s
rage. He describes how he isolates himself from his family, because “He knew that
the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness…the shame and misery of their
lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair” (Wright 10). Bigger’s
laughter also displays his sensitivity and separation regarding his supposed friends.
After Gus tells a joke, “they all laughed and Bigger laughed with them but stopped
quickly. He felt that the joke was on him” (24). This self-created feeling of seclusion,
of isolation, is evident from the start for Bigger, and demonstrates a doubt and
nervousness that is similar to Citrine’s.
But laughter is also used in Native Son, as in Humboldt’s Gift, as a defense
mechanism, a tool to cope with terrible realities. In a telling scene early on, Bigger
and Gus laugh uncontrollably while contemplating the dominance of the White
world. Pausing in their mirth, Bigger wonders, “It’s funny how the white folks treat
us, ain’t it?” (17). He is forced to find humor in the terrible inequity of his day-to-day
life, because without it he would slide into a fearful and hopeless rage. When he is
planning to rob a white convenience store, Bigger again calls on laughter as a tool to
defend himself from his awful experience. He feels an “urgent need to hide his
growing and deepening feeling of hysteria…he wanted to run, or listen to some
swing music. Or laugh or joke” (28). Just as Humboldt forces laughter in an attempt
to understand and deal with his mounting paranoia, Bigger tries to cope with his
own sense of entrapment and anger in a similar fashion.
But while laughter is used to cope, it is also predictive and demonstrative of
Bigger’s derangement as the book progresses. His early fight with Gus is one of the
first clear signs that Bigger has lost whatever semblance of control he once had.
After kicking a defenseless Gus, he laughs, “softly at first, then harder, louder,
hysterically; feeling something like hot water bubbling inside of him and trying to
come out” (36). Here violence, laughter, and fear coalesce into a dangerous mixture
that pushes Bigger towards his future horrific crimes. The bubbling hot water is an
explicit reference to the hysteria that he holds within him, and laughter was the
inciting factor for its rise. Later that same day, Bigger panicked and murdered Mary
Dalton, a white woman who was sympathetic but ignorant towards the plight of
blacks in Chicago. Echoing Humboldt’s panting laughter, Bigger’s laugh represents
and foreshadows his increasing confusion and mental decay.
The evolution of laughter in Native Son provides an interesting method of
examining Bigger and his developing morals. In the early part of the book, laughter
clarifies his devolvement towards anxiety and violence. But after the first killing,
Bigger does not laugh again until the novel’s enigmatic end. In the meantime, he has
murdered another women named Bessie, provoked a massive manhunt, and has
recently been sentenced to death. Max, a perceptive lawyer, defended Bigger
unsuccessfully in court by blaming the racist environmental pressures which forced
Bigger’s fate. Max continually converses with Bigger in an attempt to enlighten him
to the changing racial realities and to pull him out of his dark inner turmoil. But at
the end, just as Max believes he is getting through to Bigger as he could not to the
jury, Bigger laughs in his face. After a lengthy diatribe Max pleads, “’Y-you’ve got to
b-believe in yourself, Bigger,’ [but] his head jerked up in surprise when Bigger
laughed” (428). This laughter resides at the very crux of the book, and is a
continuation of its radically unconventional use that can also be seen in Humboldt’s
Gift. Laughter represents Bigger’s hysteria, the bubbling hot water that arose out of
a sickeningly imbalanced society. Bigger laughs at Max because merely
understanding the issue is insufficient and does nothing to cure the central causes of
his mentality: Endemic racism and separation. The novel closes by lingering on
Bigger’s bitter smile, which demonstrates that as long as the society remains racist,
this ‘Native Son’ will keep on laughing.
“‘Jesus,’ he breathed. ‘I laughed so hard I cried.’“
-Richard Wright, Native Son
Both of these authors effectively utilize laughter as a way to investigate
mental deterioration and weakness, so it is fascinating in contrast to discuss how
each employs crying. In Humboldt’s Gift, the juxtaposition is obvious as Citrine
continually refers to tears as a sign of mental strength. Referring to Demmie’s
sleeping moans, Citrine states, “When she cried, you not only pitied her, you
respected her strength of soul” (Bellow 29). For Citrine, expressions of grief carry
with them genuine authenticity, a treasured thing in his spiritual world. Later,
Citrine’s good friend George declares, “a man in his fifties who can break up and cry
over a girl is a man I respect” (191). Tears are not only genuine but they are
youthful and vital, counter to the aged detachment and sensitivity that are evoked
when Citrine laughs.
Instances of crying in Native Son provide more conventional insights, which
in some ways accentuates the unique and unfamiliar nature of laughter in the novel.
Most of the crying results from distress over Bigger’s violent actions, starting with
Gus. When Bigger makes him lick a knife, Gus bursts into tears (Wright 40). Bessie,
another one of Bigger’s victims, is also often tearful. Crying represents genuine fear,
sadness, and suffering in the novel. However, unlike Humboldt’s Gift, tears represent
mental fragility rather than strength. Both books take unusual positions regarding
laughter, and understanding the nature of crying assists in contrasting and
sharpening those positions.
Laughter is the string that winds throughout theses novels, eventually
binding two drastically different settings tightly together. Both are really about
personal battles to maintain sanity, and in these skirmishes laughter is the warped
weapon of hysteria. Citrine’s laughter portrays sensitivity and detachment, but by
the end he manages to escape the footprints laid so ominously by Humboldt.
Unfortunately, Humboldt and Bigger succumb to the hysteria their damaged
laughter represents, leading inevitably to their demise. The novels are connected by
their reliance on laughter to demonstrate a sloping decline towards paranoia and
rage, bridging milder sensitivity with themes of loneliness and death,
Broken laughter evokes itself in many forms: Silent; Panting; Laughter that
disappears into the bat range; Nervous laughter; Laughter that begins softly,
tensely; Laughter that is hard and loud; Embarrassed laughter; Laughter that
bubbles up and out like boiling water; The laughter of isolation; The laughter of
doubt; The laughter of fear; the laughter of rage; the laughter of death. In Humboldt’s
Gift and Native Son, laughter is explored unconventionally as both a symptom and a
sign of mental decay. Using laughter to represent weakness rather than strength,
illness rather than health, Bellow and Wright are able to illustrate characters that
are complex and meaningful within the context of their stories.
Works Cited
Bellow, Saul. Humboldt’s Gift. New York: Penguin Group, 1973. Print.
Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York: HarperCollins, 1940. Print.