In the cemetery where al jolson is buried 7 PDF

Preview

Summary

Essay 7 about the short story of In the cemetery where al jolson is buried...

Description

Gibson 1

Holly Gibson Professor Loretta Rosenburg Writing 200 May 29, 2017 There is No Flow, but Keep Pretending In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried is such an interesting and complex short story. In the first few pages, I wasn’t even sure I was comprehending it. So many split views and jumps in thoughts are happening, and the story starts without any context given. I loved the flow the story gives us, while simultaneously hating every moment of it. It is written so raw, so honest, yet so fluent. It is real. The feelings I had while reading didn’t come until after, when I was still, just trying to process it. The way this story is written reminds me a lot of the book and movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The way the writer jump through thoughts and in how they speak, it feels like a diary entry that is also live. The pure honesty we hear throughout the story and the processing that takes place truly feels real. Similarly to Perks, you feel for this writer, you understand the emotions they are dealing with and you want so badly to step up and be there, to support, and to offer up comfort, even though we ourselves have no solutions. Throughout this story, as I slowly started to comprehend what I was reading, I found I still couldn’t fully grasp what was happening. I had so many questions, just like when you’re watching a movie alone and you so badly want to lean over and ask what is happening but you can’t, because still, you are alone. Why is this girl in the hospital? How old is she? Is her best friend the only person in her life? Where are her parents? Did she end up having a year to live? Why did her best friend have to leave and why was the girl running away? So many questions are left without answers, but does it really matter if we find out? Life doesn’t care. Life isn’t going to wait for us to find an answer, it’ll just keep moving forward, whether we like it or not.

Gibson 2

That’s what I like about this story. There is no beginning and there is no end. Too many questions and not enough time to fully answer them. We don’t always get to know the facts. We are left more often than not wondering. Wondering if we are living fully, or if we are just surviving. Wondering the meaning of our lives and what we are supposed to be doing with our time. We spend so much of life running away from the questions that will never truly have answers, and we are supposed to pretend to be okay with it. Supposed to act “normal”. In the Cemetery has a flow to it unlike most stories. There is a progression in the story that truly has no rhythm, instead continually moves forward. First we hear pointless stories being exchanged back-and-forth with no background as to what they are talking about. Then we find out there is a good and bad doctor and a best friend. Soon after one of them is leaving to the beach and bringing back anything but a magazine subscription, because there is less than a year of life left. This is how the whole story goes on, jumping from scene to scene in a seemingly random fashion but really not at all. It’s not until you finish the story and sit with it are you truly able to process what happened. Someone dies. Unfairly. With some type of incurable disease; probably cancer. A life is over, just like that. And the living are expected to keep moving forward. As the Best Friend thinks about what she remembers, “I noted these gestures as they happened, not in any retrospect—though I don't know why looking back should show us more than looking at.” She doesn’t know what she should share in the retelling. Why does it matter what was, when everyone can see what is? I don’t fully understand that sentence but something about it hits me, and I am comforted by it. In the same way as when Hempel writes, “because anger is stronger than fear”, I like what she is saying. I understand the sentence but it’s not one that I can fully explain just yet. I just know there is truth in it. Amy Hempel writes with a pure honesty unlike any other short story I have yet to read. She writes in the now. She shares truth and rawness and the thoughts we are sometimes afraid to face. When we are scared or sad or broken, all we want to do is run and

Gibson 3

never look back. We don’t want to face the pain, we don’t want to see suffering. We all want everything to be okay in our life. “I twisted my hands in the time-honored fashion of people in pain. I was supposed to offer something. The Best Friend. I could not even offer to come back”, Hempel writes. We are supposed to stay strong for those in pain, we are supposed to be the ones who hold up the suffering and remind them that even when it’s not okay, it will be. But sometimes, we can’t. Even in the knowing, it’s still hard to be strong. It’s hard to be the support when you are all but breaking inside. In the end, the reference of the chimp with the talking hands comes up again. There is death in the chimps story too. The chimp doesn’t understand death any more than we do, but the chimp has an “animal grace” unlike we do. The chimp is “fluent now in the language of grief” as Hempel puts it. I don’t know if that means that the chimp has experienced grief many times. I don’t know if one can ever truly be fluent with grief. It’s too big of a variable. There are once again too many questions and not enough answers. There is too much unknown. And again, we are just expected to push through, move forward, and pretend to understand, pretend to be strong....