Analysis
Denis Johnson’s short story, Emergency, is a part of series of stories from the book Jesus’ Son. Emergency, along with the rest of Jesus’ Son, is narrated by a prescription drug addict named Fuckhead. The short story follows the adventures of Fuckhead, an emergency room clerk, and Georgie, and emergency room orderly. Georgie regularly steals medication from the hospitals pharmacy to get high, and Fuckhead takes pills from Georgie to follow suit. Emergency is a story filled with contrast. The first half of the story, written in a disconnected, drug induced haze contrasts the second half, written in a vivid hallucinogenic state. Fuckhead and Georgie contrast in many ways, Georgie saves, while Fuckhead kills. Georgie is overly connected to his feelings, while Fuckhead is detached. The contrast between seeing and not seeing is also approached throughout the story. It is often unclear what the two main characters are doing. However, at the end, Georgie is able to give the story a since of hope with his desire to save people.
The story begins in what seems to be the hazy and disconnected side of drug use. The language is both sarcastic and direct. Even when a patient walks in with a knife in his eye, the characters remain sarcastic, they also maintain a dark humor, which is emphasized when Terrance Weber comes in to the emergency room. He claims his wife stabbed him in the eye, and when the nurse asks him if he wants to press charges, he says, “Not unless I die.” While the hospital employees are exploring how to remove the knife from the eye of Weber, Georgie is instructed to prep the patient. At the same time, Fuckhead is instructed to contact the proper doctors to perform the surgery. Johnson maintains understated language when he describes how Georgie saved Terrance. The nurse describes Georgie’s saving act by saying, “There’s nothing wrong with the guy. It’s one of those things” (Johnson 62). Usually in this situation people would be exclaiming the miracle, but they barely recognize it as so. This situation again shows Fuckhead and Georgie’s opposing actions. While Fuckhead did as he was told, Georgie disobeyed orders and successfully removed the knife from Weber’s eye. The only things the two have in common is their inappropriate use of drugs. When Georgie removes the knife from Terrance Weber’s eye he first reveals himself as a savior, this idea is revisited several times throughout the story.
Emotionally, Fuckhead and Georgie contradict each other from the beginning. Georgie is overly emotional from the beginning, crying as he mops up blood that isn’t actually there, when he rescues the baby bunnies, and again in the back of his truck when he expresses his wish to go to church. Fuckhead repeatedly ignores his emotions especially when he is responsible for the death of several prenatal bunnies. “Fuckhead seems immune to the horrors surrounding him, but Georgie is more sensitive” (Farrin 138). After hitting a rabbit with his car, Georgie attempts to save it, only to find out it is pregnant. He removes the baby bunnies from the mother’s womb and gives them to Fuckhead to keep warm in his shirt. Eventually Fuckhead falls asleep with the rabbits in his shirt and crushes them. Georgie’s reaction to this is upset, while Fuckhead acts like it never happened.
The second half of the story is written as though the two characters are in a vivid drug induced hallucination. Whereas in the first half of the story actions are described in a dazed and confused fashion, the second half is described in a heightened state of reality. When Georgie and Fuckhead begin driving around, it is described as “Terrific,” the day is described as, “clear and peaceful” (Johnson 63). Once night falls because Georgie’s truck does not have lights, the two are not able to continue their journey. After parking the car, they walk around until they eventually end up in what the narrator believes to be a graveyard. His hallucinations continue as he explains,
On the farther side of the field, just beyond the curtains of snow, the sky was torn away and the angels were descending out of a brilliant blue summer, their huge faces streaked with light and full of pity. The sight of them cut through my heart and down to the knuckles of my spine, and if there’d been anything in my bowels I would have messed up my pants from fear. (Johnson 67)
This vivid explanation is interrupted when Georgie tells Fuckhead that what he is seeing is actually a drive in movie. The two separately go through multiple moments of lucidity, but they are never lucid at the same time. In the beginning when Georgie is hallucinating that there is blood on the floor, Fuckhead sees nothing. Georgie is seeing what most try their hardest to avoid, that everyone must die, and he cries about it.
