A Voiceless Trumpeter

El­wyn Brooks “E. B.” White was an Amer­ican writer, con­trib­utor to “The New Yorker” magazine and a co-au­thor of the Eng­lish lan­guage style guide The Ele­ments of Style, which is com­monly known as “Strunk & White”. He also wrote books for chil­dren, in­clud­ing Stu­art Little (1945), Charlotte’s Web (1952), and The Trum­pet of the Swan (1970). (cf. Mit­gang, “E. B. White…..”). Nowhere is the author’s love of the nat­ural world, es­pe­cially its an­im­als, more evid­ent than in the char­ac­ters that pop­u­late these three books.

Stu­art Little the mouse-boy, Wil­bur the pig, Char­lotte the spider, and Louis the swan are so fully real­ized, with their stor­ies so beau­ti­fully mix­ing real­ism and fantasy, that they have be­come pil­lars of children’s lit­er­at­ure. These cre­ations are really ap­peal­ing due to their au­then­tic an­imal be­ha­vior and vivid de­scrip­tions of the nat­ural set­tings the char­ac­ters in­habit: Stuart’s road trip through rural New Eng­land, the Zuckerman’s farm and Louis’s Ca­na­dian wil­der­ness. White’s tale of a wild trum­peter swan born without a voice cel­eb­rates his love of wild­life and the out­doors. These ideal­ized de­pic­tions serve as a por­trayal of sim­pler life­style and a closer con­nec­tion between an­im­als and humans. 

One of the most dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures of E. B. White’s children’s stor­ies is de­scrip­tion. Through it, the au­thor in­teg­rates what he con­siders es­sen­tial in writ­ing for chil­dren, trans­mit­ting hon­est and ac­cur­ate in­form­a­tion through simple lan­guage and over­whelm­ing de­tail (Ryan, “An Ex­am­in­a­tion…”). In each book, in some way, White also de­scribes death. How­ever, he re­tained the mouse child, the dy­ing heroine, and the de­fect­ive trum­peter in his books, be­liev­ing that chil­dren “ac­cept, al­most without ques­tion, any­thing you present them with, as long as it is presen­ted hon­estly, fear­lessly, and clearly,” and that they must be ex­posed to more than “life neatly pack­aged.” (Plimp­ton, “The Art of the Essay…”)

In The Trum­pet of the Swan, the de­scrip­tions of the trum­peters, their nest­ing and mi­grat­ory habits, and their sounds and be­ha­vi­ors are all ac­cur­ate: “the fe­male reached for grasses, for moss, for twigs-any­thing that was handy. Slowly, care­fully, she built up the nest un­til she was sit­ting on a big grassy mound. She worked at the task for a couple of hours…” (White, 14) Al­though the lan­guage of White’s de­scrip­tions is simple, it is ex­tremely spe­cific. Noth­ing is too in­sig­ni­fic­ant to be men­tioned: Sam cla­ri­fies that Louis holds ex­actly “four thou­sand six hun­dred and ninety-one dol­lars and sixty-five cents” (White, 177). Though all of White’s de­scrip­tions are de­tailed and clear, his most strik­ing ones are of simple scenes in nature. Us­ing lan­guage that is simple and spe­cific, White de­picts the world he loves. He beau­ti­fully ex­plains the sea­sonal change from winter to spring: “but one day a change came over the woods and the pond. Warm air, soft and kind, blew through the trees. The ice, which had softened dur­ing the night, began to melt. Patches of open wa­ter ap­peared. All the creatures that lived in the pond and in the woods were glad to feel the warmth. They heard and felt the breath of spring, and they stirred with new life and hope. There was a good, new smell in the air, a smell of earth wak­ing after its long sleep. The frog, bur­ied in the mud, at the bot­tom of the pond, knew that spring was here”. (White, 7)

The Trum­pet of the Swan also hon­ors body dif­fer­ence where the prot­ag­on­ist takes a longer jour­ney to self-ac­cept­ance. Louis the Trum­peter Swan has been born with a dis­ab­il­ity: un­like other Trum­peter Swans, he is mute. As he ages, how­ever, this be­comes a prob­lem: without a voice, he can’t com­mu­nic­ate. And so, he and his father turn to other solu­tions, in­clud­ing the search for a spe­cial in­stru­ment.

