Here is a simply analysis of the story Emergency by Denis Johnson.
- Reality versus abstraction- this story shows the contrast of reality and abstraction. When the story starts we seem to be in reality, as we learn who the two main characters are. We learn that both of the main characters steal drugs from the hospital that they work at. We see the main character who is referred to as Fuckhead often, take pills from Georgie who has already taken some pills. After this point is when it slips from reality. It seems as the story progresses reality starts to slip farther and farther away. This seems to be an interesting way to possibly give the reader a vantage point into the mind of a drug user to show that they are not necessarily bad people because they are drug users. We first learn that reality is slipping when Georgie is mopping up the floor that he thinks has blood on it, when the floor is actually clean. We then take a ride in the truck where the two main characters see many things that I took to be drug induced images, like the angel that the main character Fuckhead sees. It then jumps to the drive in movie that I took to be reality, where he realizes that it wasn’t an angel at all that he saw. I think all of the images that these two see in their drug induced minds really shows who these people are.
- Who is Georgie? One of the main characters that we learn steals drugs from the hospital. Despite his drug use he seems to have a strong desire to save things. It firsts starts in the beginning of the story when a patient comes into the hospital with a knife in his face. The doctor did not want to operate on him, and Georgie was sent in to prep the patient for the specialist. Next thing we learn is Georgie is walking into the staff room holding the knife. We really do not know if this was reality or an abstraction from the mind of the narrator, but regardless of actuality I think it represents what Georgie would have wanted to do. Another situation that shows his need to save is when he hits the rabbit with his truck. Instead of just leaving the dead animal he gets out of the truck and cuts the baby bunnies out of the rabbit and brings them into the truck, saying that they will feed them milk and keep them warm. Reality wise this may have never happened but like I mentioned before I feel that somewhere in his sober mind, saving people is actually very important to him.
- Is there a theme? It seems as if this story has no set conflict that the main characters are trying to overcome. The first time I read the story I thought there were no themes let alone a real story other than the events these two drugged up people experience. After reading the story more than once though there does seem to be an underlying theme. It seems like the theme or lesson presented in this story is that life is a series of randomly occurring events, randomly colliding together. The story is full of ironic events like the man who is stabbed in the eye, and can see in the stabbed eye but not in the other eye, and he was stabbed for seeing what he shouldn’t have saw. The drugged out orderly supposedly saves that man in the hospital, when a doctor said he couldn’t save the man. Everything seems to be dying in life according the Georgie, but there are always new life occurring, with the dead rabbit and the baby bunnies. The lesson or theme to me is saying maybe what you see at first or feel at first maybe not be what reality is. That there is so much more going on than what you think at first glance.
iamkaylaw 