The protagonist of Other Voices, Other Rooms, Joel Knox Harrison, is an orphaned boy who is sent to live with a strange group of semi-family members in the middle of nowhere, after having spent most of his life in New Orleans. This sense of being uprooted really knocks him off balance, and his loneliness pervades the entire novel. He wants very badly to be loved, but he finds himself truly in the middle of nowhere. Other characters, like a hermit named Little Sunshine, just echo the isolation that Joel is beginning to experience.
Questions About Isolation
- Who does Joel trust the most in the novel? Do you think that he makes the right decision?
- What is the effect of the setting on the novel's portrayal of isolation?
- Why do you think that Randolph and Amy choose to live at the Landing instead of in New Orleans?
Chew on This
The characters of Other Voices, Other Rooms live in isolation because of the backward nature of their surroundings.
The characters of Other Voices, Other Rooms are exaggerated examples of the loneliness of the human condition.