I was visiting my parents over the holidays and we watched this. My mom kept saying, "oh that poor little mute boy..." My dad said, "naww, he can talk, he's just too scared to."
"No he can't, he's a mute."
I tend to agree with my dad, Caleb could talk, but was so traumatized after watching his family get butchered, he'd probably need years of psychotherapy these days. But back then, all he gets is, "Stop that, boy."
I think it's pretty clear that the Indian attack on the family whose aftermath Johnson comes upon was horrifying enough to drive the mother crazy and the young boy mute. Though I've never bought into the notion that a stressful or traumatic event (unless of course the vocal cords had been damaged) would cause someone to be mute for very long - maybe minutes but not days and days or permanently. It's still possible I guess that the boy was mute before the attack - we just don't know it's never brought up in the story as far as I can recall.
shareI think he would have eventually talked if it were important to the story. It's enough to know that the encounter traumatized him enough to make him completely non-communicative.
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What's he going to say, anyway.."Gee I'm having a blast in the middle of f ucken NOWHERE!!!
I had a fish named Sam he lived in a bowl........
I worked with a lady who suffered from what I remember to be diagnosed ad 'catatonic depression'. She never talked again whoever, she wasn't interested in anything - period. No one in the family could point to a 'trigger' (so they claimed) and I had no business pushing the issue so that angle was dropped.
Maybe they just got the depiction wrong in the movie and the real kid was much less all responsive all around. This poor woman certainly wouldn't have been up for playing field hockey thats for sure. She seemed to get no enjoyment from anything. I temporarily lost my ability to speak for about a half an hour once shortly after finding out my best friend was killed in an accident. Words just would not come out even though I was still 'thinking'. It felt almost like when you try to take a breath after having the wind knocked out of you.
The mother didn't speak either although she was apparently able to care for herself - maybe the kid thought 'silence' was normal - we don't know how old he was the father/siblings were killed. If he had been a toddler, he wouldn't have had anyone to teach him how to speak but he would have at least made guteral sounds if his vocal chords/muscles were in tact.Then again, its a movie. They probably didn't spend too much time thinking out how accurate this part would be - assuming most people would just presume it had something to do with the trauma of having witnessed his family members murdered. And they certainly didn't anticipate internet forums back in '72 for people to discuss/question their movies in detail. Who knew ? :-)
I think the apparent eagerness of the "crazy woman" to unload the child on Johnson was an indication that he was aphasic all along, maybe from birth. Pioneers struggling to survive in the wilderness took a cruelly pragmatic view of "defective" offspring. Plus, she probably knew she wasn't going to last much longer in any case.
shareCaleb was neither deaf nor mute. At least once in the movie he is clearly shown muttering to himself when we see his lips moving properly as a normal person.
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