Help Me Suspend My Disbelief?

September 17, 2013 9:04 AM

So, I'm listening to Jody Piccoult's The Storyteller, which has a number of incredible elements although the very real events of the Holocaust in Poland lie at the center of it. And she has a narrator relate that the night after his wife's transport from the Lodz ghetto, her husband's hair turns entirely white. From grief, not washing out hair dye. But isn't that actually impossible? I can't believe this is a Real Thing.
posted by bearwife to Writing & Language (15 answers total)

Best answer: One possibility: "If someone has salt-and-pepper hair – a mixture of gray and black – and they develop alopecia areata, the dark hairs can fall out quickly," Dr. Orentreich says. "So it appears that they've gone gray overnight."
posted by rada at 9:09 AM on September 17, 2013 [5 favorites]

Yeah, it's impossible. It IS apparently possible for someone's hair to lose pigment at the follicle due to stress, but it would still need to grow out. It's poetic license.
posted by KathrynT at 9:09 AM on September 17, 2013

I think it is a very real thing. I read a report of a Syrian child who lost his parents in the war. He has patches of white hair caused by stress.
posted by Fairchild at 9:12 AM on September 17, 2013

Best answer: It's dramatic license.
posted by canine epigram at 9:14 AM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yes, I think it would be impossible to happen overnight. Here is article I referenced above: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/opinion/syria-million-child-refugees-mercy-corps/index.html
posted by Fairchild at 9:19 AM on September 17, 2013

I know for sure your hair can turn white from stress, and can revert to its original color later. I have seen it occur. It did not occur overnight however.
posted by jcworth at 9:38 AM on September 17, 2013

On a small scale, this happened to me. I went through a very traumatic event in my early twenties and within a week I had several grey hairs - I'd never had any before and have barely found half a dozen since*.

If the trauma was more acute, if I was older... who knows.


*And believe me, my partner looks hard, because I'm older than him and he loves to tease me. He sure didn't tease me about those first ones though.
posted by greenish at 9:48 AM on September 17, 2013

Best answer: It may or may not be possible for x to happen in real life, but it is certainly possible for a narrator -- in real life or in a fictional setting -- to relate that x happened. When I bump up against something like you're talking about, I consider whether I'm supposed to believe it "really happened" in the fictional world, whether I'm supposed to believe the narrator is supposed to believe it really happened, or whether I'm supposed to look at the narrator in a certain light based on what he's recounting.

Although it's a very meta way to look at it, for me, it doesn't so much take me out of the story as help me put flesh on the bones of the characters.

The last possibility I consider is whether the author is just sloppy, although that *is* a possibility. And if that seems to be the case considering my experience with the author -- have I run into sloppy writing elsewhere in the book? -- I decide whether to forgive it and plow on, or drop the book for something that I might enjoy more.
posted by Infinity_8 at 9:55 AM on September 17, 2013 [5 favorites]

When I was about 13 I got hit by lightning, though not on the head. The next day there was a 1" square patch of white hair at the very front and center of my head. This change is clearly documented in all our childhood photos and school pictures.

In the years that followed I noticed when I got a tan that the forehead in front of the white hairs didn't tan, and appeared to not have pigment in it.

As I aged (34 now), the white hairs eventually were replaced by brown ones, and my forehead's pigment seemed to even out. I can't remember the timeline, but I think the white hair was mostly gone by my mid-20s.

I know it seems medically/scientifically impossible, but I swear it happened. I did not have any white hair at the time, so it wasn't like brown hair just fell out.

Therefore, I think it's not totally impossible.
posted by MonsieurBon at 10:23 AM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I think Inifinity_8 has it. My mom would tell the story this way even if what actually happened was that the hair turned white over the next few weeks or months.
posted by Area Man at 10:24 AM on September 17, 2013

A person's hair can turn white or gray from stress or traumatic experiences. It's more likely to be experienced as an increase in the number of white hairs, as opposed to every hair turning white.

However, a person's hair cannot change color from stress overnight. It might happen as a result of some physical occurrence (being struck by lightning, as MonsieurBon notes), but there is no biological mechanism by which grown hair changes color solely due to stress. Even in cases where a person's hair does change color, it does so by growing in that way.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 10:52 AM on September 17, 2013

Best answer: Sudden whitening of the hair: an historical fiction?
posted by latkes at 11:46 AM on September 17, 2013

If the gentleman had a short haircut as was common in the day, and had his hair turn white from stress it would only take a month for it to grow half an inch (1.25cm) he gets a trim and bam the brown end bits of the hair are gone and his hair looks white. But mostly it's poetic licence.
posted by wwax at 12:11 PM on September 17, 2013

My grandmother once told me that her brother was in the war and his hair turned white after a particularly harrowing experience. I don't know if this was overnight or if his hair went back to its original colour afterwards (I never met him and can't remember pictures of him at the moment), but definitely stress/trauma could cause a rapid change of hair colour.
posted by pised at 2:08 PM on September 17, 2013

@jcworth: and can revert to its original color later

Are you sure?
posted by devnull at 1:10 AM on September 18, 2013