The story ac­tu­ally opens not with Louis, but with Sam, an el­even-year-old boy with a fas­cin­a­tion for nature, and a tend­ency to end the day by writ­ing brief journal entries that end with a ques­tion that he thinks about as he goes to sleep. While ex­plor­ing, Sam en­coun­ters two Trum­peter Swans guard­ing their nest, and is for­tu­nate enough to watch the little eggs hatch. It turns out to be a lucky en­counter for Louis, as well, since he now has a hu­man con­tact he can ask for help when he real­izes he has no way to com­mu­nic­ate with his fel­low swans. Any­way, as a res­ult of all this, Louis does learn to read and write; and the book also gives us a few light hearted maths les­sons sug­gest­ing that E.B. White had ser­i­ous con­cerns about how maths is taught in school: the stu­dents all ob­ject to the word prob­lems they are given for com­pletely prac­tical reas­ons, and the math teach­ers, sur­pris­ingly, agree. (Ness, “Over­com­ing Si­lence.….”) Un­for­tu­nately, Louis’ new skill only al­lows him to talk to hu­mans. It doesn’t al­low him to talk to swans. Louis’ father sees that his son is look­ing for the lovely young swan Ser­ena and de­cides he can only do one thing for his son: steal a trum­pet. The trum­pet does al­low Louis to fi­nally sing with swans and gain Serena’s love. But, since the trum­pet was stolen, it also gives Louis and his father a ma­jor guilt.

The de­scrip­tion of Louis’ si­lence as a de­form­ity sug­gests a stigma, as de­scribed by Erving Goff­man in Stigma: Notes on the Man­age­ment of Spoiled Iden­tity, “he is thus re­duced in our minds from a whole and usual per­son to a tain­ted, dis­coun­ted one. Such an at­trib­ute is a stigma, es­pe­cially when its dis­cred­it­ing ef­fect is very extensive”.(3)  Goff­man sug­gests that the stig­mat­ized in­di­vidual will find so­cial in­ter­ac­tions to be dif­fi­cult en­coun­ters; nor­mal people will find these in­ter­ac­tions dif­fi­cult as well:

We will feel that the stig­mat­ized in­di­vidual is either too ag­gress­ive or too shame­faced, and in either case too ready to read un­in­ten­ded mean­ings into our ac­tions. We ourselves may feel that if we show dir­ect sym­path­etic con­cern for his con­di­tion, we may be over­step­ping ourselves; and yet if we ac­tu­ally for­get that he has a fail­ing we are likely to make im­possible de­mands of him or un­think­ingly slight his fel­low-suf­fer­ers. (138)

This is the case of our hero, Louis, who is dis­cred­ited; he real­izes that he is dif­fer­ent and his dis­ab­il­ity is known by others.

In the be­gin­ning of the book Louis sees him­self as im­per­fect and this scares him. Be­cause of this phys­ical dif­fer­ence, he places bad la­bels on him­self. For ex­ample, when he learns to fly his hap­pi­ness is not com­plete be­cause he thinks “I may be de­fect­ive, but at least I can fly”. (White, 60) This is very sad, and it may re­flect a child’s in­tern­al­iz­a­tion of his/her dis­ab­il­ity as a de­fect. Maybe the au­thor used this pe­jor­at­ive lan­guage in or­der to chal­lenge self-la­beling in children. 

