David Rossman
Sandra Hunter
10/12/2017
Analysis of Kim Addonizio Ha!
The first sentence is based on the first sentence of a family of jokes. In the next sentence, the narrator then accuses the reader of assuming that the first sentence is a joke, instead of the beginning of a story. The following sentence is on a new line, perhaps to keep the accusation untouched in the reader’s head just a little bit longer. From there the narrator changes the story to the man runs into the bar. This is the last sentence we hear about this man.
The story takes a mildly-bleak, reader focused, realistic turn. There are a lot of “you”s, so the poem is to a large degree in the second person, but there is a sense that there is still a narrator with some personality. The 6th line ends on the word “hard” seems to emphasize it.
The bleak mood is ruined when the narrator changes the fall from being caused from slipping on ice to slipping on a banana peel. The next line, the priest and rabbi, are 2 particularly common (yet generic) ‘characters’ in the type of joke alluded to in the first sentence. The joke template typically starts with 3 characters too.
Once again, things turn reader focused and a little bleak. The real reader learns his/her character has gotten out of a bad marriage, which will matter later. The first thing we learn about the marriage is that it ended in a divorce. When the marriage is brought up, it is the last word in the line, probably because it is important. The line about the marriage is only about the marriage, despite the fact that the sentences that are part of the line are not being exclusively be about the marriage. The reader is soon stated to be limping, implying the banana peel induced fall was not without consequence.
A man who has an undesirable workplace environment is described as being the butt of a lot of jokes at work, probably playing into the ‘joke’ theme of the poem. The word moron is capitalized and doesn’t have an “a” in front of it, so presumably the guy’s boss treats it as a proper noun. The word’s “it’s true” are the last words of it’s line and if you stop reading there, it reinforces what came before it.
I’m not entirely certain what to make of the artistic wording of “He's tired of life, tired of being alone”. Maybe the similar wording is supposed to make those clauses reinforce each other. Maybe one of them is the real thing he’s tired of and the other he is tired of out of perceived affiliation.
The drink after drink line ends on the word drink, perhaps to emphasize the word drink. I didn’t understand where ‘angel passing out brains’ came from. I guess it was just a metaphor with little to no religious background. The line ends with the word brains, I assume to emphasize the person’s problem.
I think the line that ends with “half an hour” for a non-arbitrary reason. Probably an attempt to make the next line be one continuous thought. The “riddles” the reader and the moron tell each other are all over the place. The first is anti-humor. The second is a bad joke. The third is a legitimate philosophical question. The last word of its line is “nothing”, perhaps reminding us how miserable the reader’s character and the other guy are. The last 2 riddles are on the bleak side. The first half of the penultimate riddle is a poetic wording of the problem of evil. The wording also asserts there is a large amount of evil, perhaps pre-emptively siding against Leibniz’s argument that ‘there is evil in our world because some evil is necessary for the greatest amount of good’. The second part of the riddle seems to ask ‘does free will exist?’. and if yes, and combined with the first part, the riddle also seems to question ‘is free will a thing an omnibenevolent, omniscient god would give to mankind?’ I suspect the reader’s character was the one that asked the final question, considering the divorce. Or maybe they were both pleasantly drunk and dreading the inevitable hangover, and either of them could have asked it. I wasn’t able to find either of the last 2 riddles on the Internet outside of the poem suggesting they (or at least the wording used) started in the poem. The word “door” is the last word of its line. I think this is to emphasize the transition of being inside the comforting bar to the cold outside.
The story ends somewhat similar to the other story in the beginning, person(s) in cold weather outside of a bar. In other ways it’s the opposite, in the first story the guy is going into the bar in a hurry to get out of the cold. In the second both people leave the bar presumably at regular pace (for drunk people at least) into the cold and when it gets colder they don’t try to get somewhere warm.
I think the final shift from 2nd person to 3rd person reflects the reader’s character’s presumable lack of self-worth. He’s not “me” or “I”. He’s just some random loser on a corner.
It is a bit interesting that they asked multiple riddles at one point and each asked one personal question at another. Similarly, the environment the questions were asked seems note worthy as it seems said environments paralleled the questions themselves. The broad riddles were asked in a warm bar that has strangers near by. The troubling personal questions were asked outside in the cold with only their friend around.
At this point I came up with multiple interpretations of the ending. The story ends with the two ‘losers’ loitering together ‘until they finally get it’. I suspect it was deliberately left ambiguous.
At first I thought it was implying they have come to the conclusion that life (or at least their lives are/)is some sort of joke, but they have yet to figure out why that joke is supposed to be funny. Which would fit the theme given the joke related content and the intermittent bleakness. I still think that meaning might be partly relevant.
Later it occurred to me that the first loser is the reader’s character, who went through a divorce, and the other, of course, is the guy who is mocked at his job. The wording makes me suspect the ‘two losers’ are looking for one answer that answers both their personal questions.
I’m also not sure why they are trying to find the answer together in the cold then somewhere more comfortable. I’m guessing it’s because once they are done they have to go in different directions. Also they might feel more comfortable being cold and miserable in the presence of someone else that is cold and miserable, than being warm and miserable alone. It’s also possible they want the answer ASAP and they would rather be in the cold if it meant they could get the answer right away if the person they are with came up with the answer.
One thing of note is the danger involved in just standing around in a snowstorm, which displays a disregard for their survival. Perhaps ‘get it’ means ‘die’, and they’ve decided to commit suicide by standing around in a snowstorm. Going back to the ‘life is a joke’ thing; if life is a joke, what is the punch line? Maybe they knew the punch-line and were just waiting for the delivery. One of them has already explicitly been stated to desire to killing himself after all