Deafness in Brian Selznick’s “Wonderstruck”

Disclaimer: I am not deaf, nor am I particularly involved in the Deaf community. This comes from an outsider’s perspective, as do many of my posts. My perspective may not reflect the opinions of others, and I will definitely have room to learn.

Wonderstruck is a 2011 “novel in words and pictures” about two deaf children, Ben and Rose, with their stories taking place fifty years apart. Rose’s story is told in pictures and Ben’s in words.

Brian Selznick is hearing. His brother was born deaf in one ear, but doesn’t personally identify as either deaf or disabled. The idea for a story in pictures was based on Selznick’s realization that, to many deaf people, the world is visual. Since Ben becomes deaf while Rose was born deaf, Ben’s story is in words and Rose’s is visual.

Ben Wilson’s story starts in 1977, and one of the first paragraphs is “What? What? Can’t you hear me? Are you deaf?” This is said by Ben’s cousin Robby, waking him because he was screaming in his sleep. Ben is deaf in one ear and sleeps with his good ear on the pillow to block out noise, which is helpful since his cousin leaves the radio on all night. Ben’s mother died recently and he’s been having nightmares about wolves ever since.

Ben’s partial deafness isn’t glossed over, however temporary the partialness of it is. He covers his good ear for quiet and turns his head to hear better, the same way Selznick’s brother would have. The reader is not allowed to forget that Ben is hard of hearing, but it’s not made particularly significant in the first part.

Rose, living in 1927, appears in visual sections that alternate with Ben’s written ones. Her first part gives no indication that she is deaf, but there is no noticeable dialogue and, as Selznick intended, the visual format gives it a feeling of silence. A tutor arrives at her house and she runs out, holding a piece of paper with the words “Help me,” which she folds into a paper boat and sends down a waterway.

Ben runs to his and his mother’s old home during a storm, having seen a light inside. He discovers a book called Wonderstruck about the history of museums. In it is a bookmark with a note addressed to his mother from someone named Daniel, with a phone number under it. Hoping that Daniel is his father, who he never met, Ben calls the phone number.

He wakes up smelling something burning. He thinks the storm has stopped because he can’t hear anything, but when he looks outside, it’s still raining. When we come to him again, he’s in a hospital room. His aunt Jenny gives him a note saying the house was struck by lightning. He’s lost his hearing completely.

Rose returns to her room through the window, soaked with rain, and sees a book on her bed: Teaching the Deaf to Lip-Read and Speak. The introduction leaves a lot to be desired.

“In this volume we will discuss how best to teach the deaf child to communicate. We must remember that spoken language berings a child more closely into contact with the world. A deaf person who cannot lip-read or speak has only one means of communication with the world – pencil and pad. […] In the uneducated deaf-mute we see the mind confined within a prison. He knows nothing of the touching power of the human voice.”

Rose cuts up the pages and makes them into paper buildings.

Neither of their stories are about them learning to accept their deafness. It affects how they interact with the world, but it’s not their driving factor or the source of plot development. Rose is escaping a neglectful home and trying to gain the affections of her actress mother, and Ben wants closure about his parents and to know the family he never met. These aren’t goals unique to deaf people.

Ben forgets why it’s so quiet. He forgets that he can’t hear; new places are overwhelming and there are many things to draw his attention. He tries to imagine the noise but all he can hear is David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” his mother’s favorite song.

When Rose reaches her mother, she’s scolded for leaving home. Her mom writes that she promised she would visit next month and that it’s “too dangerous for a deaf girl to be outside alone.” Rose responds that anyone could be hit by a car or kidnapped, the examples given, but her mother doesn’t write anything else about that, instead writing that she has to get back to work and someone else will take Rose home. Despite her daughter’s obvious desperation, she’s unwilling to change her routine or to respect Rose.

Unlike Rose, Ben isn’t used to navigating a silent world, but he manages. Someone pulls him just out of the way of a car, but it’s not specified if he didn’t realize there was a car because he couldn’t hear it or because there’s so much happening. He holds the bookmark out to a woman as a way of asking for directions and follows the way she gestures. He tries to talk to the woman at the address but struggles to understand any of what she’s communicating. When he misinterprets a question in his struggle to lip-read, she shuts the door on him. We learn that Ben used to practice lip-reading but struggled beyond understanding the simplest words.

In the Museum of Natural History, Ben meets a boy named Jamie, who writes in a notebook to ask if he’s deaf, since he didn’t seem to understand anything Jamie said. Jamie finger-spells something, but Ben hasn’t learned sign and doesn’t understand what he’s doing. They manage to talk, Jamie mostly writing or using gestures and Ben speaking out loud or using signs in the museum. Sitting in a small room that Jamie leads them to, Ben begins to learn the alphabet. The two bond over Ben’s museum box, a collection of items he’s saved in a box with a wolf carved on the outside, and at the end of the day, Jamie gives him instructions for if he wants to stay the night in the museum.

It’s difficult to describe Rose’s story in words. Maybe that’s part of the point of the images. We see what happens, we see her emotions, but nothing is put into words. Ben and Rose both spend the second part of the book mostly in the museum. Their stories parallel each other in many ways, and some of what I describe happening to Ben simultaneously happens to Rose.

The next day, Jamie puts on a record and Ben puts his hand on the speaker and feels the music. Rose’s brother Walter sees her in the museum and takes her to his office. Ben finds records of Daniel in the museum but again struggles to communicate with the staff, only being able to tell that they don’t know who he’s asking about.

After a fight with Jamie, Ben runs to where the store Daniel was connected to had relocated to. A woman he’d seen in the museum – Rose – and the man behind the counter – Walter – are signing to each other. The man is hearing and the woman is deaf. The man speaks to Ben and switches to sign when he says he can’t hear. Ben has to clarify that he doesn’t know sign either and the man uses a notebook.

Walter helped Rose find a boarding school for deaf children. They were still taught to lip-read and speak, but the other students taught her to sign. She met her husband Bill there and he went on to work at a printing press, which many deaf boys did because they weren’t bothered by the noise. Rose worked making exhibits at the museum. Bill had become deaf at nine due to an illness, and his parents struggled with having a deaf child. Their parents disapproved of their marriage, especially worried they would pass their deafness on to their children. Danny, their son, was hearing, and with help from friends, the radio, and their parents, he learned to speak.

“Even though he could hear, I don’t think it was easy for Danny. In many ways he ended up in the same position Bill and I were in growing up. We were so different from our parents. But Danny became a child of two worlds, the hearing and the Deaf. He could sign so beautifully, better than many deaf people.”

Elaine, Ben’s mother, learned some sign from Danny and at his memorial service, she used it to talk to Rose.

Jamie arrives in the Queens Museum of Art and Rose asks, in writing, who he is. Ben replies, finger-spelling, in full-page art, “My friend.” And, god, it’s such a sweet moment. The book is really sweet, and it has the added benefit of not being meant to inspire the reader. It’s more of a celebration of deafness than anything.

The original inspiration for Wonderstruck was the documentary Through Deaf Eyes, particularly a part about “cinema and the new technology of sound,” which plays into the narrative through Rose’s story. The acknowledgements also includes multiple paragraphs about how Selznick went about learning about deaf experiences and Deaf culture, and the selected bibliography at the end recommends meany books on the subjects.

I highly recommend the book. As a kid, I was hesitant to read it since it’s so large, not realizing how short it really is, but I loved it as soon as I did. From my perspective, it handles its subjects very well. The art is beautiful and the writing works very well. Brian Selznick’s other books, The Invention of Hugo Cabret and The Marvels are also well worth a read.