Analysis Of Amy Hempel's In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried

Death is painfully unpleasant for anyone who is approached with it. It can be difficult to comprehend and scary to live through, but just because death isn’t very well liked does not mean it doesn’t happen. In fact it happens every day through every hour; no rich, poor, healthy, or sick can escape it. The contemporary writer Amy Hempel gracefully writes about death between a friendship in her piece titled “In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” showing a relatable situation everyone will undergo at some point in their life. Hempel’s relatability to the subject of death and reactions, unique style of characterization, and rhythmic balance display the great qualities that make her work so rare; making it belong to the 21st century literary

Unity ties in by never mentioning things just once, for example, when the narrator talks about the chimp at the beginning, “when they taught the first chimp to talk, it lied? ” and at the end of the story “I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands”(187,195). Also, when they characters talk about earthquakes and flying weaving a sense of fear throughout the story: “Earthquake, Earthquake, Earthquake,” “Bad earth,” “she was not afraid no even of flying,” and “I enrolled in a ‘Fear of Flying’ class” (190,191,190,194). The author gives lines more meaning than what you think of by bringing up their conversation multiple times. It’s not consistent repetition, but more repetition by alternation, so she jumps subjects, but always comes back to give more

She makes it seem as if the characters think they are famous or occasionally “off camera”(187). There is an entwined concept that they live in a movie set by incorporating into their conversation famous people and luxurious ways of living. For instance, when the narrator says “We call this place the Marcus Welby Hospital,” Marcus Welby was a popular T.V. show in-between the 60’s and 70’s it is essentially a “Hollywood hospital” something not real only entertainment (187). The fantasy leans more toward the narrator like an escapes from something, possibly from reality. She continues with a presumption that they live in “California” which is a famed state where the capital of the entertainment sits (192). Hollywood is all about glamor. It brings us back to the idea of denial the characters discuss about, the unwillingness to accept reality for what it is. This other line could be true, but it 's not clear: “I had a convertible in the parking lot. Once out of the room, I would drive… down the Coast highway through the crab smelling air. A drop in Malibu for sangria” (194). The same idea is brought up a possible imaginary world that shows up regularly through the text. The fuse in Hempel’s fugitive language incorporates a nicely blended union in her work, which makes it so readable and likable for