in the cemetery where al jolson is buried theme

Her dream that her friend is not content with dying alone but must also decorate her own house with death suggests that somehow she will be caught up in the dying of her friend. THEMES FURTHER RE… Cane

At the end of the story, the narrator recalls the events of her visit to her friend, wondering why looking back should reveal more than looking at something. [tr.] Sources The narrator says that she does not dare look any closer at her friend’s dying, for she fears it will scare her to death also.

The tale features two characters, both of whom are unnamed. HISTORICAL CONTEXT SOURCES Criticism The narrator’s fear of death is made more immediate by the fact that she and her friend are indeed almost like sisters—for example, when they were in college her friend’s mother could not tell them apart on the phone. Deciding to become a writer, she settled in New York City and attended Columbia University where her creative writing instructor was Gordon Lish, a noted novelist, short story writer, and editor. This Study Guide consists of approximately 34 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried. INTRODUCTION PLOT SUMMARY

CRITICISM

She tries to block out everything painful by remembering useless things, but when she recalls the talking chimp story and the part that her friend did not want to hear because it would “break your heart,” the wall that she has built around her grief and guilt breaks down. She tries to explain her failure to herself by recalling a story (told to her by a friend who worked in a mortuary) of a man who wrecked his car on the highway: When he looked down at his arm from which the flesh had been torn to the bone, it literally scared him to death. Firstly there is the dying friend that the narrator visits. She also names other contemporary short story writer… When she comes back from the beach and sees the other bed in the room, she fears that her friend, vampirelike, wants her life. Author Biography ANNA AKHMATOVA FURTHER RE… In re Jose Mauricio LOVO-Lara, Beneficiary of a Visa PetitionIn the Days of theThundering Herd & the Law & the OutlawIn the Kingdom of the Blind the Man with One Eye Is King Grief cannot be talked about; it can only be objectified in efforts to avoid it. Discussion of themes and motifs in Amy Hempel's In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried. Style (often be narrated) give a spoken or written account of: the voyages, festivities, and intrigues are narrated with unf… McEwan, Ian (Russell) Born: Aldershot, Hampshire, 21 June 1948. Born December 14, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois, Amy Hempel moved to San Francisco as a teenager and attended several California colleges during an academic career that saw frequent interruptions. Overview “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” is a short fiction story by author Amy Hempel. She thinks of the chimp making sign language, indicating the loss of its child, for, like the narrator, it has become “fluent now in the language of grief.” Hempel, like her most admired writer, Anton Chekhov, knows that grief, by its very nature, resists ordinary attempts to articulate it. For Further Study Cane… Requiem STYLE SOURCES She imagines escaping, driving her convertible to a bar in Malibu where she will “shimmer with life.” It was first published in TriQuarterly magazine in 1983, reprinted in Editor’s Choice: New American Stories, and collected in Hempel’s Reasons to Live in 1985. Much of the story focuses on the narrator’s efforts to distance herself from the fact of her friend’s dying. 1963 POEM SUMMARY Themes CRITICAL OVERVIEW "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" begins with the narrator's reluctant visit to a dying friend but evolves into an You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and 300,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts.This is an incredibly moving and sad story. Underlying the banter and jokes that dominate the dialogue is the narrator’s own fear of death and her guilt at not having come to see her friend earlier. She thus has an irrational sense that she will somehow become infected with death.

rate / ˈnarˌāt/ • v. Nationality: British. When she describes the hospital masks she and her friend wear, she says she kept “touching the warm spot where my breath, thank God, comes out.” When a nurse tells them they could be sisters, the narrator thinks that the hospital staff must be wondering why it took her two months to come see her friend. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY CRITICISM CRITICAL OVERVIEW

HISTORICAL CONTEXT Hempel credits Lish with having had a special influence on her work.