23 pages • 46 minutes read
Denis JohnsonEmergency
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Blood
“Emergency” opens with Georgie in the operating room mopping up blood that only he can see. While Johnson plays up the humor of Georgie’s drugged state, he also asks the reader to consider Georgie’s perspective and what truths to glean from his commentary. In Georgie’s eyes, there is a huge quantity of blood on the floor, and he tells Fuckhead, “There’s so much goop inside of us, man […] and it all wants to get out” (57). Georgie acknowledges the inevitability of suffering, and the hallucinatory blood represents his understanding. Georgie, the most empathetic character in the story, cries upon this realization, and when Fuckhead asks him why he weeps, he cannot articulate a reason. Georgie realizes that every human has “goop” that wants to come out, and no human can prevent it. He is overwhelmed and continues mopping in an effort to mitigate the feeling of suffering and loss.
Bunnies
When Georgie hands the bunny fetuses to Fuckhead, instructing him to keep them warm, he implies that keeping them alive will make up for killing the mother. The bunnies represent the proximity of death and the randomness of violence. Fuckhead receives them and notes that they are “hardly moving” (65), a reminder of his own passivity, and while he tucks them into his shirt to keep them warm, he eventually inadvertently crushes them. In Fuckhead’s and Georgie’s world, violence and death are always near, and chance and luck, as much as anything else, inform the outcome of people’s lives. The bunnies are a casualty of their world and a harbinger of grief.
Angels
Johnson employs religious imagery and language throughout both “Emergency” and the larger collection, Jesus’ Son. The author combines the more depraved elements of the characters’ substance use and lifestyles with sublime imagery, creating a juxtaposition that highlights the complexity of their lives, desires, and hopes. Fuckhead’s sublime experience begins as a snowstorm barrels down on him and Georgie, and, getting out of the truck, they encounter what Fuckhead initially thinks is a graveyard. He says:
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 the knuckles of my spine” (66-67).
While the angels turn out to be actors on the drive-in movie screen—a witty reversal that undercuts the drama of Fuckhead’s experience—his emotions are nevertheless revealing. The angels represent the beauty and emotional connection Fuckhead desires in his life. When Georgie points out to him that it’s just a movie, he’s disappointed. After experiencing his meaningless day job made palatable only by ongoing drug use, and wandering around purposelessly, Fuckhead craves both the shock and awe of a god-like encounter—but also the emotion, the pathos, that it might bring.
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By Denis Johnson
