In response to various Denis Johnson’s “Jesus’ Son” excerpts
Dundun
Dundun’s revelation comes when he realizes McInnes dies. His demeanor on the situation shifts from his unique brand of caring into disgust when he dies as he says to throw him out of the car. He later thinks about being a hitman, suggesting he was somewhat proud of what he had done. I think the main character’s revelation comes when Dundun mentions being a hitman. He recollects his history with Dundun and tries to justify his actions, but this moment brings upon the revelation that he has been lying to himself. Despite Dundun’s simple nature, he is still a hazard to himself and the people around him so, evil or not, he shouldn’t be allowed to run around causing problems. He tries to confirm to the reader that Dundun was not all bad, but I feel this is only said in an attempt to protect him from receiving a strong punishment than what he had received of being in jail.
The main character is dependent on Dundun and his group for opium, so his actions are motivated by keeping face and friendliness with his drug suppliers. Meanwhile, Dundun seems to have no motivations. Perhaps it’s his “faulty wiring,” but it seemed like his actions, despite their severity and the fact that they were the conflict of the plot, were of no importance to him. He simply went from moment to moment as though he had just walked in the door to every scene, completely oblivious to the depth of the situations around him. His only need seems to be to make it into that next moment.
Johnson allowed the men to be revealed by their actions in a “show, don’t tell” strategy. We only had each man’s reactions to the events around them to base their characters on. There isn’t much for physical description outside of their clothes which I found interesting. The reader really has to base their assumptions of their appearance based off of their actions as well. All the characters seemed to be one form or another of Iowa druggies and all presumably used or had used before. The main character seemed to have some sort of connection to Dundun as though Dundun was dependent on him to help him out of other binds in the past. Despite his search for opium, the main character seemed the most responsible of the bunch, and Dundun seemed like a child they all had a part in keeping track of. The wonderful thing about this story is that all of these assumptions are just that, assumptions, all based on the interactions between the characters. No proof of their emotional roles in each other’s lives are directly presented, leaving room for reader perception to fill in the blanks. I personally enjoy when this type of freedom is in a story and definitely enjoyed it in this case.
Dirty Wedding
The train gets the most time dedicated to it in the narrative. More often than not, however, the train is a very basic setting. Some descriptions occur, but usually, we have descriptions of the people inside, such as the driver, or the outside passing by, such as the close buildings. About 20% of the text about the train really describes it. The encounters in the train lead to showing the type of train this is, one with drug deals and stops at abortion clinics. The most important element of the train is that it’s the backbone of the rest of the setting, not only in the way a train line would be for a city, but it serves as a transition from one part of the story to another.
The clinic seems more sterile but perhaps equally as uncouth as the train. The only intended stop off the train in the story, the events in the clinic are the main conflict of the rest of it. The picketers outside the building and a description or two make up about 10% of the text about the clinic. The encounters in different rooms with different members of the staff of the clinic set the tone of a typical hospital-like setup, and the narrator’s opinions on these things show his discomfort in such a place. The most important element is, despite the importance of what’s going on at the clinic, the narrator seems to be apathetic, almost disgusted, by the entire concept, giving the reader a similar feeling that makes getting back on the dirty train seem like a relief.
About 10% of the text about the Polish neighborhood is about it. We get to know there is snow, fruit and foreign music, and the laundromat has coin machines and “notices” never explained what about. The setting’s importance in this scene is that it serves as a place for the men from the Polish neighborhood to congregate, allowing the narrator to face a new conflict in his interactions with these men. We primarily receive telling in this setting while the showing is preserved for the interactions between the narrator and the men.
The alley and the Savory Hotel receives more description than any other setting it seems, a good 40% seems to be dedicated to explaining the place in a telling fashion more than showing. The most important element I saw in this setting is how unsettling it was to the narrator. The negative experience showed a frightened side of him that we had yet to see, despite the other awful stuff we as readers have seen so far. This stop being the last seems to be the last part of the day the narrator either remembers or just cares to remember. After this, he jumps to the conclusion of his and Michelle’s relationship, leaving a void in the rest of the evening.
Not much is shown of the party other than there was a lot of people and there was a radio. The latter placed meet-cute of the narrator and John shows what sort of rapport them and Michelle had, possibly being the most important part of this setting. The showing of the gun and John’s abilities to calm a crowd are important to the plot in that he could be dangerous, a possible reason for Michelle to kill herself later on and could also be perceived as more personable than the narrator, a possible motive for Michelle to leave him for John.
We don’t get anything about this kitchen. I think the point of it was to have a place where a table could be between them when Michelle shot at him. Perhaps there’s some importance on it being in the kitchen to say they shared a space together and were, on a good day, copeable with each other. This could also be a callback to the beginning of the story when the narrator sees the peaceful kitchens through the train window and how he would never have that since they didn’t have their child.
Car Crash While Hitchhiking
A major theme in “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” is loneliness. The hitchhiker is alone and sees the varying levels of loneliness in others, whether they too are alone, they have a full family and aren’t alone at all, or they have someone but still feel alone. The family, the ones who aren’t alone, end up becoming that way after the accident when the father dies. All of these lonely people are seen through the perspective of the loneliest of them all, the reader’s window into these people’s lives. When he goes along with the baby after the crash to the truck driver, he makes the first actions in the story that have any consequence to anyone else, and his confusion in what he should do is prominent due to his loneliness. His dependence from another person, that being the family or the people in the other car, is the first he has in the story, and that dependence is the beginning of the ending of his loneliness.
Having someone who needs you, even as indirectly as the family needed him, gives a stake to your actions outside of yourself. Your choices affect others, and that can only happen when you’re no longer alone. When he hears the wife scream later on, he says he’s “gone looking for that feeling everywhere.” I feel Johnson used this final moment of lucidity for the hitchhiker to convey his lack of any sort of genuine human interaction and portrayed the importance of even the feeling of suffering was to him. He also uses this moment to connect the concepts of the hitchhiker’s travels to the theme of loneliness by suggesting this was what he was looking for within them.
Work
An important theme in “Work” is peace, and for the most part, the lack of it. The dream states the narrator finds himself in when seeing beautiful women within his dirty, distraught life give him hope for something better to come along and completely takes him out of his reality. That peace is something folks that look for work the way the narrator does struggle to find. As for the little we get on his background, it seems this search for peace has always been an important aspect in his life. As for the scope of this story, Johnson uses the beautiful women as connections to peace in that the narrator believes finding himself a woman would bring some sort of peace. The story concludes with this when he finds the bartender and subsequently finds that peace he had been looking for at the bottom of a glass. His remembrance of “only her grace and her generosity” showed that he found beauty outside of just the physical and connected with the way he made him feel, that being peaceful, rather than just having a crush on some girl. There was depth to his search for peace and that shines through in that interaction.