The savior complex inside Georgie is revisited in the ending of Emergency. On the return home from their adventures, Fuckhead runs into an old friend of his named Hardee. Hardee has been working on a bee farm, and is attempting to escape the draft for the Vietnam war. He is trying to leave the United States to go to Canada to avoid the draft. When he expresses his wish to go to Canada, Georgie immediately says that he will help Hardee get to Canada because, as Georgie says when asked what his job is, “I save lives” (Johnson). The fact that Georgie saves lives and Fuckhead takes lives is a huge contrast. “Whereas Georgie can proclaim, ‘I save lives,’ the narrator accumulates deaths” (Parrish 25).
Synthesis
This story takes place in the 1973. This time period’s major trends involved recreational drug use and the Vietnam war. Recreational drug use is clearly shown from the beginning of the story when Georgie is consuming medications stolen from the hospital. However, Georgie and Fuckhead aren’t some Woodstock hippies. Their time of youth in which recreational use of drugs is experimental and fun is over. The two main characters are doing anything to get high, stealing an array of unknown pills that could be anything from blood pressure medicine to antibiotics. This desperate escape from the reality of their daily life is because of the two’s dislike of their daily reality. The two main characters do not value their lives or their jobs. The criminal penalties they could have faced in the 1970’s included, “up to one year in jail, a fine of up to $5,000, or both” (Drug Abuse Legislation For The 1970’s).
In this story it seems as though the uneducated characters dislike their jobs, otherwise they would not be stealing from the medicine cabinet during their shifts. Without a degree to become a skilled worker, their only options seem to be working in the hospital or going to war. In the 1970s there was a huge number of resistors. No young man wanted to go to Vietnam. As shown on the last page of Emergency when Georgie and Fuckhead see Hardee, who is trying to escape the draft by running away to Canada. “War resistors were excited to be in Trudeau’s Canada” (Parker 52). Many war resistors throughout the United States were happy to move to Canada. Many of the characters in this story seem to lead unhappy lives.
The dislike of their reality and detachment from their reality is seen throughout the story. Both character’s detachment is different in nature, Georgie wants to go to church in his hallucinogenic state, Fuckhead wants to go to the fair, Georgie wants to save the bunnies, Fuckhead doesn’t care, Georgie wants to stop driving at night because he doesn’t have headlights, Fuckhead tells him to drive on. This is likely because of the presence of drugs in their daily life. However, the differences in the reaction to the drugs reveals subconscious emotional states. Georgie is an inherently good person; he does not wish to bring others harm and he is always trying to help others. Fuckhead on the other hand is selfish; he did not care about the bunnies or other drivers on the road. The author does not attempt to romanticize the use of drugs as many drug stories try to do. Instead, Johnson very bluntly uses the presence of drugs to show the characters lack of mental health.
Conclusion
The question of seeing versus not seeing is subliminally visited throughout the story, and seems to be the most important idea in the story. The seeing and not seeing begins on the first page with Georgie mopping up imaginary blood. He alludes to the fact that death is inevitable for all of us and explains his fears. Fuckhead is unable to see the imaginary blood and he is unable to understand Georgie’s point of view. Seeing and not seeing is revisited in the emergency room when the man with the knife in his eye brings himself in. The doctor does not see what is wrong when he asks what the patients trouble is. Georgie says he cannot hear what Terrence Weber is saying because he cannot see his face. And finally Weber, with one glass eye, is able to see even though a knife has been stabbed through his good eye. Georgie is able to save him showing that he helps people see realities.
During their adventure in the field that Fuckhead views as a graveyard is another example of seeing versus not seeing. “He [Fuckhead] seems poised to embrace what he most longs for: a vision that will take him out of his endless life” (Parrish 25). Georgie quickly brings Fuckhead back to reality when he explains that the angels he is seeing are actors on a projection screen at a drive in movie. “His vision is temporary, and he is returned to the sordidness of his life, alone again” (Parrish 25). However, one analyst claim that Emergency and Jesus’ Son are stories of addiction and recovery. I agree that they are stories of addiction, but not that of recovery. From the synopsizes of the rest of the stories in Jesus’ Son, there is not an attempt at recovery for Fuckhead. In Addiction and Recovery in Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, Robert McClure Smith believes that Fuckhead’s hallucination of angels in the graveyard is Fuckhead’s recovery (185). This cannot be a recovery because there is no catharsis for Fuckhead and there is no change in action. He remains doing the same things as before being selfish and stingy.