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.
Literary Devices
Simile
A simile compares two unsimilar concepts by linking them with like or as. Communication between the narrator and friend is almost never straightforward. Instead, meaning is constructed through comparing something familiar with something unfamiliar. Because mortality, death, and the afterlife cannot be elucidated in language, participants must use an imperfect substitute. Thus, the friend says she “feel[s] like hell” (7).
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing occurs when small clues hint at a key plot point or resolution. The mention of a cemetery in the story’s title, the narrator’s memory of the friend who worked in a mortuary (2), the allusion to Kübler-Ross’s philosophy of coming to terms with death (3), and references to earthquakes are all ways that the friend’s death is implied.
Moreover, the narrator’s thoughts hint at the loss she will suffer because of her friend’s prognosis. As they watch a movie laying in hospital beds laid side-by-side, the narrator enjoys their camaraderie but alludes to a sad outcome: “I missed her already” (8). When the narrator recalls the earthquake both survived earlier, she remembers their lighthearted solution to avoiding another one. The memory is tinged with sadness, however, as the narrator thinks that the friend will not live long enough to experience another earthquake: “I could not say that now—next” (5).
Although the actual word is not uttered, the idea of death creates an uneasy mood in the story. Frequent foreshadowing contributes to the anxious mood.
Flashback
Time in the story is jumbled. Written in the present tense, the time skips backward, revealing details that occurred earlier. Although the narrator writes this after the friend’s death, the death is not revealed until the end of the story. Short vignettes serve to propel the narrative forward. Not revealed as memories, the short episodes are presented unchronologically, each having the same importance in the story. Questions arise in the reader. Does the hospital visit take place in only one day or over several? Was the friend’s one-year prognosis of survival proffered recently or much earlier? Did the author’s fear of flying originate with the earthquake she and the friend lived through as roommates?
The reader’s confusion and inability to piece together a narrative timeline mirrors the patient’s confusion at her diagnosis and terminal disease and the narrator’s attempts to process the impending death and confront and accept her own mortality.
Euphemism
Euphemism means “good speech.” It occurs when words with positive or neutral connotations are substituted for those with negative ones. One example of euphemism is when the narrator labels the friend’s burial in the cemetery as being “moved” (10), suggesting a benign transfer from one area to another and implying the friend’s consent. When thinking about what has delayed the narrator from visiting her friend, she labels the hospital “the glamorous place” (2), ironically elevating it as a desirable destination. Communication is often imprecise in the story, but the narrator’s use of euphemism renders an intolerable situation into a less difficult and tragic one.