Louis’ prob­lem of si­lence makes him unique and power­ful. He learns to fly sooner than his sib­lings do, after some pres­sure that he will fail and be left be­hind to starve. From the point in the book that he learns to fly, he has no other phys­ical dif­fi­culty. He gains a voice through a trum­pet his father steals and presents to him. Louis does not ap­prove of his father theft and is clear in the book that no one from the swans’ fam­ily ap­proves of it either. (Brown, 42) How­ever, Louis makes a lot of ef­forts with the new device and fi­nally learns how to use it. The in­stru­ment has an­other func­tion in the novel: the trum­peter is able to per­form in front of the hu­mans so that he can earn money and make resti­tu­tion for his father’s guilt. The trum­pet be­comes a sym­bolic device since it gives Louis self-worth once he be­comes very tal­en­ted at play­ing it. The trum­pet will also func­tion for Louis dur­ing mat­ing time, as a sub­sti­tute for the swan’s reg­u­lar call. The in­stru­ment has an en­tirely pos­it­ive ef­fect on Louis’ life and self-im­age. Dis­ab­il­ity is never an eco­nomic li­ab­il­ity for Louis: he makes more money than he can use. (Brown, 43) 

Louis must enter the hu­man world for one reason: to make money and pay for the stolen trum­pet. His goal leads to pos­it­ive ex­per­i­ences. His first step is to at­tend school: “I will learn to read and write … per­haps … Sam will let me go to school with him, and the teacher will show me how to write”. (White, 63) Louis learns to write in Eng­lish, on a slate, us­ing his bill. This scene il­lus­trates a ma­jor shift in the novel. Louis wishes to be ac­cep­ted by hu­mans, but any pre­ju­dice he en­coun­ters is not be­cause he is si­lent, but be­cause he is an an­imal and can’t use his hands. Sam is prac­tical and helps him over­come this pre­ju­dice us­ing ad­equate writ­ing equip­ment. Thus, the trum­peter swan is in­teg­rated in a reg­u­lar classroom.

The slate is used ex­clus­ively in the hu­man world. It al­lows Louis to com­mu­nic­ate with em­ploy­ers re­gard­ing the terms of his jobs and pay­ment. How­ever, the slate is not meant to be used in the world of the swans. He tries out the slate with his fam­ily, once. The swans do not un­der­stand this greet­ing: “the cygnets stared at it. They just stared and stared. Words on a slate meant noth­ing to them … Louis’ at­tempt to greet his fam­ily was a fail­ure”. (White, 82)

Louis’s tal­ent as a mu­si­cian is a key pos­it­ive as­pect of his iden­tity. His self-im­age changes be­cause of the em­ploy­ment, and he never refers to him­self as “de­formed” while play­ing the trum­pet. Louis’ entry into the work­ing world, via his trum­pet play­ing and slate, are as sur­pris­ing and en­cour­aging as Stu­art Little’s. Louis is seen as an odd per­son, but he is soon re­spec­ted as an ex­cel­lent player, and en­joys play­ing: “he loved the sound of his own trum­pet”. (White, 130) Louis is phys­ic­ally dif­fer­ent but em­ploy­able; he never lacks work and al­though he is hired be­cause he is a swan, he be­comes pop­u­lar be­cause he is tal­en­ted. His audi­ence and em­ploy­ers al­ways treat him with re­spect; he never feels ex­ploited. He makes good money and ne­go­ti­ates time off and good liv­ing con­di­tions (in the hotel). Play­ing the trum­pet in clubs is not his goal for life, but he is never miserable. 

In the end of the book, Louis is able to leave the world of per­form­ing for money (he plays later, but only for en­joy­ment). He earns enough money to pay back the mu­sic shop for the stolen trumpet.

Sam in­teg­rates Louis into the hu­man classroom, gain­ing the teacher’s sym­pathy without la­beling Louis, simply stat­ing to the teacher that Louis needs to learn Eng­lish be­cause “he can’t say ko-hoh the way other swans can, and this puts him at a ter­rible dis­ad­vant­age”. (White, 70) Louis does won­der if “a young swan would be ac­cep­ted in a classroom full of chil­dren”. (White, 63) Only the teacher ob­jects, but Sam con­vinces her to ac­cept Louis into the hu­man school and “the first-graders cheer”. (White, 71) Nev­er­the­less no one ever for­gets that Louis is a swan; he moves between the swan and hu­man world and func­tions well in both, but it is clear that the two worlds never intersect.

