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Work By Denis Johnson Summary

Decent Essays

When considering the themes of Denis Johnson’s collection of short stories entitled Jesus’ Son, it is important to bear in mind that Johnson himself struggled with alcoholism and addictions. Each story in the collection is a snapshot of the heroin addict narrator’s life. A short story in the collection entitled “Work” can be examined to reveal Johnson’s multifaceted perspective on addicts. The story’s plot, advanced by an early introduction of place and character paired with a non-linear narrative structure, allows for Johnson to call readers’ perceptions of addiction into question. The first two lines of the story provide enough detail to fully establish a sense of place. The narrator describes the setting as being late summer of 1973 in an emergency room, his current place of employment. The initial line provides a sense of the narrator’s flippant attitude towards his job, “I’d …show more content…

As suggested by the opening paragraph, “Work” unfolds with the narrator working in a hospital. One day, a man comes in after being stabbed in the eye. While the emergency room staff bustles to prepare a full team of doctors qualified to operate on the man, Georgie (while high) thoughtlessly pulls the knife from the man’s eye. Johnson steers away from the recklessness exhibited by Georgie in the medical story to talk about Georgie and the narrator’s experience after work that day. While riding out a high, the duo encounter a set of newborn bunnies. Georgie insists that he and the narrator must take care of the babies. Within a few hours, the bunnies die as a result of the narrator’s carelessness. Even though eight defenseless bunnies’ lives were lost a result of the narrator’s actions, the narrator confronts the situation with disregard and a lack of repentance (69). This portion of the plot supports the belief that drug addicts are incapable of functioning responsibly in

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