Denis Johnson: Emergency response

A large part of Denis Johnson's effects are felt because of the author’s unique use of point of view. Its dark, yet laid-back tone feels as if reading through some sort of haze, the story seems to flow at a slow pace from the first person point of view. It’s possible that is true because there are only a few moments when urgency is truly felt.

I first felt the detachment of the narrator during his phone call at the hospital, as he put it, “I dialed the hospital operator and told her to get me the eye man and the brain man and the gas man” (386). Even though the setting puts them on the late shift and people might have slack attitudes late, but even during an emergency you would think that any and all staff would being using some amount of medical jargon which shows a high level of apathy within the narrator at the time.

Once you realize the narrator has been popping pills the entire time, you have to take every piece and section of the story with a grain of salt. His mind is being altered chemically; therefore his experiences are skewed to a certain degree. Even though the narrator functions within the hospital just as well on the drugs, the amount of drugs taken has obviously numbed him to most of his surroundings. An example of this is when the narrator in response to a man the narrator dubs “a champion of LSD” being interviewed says, “It doesn’t occur to me, as I pity this extraterrestrial, that in my life I’ve taken as much as he has.” (Johnson 388).

                With the narrator on drugs throughout the entire plot it brings up more and more issues in relation to reliability of the narrator, his mental stability, and a lacking in a sense of time. An obvious clue once again pointing towards the unreliable narrator happens after he can’t recall his memory correctly. He states, “Or maybe that wasn’t the time it snowed” (392). Immediately we begin to question not only the narrator and Georgie’s immediate adventure, but the all the events prior to this statement.