Louis’ first en­counter with an act­ive em­ploy­ment is de­scribed in very pos­it­ive lan­guage. Sam takes him to his sum­mer camp, Camp Kookooskoos, to work as a bu­gler. The camp coun­selor in­tro­duces Louis to the other chil­dren in a pos­it­ive way: “we are lucky to have him … he is gentle and has a speech de­fect.… Louis is a mu­si­cian. Like most mu­si­cians, he is in need of money”. (White, 113) The coun­selor re­in­forces the strength of Louis as well: “I cau­tion you to treat him as an equal and to treat him with re­spect, he packs a ter­rific wal­lop with one of those wings”. (White, 114) The pre­ju­dice ex­pressed about Louis be­cause he is a bird is for­got­ten when he saves the life of a child who was drown­ing. The head coun­selor praises him, “he is our most dis­tin­guished coun­selor, a great trum­pet player, a great bird, a power­ful swim­mer, and a fine friend”. (White, 131 ) Louis’ im­age is pos­it­ive among hu­mans, “Louis’ fame was grow­ing”. (White, 133) 

Louis’ job at the camp ends, but his work­ing ca­reer is just start­ing. In search­ing fur­ther em­ploy­ment, he asks Sam for help and Sam has a great sug­ges­tion, “Sam sat down on his bed and thought for a while. Then he said, ‘Go to Bo­ston. Maybe you can get a job with the Swan Boat’”. (White, 136). He does this, by ap­proach­ing the man in charge and writ­ing on his slate: “have trum­pet. Need work”. (White, 142) 

Sur­pris­ingly, Louis’ tal­ent is used to cre­ate comic ef­fect in or­der to jus­tify his ac­cept­ance by hu­mans. There is no ref­er­ence to “de­form­ity” in the hu­man world to­wards Louis. Sev­eral people ini­tially ob­ject to Louis’ pres­ence in the hu­man world be­cause he is a swan, but later they ob­ject to him be­cause he is a mu­si­cian. The in­ter­ac­tion among Louis, a hotel keeper and Louis’ man­ager, when Louis at­tempts to ob­tain a hotel room, is amus­ing: “will he mess the room all up? Act­ors are bad enough. Mu­si­cians are worse”. (White, 156) Louis as­sures the hotel keeper that he will not act as a mu­si­cian, but as a po­lite swan. 

Louis has a pos­it­ive re­la­tion­ship with his hu­man em­ploy­ers. He is ini­tially hired to play on a swan boat (a boat shaped like a swan) that trans­ports people across a pond. The owner of the boat doesn’t con­sider Louis’ skill so much as the nov­elty of a swan play­ing mu­sic on a boat. The hu­mans en­joy the mu­sic but they are also amazed by the spec­tacle of a swan play­ing a trum­pet. Louis is aware that he is ini­tially a spec­tacle for people. Play­ing the trum­pet in clubs is not his long-term goal for life, but he is never mis­treated or miserable.

In the end of the novel Louis is able to leave the world of singing for money. He earns enough to pay back for the stolen trum­pet but he never won­ders about giv­ing back the in­stru­ment too. Louis re­turns to the lake and the swans, and at­tracts a mate with his trum­pet: “she suc­cumbed com­pletely to this charmer, this hand­some mu­si­cian”. (White, 196) His goal of at­tract­ing a mate is at least as im­port­ant as pay­ing for his father’s debt. The trum­pet has a ma­jor role in the mat­ing pro­cess. How­ever, Louis’ love leads to an im­port­ant con­flict; once he finds a mate, he is able to leave the hu­man world and re­turn to the pond, but hu­mans don’t let them go. People want them both stay in the re­ser­va­tion be­cause two swans and their chil­dren would at­tract many vis­it­ors. When people want to cut off Serena’s feath­ers, Louis’ re­ac­tion re­minds that he is in power of his des­tiny and fu­ture: “this is my mo­ment … Nobody is go­ing to clip my Love’s wings when I’m around”. (White, 200) So, he de­cides to fight for this: “Louis beat him over the head with his wings, strik­ing ter­rific blows”. (White, 202) 

