Denis Johnson - "Emergency"

Music suggestion for this reading: Gogol Bordello - Through the Roof 'N' Underground

Denis Johnson has created an extremely thought-provoking piece in this short story. In particular, as I have seen noted in a few other responses, the reliability of the narrator is shattered by both his drug use and his own admittance that the actual facts of the day matter little. Instead, this lack of a definite truth to the narrative forces the individual to focus on other elements of the story.

The first element of "Emergency" that the lack of truth highlights is a sense of voice. The narrator has a sense of absolute passivity to the events that he's seeing, even as they get more and more unrealistic and surreal. In fact, he only shows an active reaction, fear to be exact, when he believes angels are descending to him in a graveyard (Johnson 390). Likely, it was fear that he had died in the cold of the blizzard that evoked such a strong reaction. It is also important to note that, this is one of three times the narrator really seems to feel connected to the story.

The lack of reliability in the narration also leads to both a revelation and an obfuscation of the nature of the characters in the piece. The revelation happens especially in the character of the narrator, who despite feeling separated from most of the events of the story does in fact reveal multiple aspects of himself in his observations. The first time he really seems connected to the story happens on page 388, when he mentions the interview with the "champion of the drug LSD". The narrator mentions that he feels pity for the man. Another sign of his connection with this event is the switch of tense to present tense. The idea that his pity is self-reflective "doesn't" occur to him rather than "didn't" occur to him. Could this be a suggestion that the scene continues to play in his head, even after the events of the story (or even perhaps because of the events of this story)?

On the other hand, the lack of a reliable narrator obfuscates a lot about the other characters in the piece. The most prevalent example is that of Nurse, whose name in the piece seems an attempt by the narrator to make her a nonentity. However, even the character of Georgie could come under question. With the lack of trust that develops between the narrator and the audience, there is a question of how much of Georgie's actions are a result of a distorted or piecemeal perception of the character, especially after the narrator takes the drugs from Georgie's pockets. Even before that moment though, Georgie is shown having likely taken drugs. This could mean that we never see a true depiction of Georgie in the entire piece, but rather one that is always altered by substance use on either the character's or narrators part.

So far, I have mentioned two of the three scenes in which the narrator seems to be active and emotional rather than passive and accepting. The final of these scenes was the final section of text where the narrator comes to the realization of the difference between Georgie and him. The key phrase in that text is the final sentence of the short story: "I save lives" (Johnson 395). This is Georgie's response to his line of work, which is to assist in ways that have no risk to the patient and can be done by pretty much anybody. The difference then likely does not lie in role but in attitude, a difference in attitude that is blatantly obvious, even through the obfuscation of the narrative. Throughout the entire piece, Georgie has been an active character, playing a part continuously and never being a simple observer while the narrator has been passive the entire time, only feeling a connection when the scene was directly related to him.

The difference in attitude is simple: Georgie is active and believes what he does is important enough to matter while the narrator does not. That is the difference between them that I see.