A fractured fluency: Amy hempel’s exploration of grief

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

5 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

05/21/2009

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Humanities/philosophy

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Summary :

$Table of Contents A fractured fluency: Amy hempel’s exploration of grief$ Table of Contents

Introduction
Understanding the character
The long absence of the character
Analysis of narrator's struggle between grief and fear
Conclusion
Bibliography

Abstract

amy hempel's story "The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried" appears to be a bleak depiction of human selfishness and avoidance in the face of death. A woman visits her dying friend in hospital, but instead of staying to offer comfort, she departs abruptly, leaving her friend crying in the supply closet, with nurses flocking around her. According to critic Robert Peltier, the story evokes a climate of postmodern meaninglessness in which there is no difference between truth and lies because death is the inevitable result of all our actions. The narrator speaks to her friend in trivia, relying on pop culture references rather than real experience to define their relationship: "We were Lucy and Ethel, Mary and Rhoda in extremis" (hempel 747). As Peltier notes, she is "fueled by a fear of all that is not material," of things she cannot see or control: earthquakes, flying, and ultimately, death. Her shallowness seems endemic of a consumer culture which glosses over real death with television violence, emphasizing the material over cerebral, and illusion over truth; the gates of the Palm Royale hospital are painted a cheerful "flamingo pink," to distract from the suffering taking place beyond them. Peltier remarks on the alarming implications of this postmodern condition: escapism supplants communication, allowing the narrator's fear to become "stronger than her sense of decency".
But when understood as a person coping with grief, the narrator is not as callous and morally vapid as Petlier makes her out to be. Her fear is a natural instinct, and her flight, if not entirely forgivable, is at least understandable as a life instinct, an act of self-preservation. Death underlies almost every aspect of the story, emerging in everything from the movie the friends watch on television, to the threat of earthquakes, to hempel's unsettling imagery, and sinister characterization of the natural world. While hempel is a postmodern writer, she is not as cynical or nihilistic as Petlier would have us believe.