He uses his slate and his trum­pet to ar­gue with the Head Man that they must leave. He goes in the Bird House to dis­cuss the is­sue. The Head Man uses a lo­gical ar­gu­ment to con­vince Louis to stay: “if you and Ser­ena stay here, you’ll be safe. You’ll have no en­emies … What more could a young cob ask?” “Free­dom”, replied Louis on his slate. “Safety is all well and good: I prefer free­dom”. (White, 206) Al­though the Pre­serve is a safe and pleas­ant place for a swan, Louis prefers to re­turn to his ori­gin and, as a con­sequence, he asks one more time for Sam’s help. Sam, of course, un­der­stands and sym­path­izes with Louis’s wish: “Sam knew how Louis felt about free­dom”. (White, 209) He is the one who comes up with an in­ter­est­ing com­prom­ise. He tells Louis, “in every fam­ily of cygnets, there is al­ways one that needs spe­cial care and pro­tec­tion”. (White, 210) He con­vinces Louis to give the Pre­serve one of these cygnets on occasion. 

In the end, Louis is able to live a life just as he wants, not as a de­formed swan with no fu­ture, but as he chooses a free and in­de­pend­ent life. Louis is still voice­less, but he had done many ad­apt­a­tions that work very well for him. He is a kind of hero who over­comes dis­ab­il­ity since he makes changes in the en­vir­on­ment and chooses the life he wants for him­self. He struggles to find a way to com­mu­nic­ate, to find a job that im­proves a tal­ent that seems to be in­born, makes a de­cision to find a mate and have a fam­ily; all these lead to a strong self-im­age. Fi­nally, hu­mans and swans come to re­spect his dif­fer­ences and choices. 

A story of ac­cept­ance and of choos­ing kind­ness, it man­ages to cap­tiv­ate young read­ers and to make won­der about what it is like be­ing dif­fer­ent; it helps chil­dren un­der­stand dif­fer­ences and ac­cept them in their lives. I def­in­itely be­lieve that the novel rep­res­ents a great way of in­tro­du­cing chil­dren to this is­sue and to get them to talk about it, and to make them ask them­selves ques­tions about how they would re­act in such situations.

Apart from the mes­sage to choose kind­ness that the au­thor con­veys through the novel, there are also some is­sues that are worth men­tion­ing, such as dis­crim­in­a­tion and ableism. It is im­port­ant that chil­dren be fa­mil­iar with all these con­cepts in or­der to learn how to re­act when hav­ing to deal with such problems.

Works Cited

Mit­gang, Her­bet. “E.B.White, Es­say­sit and Styl­ist Dies”. The New York Times, 25 nov. 2012. Web. [12 Feb­ru­ary 2016]

Ness, Mari. “Over­com­ing Si­lence: The Trum­pet of the Swan”, 6 nov. 2014. Web. [23 April 2016]

White, E.B. The Trum­pet of the Swan. New York: Harper, 1970. Print

Goff­man, Erving. “Stigma and So­cial Iden­tity”. Davis, Le­onnard J. (ed.) The Dis­ab­il­ity Stud­ies Reader. Second Edi­tion. New York: Rout­ledge, 2006. Print

Brown, Amelina. A Fear­some Pos­sib­il­ity: The Dis­abled Body in the Children’s Novel. San Mar­cos: Cali­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity, 2008. Print

Plimp­ton, George and Frank H. Crowther. E.B.White: The Art of the Es­say, No.1,Paris, 1969. Web. [12 Decem­ber 2019]

Ryan, Mari­anne. An Ex­am­in­a­tion of Style in the Children’s Books of E.B.White. Iowa State Uni­ver­sity, 1983. Web. [11 Decem­ber 2019]

Anca Rad