28 pages • 56 minutes read
Amy HempelIn the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Philosophical Context
Death has long been a subject of philosophical debate, and many theorists have cultivated various ideas about it. A frequent concern in many schools of philosophy is the person’s increasing awareness of death and eventual acceptance of it. The Stoics, for instance, viewed death as a natural and inevitable part of life. Freud argued that two opposing drives impel a person and are in tension—a drive toward living and a drive toward dying: “The aim of all life is death” (Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920).
Alluded to in the story, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross posited in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, that when facing death, a person undergoes five distinct stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Her theory is referenced in a conversation between the narrator and the friend. The friend says she can’t remember the stage that follows denial (3). The narrator remembers but does not share the stages, suggesting that both women are presumably stuck in the denial phase, unwilling to accept that death is the end for both of them, and the friend’s death will arrive sooner than the narrator’s.
Throughout “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” the narrator’s many fears are understood as substitutes for her larger fear of death, since flying and earthquakes can be fatal. When the friend passes, the narrator finally takes action to address her fear and takes a class to conquer her fear of flying—but the fear will persist, as evidenced by her keeping a glass of water by her bedside to prepare for earthquakes. The story also recurrently alludes to ocean danger. The nightly water glass is a reminder that, although one can’t escape death, one can learn to fear it less: The dangerous ocean can be captured and contained in a small glass, just as the fear of death can be minimized, still present but manageable.
Literary Context
This story is an example of Literary Minimalism, a type of art or writing that focuses on small details and pares away superfluity. Ezra Pound’s poetry and Frank Stella’s paintings are both examples of Minimalism. In literature, Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver are well-known purveyors of the form.
Minimalism avoids lengthy descriptions, elegant language, and details such as character backstory, which is deemed extraneous. Often concentrating on concrete details, small slices of life, and the maxim that “less is more,” Minimalism allows a reader to supply the unstated details.
In the story, characters are devoid of proper names and stripped of most physical descriptions, such as height, eye and hair color. The plot has few important details. Although there are glimpses of backstory—the friends were college roommates who lived through an earthquake together—the characters’ pasts are mostly insignificant. The narrative instead presents a character study through vignettes and character growth. In a 1997 interview with Bomb Magazine, Hempel noted that these vague or minimal details are artistically deliberate: “[T]here are more possibilities when you don’t pin down a person with a name and an age and a background because then people can bring something to them or take something from them.”
