In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried

“‘Oh, that’s good,’ she said, ‘A parable.’”

A parable is a story that usually imparts a lesson or moral. The friend speaks these words when the protagonist first shares the story of the sign-language-using chimp that uses sign language. The story’s ending circles again to the chimp’s story, which truly holds a moral for the reader: Communicate your love to others while there’s still time.

“But now I’m doing it—and hoping that I live through it.”

The narrator recounts an anecdote from a friend who worked in a mortuary: A man survived a car accident but died when he saw his visible arm bone. This grim episode suggests that one’s survival often depends on an ability to ignore, avoid, or deflect. The narrator implicitly parallels the story to her situation: In closely examining her friend’s illness and the narrator’s response to it, her own character flaws may be fully exposed, and she may not be able to live with herself.

“‘I thought of something,’ she says. ‘I thought of it last night. I think there is a real and present need here. You know,’ she says, ‘like for someone to do it for you when you can’t do it yourself. You call them up whenever you want—like when push comes to shove.’”

Although the friend’s chatter mostly centers on breezy and insignificant topics, this quote seemingly reveals her fear of the uncertainty of death, but she phrases an assisted-suicide plea in an impersonal way, creating ambiguity. It is unclear whether she is asking the narrator to help her end her life or asking for all terminally ill people to have that option.

“She laughs, and I cling to the sound the way someone dangling above a ravine holds fast to the thrown rope.”

The narrator’s emotional response to her friend’s laughter is vivid but ambiguous. She is hugely relieved to see her friend’s lightheartedness, but this could suggest several things: Maybe the narrator is desperate for her friend to be happy; maybe she is desperate to see signs of life and health; maybe she is uncomfortable with emotional intimacy—especially as it involves grief and fear of death—and the laughter is a reprieve from such intensity.

“‘They say the smart dog obeys, but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘the smarter anything knows when to disobey. Now, for example.’”

Several animal types are present in the story, including dogs, sign-language-using chimps, snakes, and ocean dwellers. Anthropomorphism is the ascription of human tendencies to animals or objects. Here, a dog is described as possessing human intelligence and motivation, smarter than most because it disobeys. The friend compares herself to the dog, wishing to disobey her fate and refuse death.

“A yellow dust rising from the ground, the heat that ripens melons overnight—this is earthquake weather.”

Upon her visit to the beach, one of the narrator’s first thoughts is of earthquakes. However fleeting, the thought’s very occurrence—unbidden and amid an otherwise leisurely outing—attests to the fear’s obsessive quality. Moreover, although it may be impressionistic or figurative, the notion of “earthquake weather” is nonsensical; this suggests the fear’s irrationality and highlights the narrator’s hypervigilance and sense of ubiquitous threat. Just as one might scan the atmosphere for signs of a storm, she constantly (if unconsciously and illogically) scrutinizes the world for harbingers of disaster.

“When the ride was over and my jabbering pulse began to slow, she served five parts champagne to one part orange juice, and joked about living in Ocean View, Kansas.”

The narrator recounts how, immediately after she and her friend survived an earthquake, her friend cracked jokes and poured them each a mimosa. The scene (along with the mimosa’s absurdly alcohol-heavy proportions) succinctly illustrates a difference between the two women: The narrator had a “jabbering pulse,” while her friend was carefree and even responded with playfulness. And, while the narrator’s word choice, “ride,” is a humorously ironic understatement, it recalls her habitual suppression of unpleasant realities through neutralizing language.

“Like the aviaphobe who keeps the plane aloft with prayer, we kept it up until an aftershock cracked the ceiling.”

The narrator earlier recounted her fruitless repetition of “earthquake, earthquake, earthquake” (4), a misguided attempt to cheat nature spurred on because the friend had said, “It never happens when you’re thinking about it” (4). Now, through another simile, she compares the chanting to a scared flyer praying that the plane won’t crash. Words are no protection against nature, just as faith is no defense against harm or death.

“The ocean they stare at is dangerous, and not just the undertow. You can almost see the slapping tails of sand sharks keeping cruising bodies alive.”

This quote highlights a paradox: The ocean is both life-sustaining and life-taking, filled with danger. Like the friend’s illness, what can kill is often unseen, such as the ocean’s undertow or sand sharks that lurk in shallow water.

“If she looked, she could see this, some of it, from her window. She would be the first to say how little it takes to make a thing all wrong.”

Ironic reminders of death are often visible to the friend, even as she fights to live. The hospital itself is suspended between life and death: the cemetery on one side and an ocean and beach on the other. This line echoes Important Quote #4 and foreshadows the friend’s death. A frolicking beach goer can be instantly swallowed by the undertow; a little mistake can be fatal, just as a small number of cells can proliferate into cancer or other disease.

“Then it hit me like an open coffin. She wants every minute, I thought. She wants my life.”

The narrator resents the friend’s monopoly on her time; when her friend has the bed brought in so the narrator can spend the night, the narrator compares it to an “open coffin.” Also associated with fictional vampires who suck the life out of people, a coffin is a repository for the dead, just as the hospital bed holding her sick friend will soon be.

“I feel like hell. I’m about to stop having fun.”

simile, a comparison of her illness to unrelenting torture. She follows it up through both understatement and foreshadowing, an awareness that she will, in fact, die from her disease.

“She kicked at the blankets and moved to the door. She must have hated having to pause for breath and balance before slamming out of Isolation.”

When she learns the narrator is leaving, the friend shows both panic and anger, bolting from the room. The term for the quarters, “Isolation,” denotes the hospital partitioning, but it is also a bleak pun on the friend’s emotional plight and the dreaded situation she’ll face when the narrator leaves.