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.
Character Analysis
Unnamed Narrator/Protagonist
Although the narrator/protagonist is given neither a name nor identifying details, there are clues toward her anxiety and nervousness. Her collective fears have prevented her from visiting her dying friend. She fears earthquakes and “sleep[s] with a glass of water on the nightstand so [she] can see […] if the coastal earth is trembling” (9). She also fears flying, unlike her friend, who “trusts the laws of aerodynamics” (5). And, it can be inferred, she fears death. After she upsets the dying friend by telling her she is leaving, she observes, “I was supposed to offer something […] I felt weak and small and failed” (8).
The reader also knows the narrator is a writer, although it is unclear whether this is a hobby or an occupation. After her friend’s death, she arranges her memories, noting that she may not render the details faithfully: “It is just possible I will say I stayed the night. And who is there that can say that I did not?” (10). Her implied temptation to rewrite history evinces her shame and desire to conceal what she feels is her traitorousness—yet even in confessing that temptation, she displays an ironic honesty. Her character arc is, on one level, a conflicted journey toward honesty. As the narrative draws to a close, she plainly expresses her core fear: that she will never overcome fear.
Unnamed Friend/Hospital Patient
Like the narrator, the friend is given no name and few identifying physical details except those that emerge from the narrator’s indirect characterizations. The narrator reveals the friend’s beauty by noticing the Good Doctor “is a little in love with her” (4). Further, the narrator is relieved that the “law […] requires two people to be with the body at all times” (2), thus sharing her irrational fear that her friend’s beautiful corpse may be sexually violated.
Besides her fears and the narrator’s observations, the friend’s characteristics are created through contrasts with the narrator. Through these contrasts, she appears as the narrator’s foil. Whereas the narrator is scared of flying, the friend is not (5). The narrator is irrationally fearful; the friend is “afraid of nothing” (5) and calm through adversity. In addition, the friend tries constantly to lighten the mood, telling jokes and reveling in puns and wordplay. While these personality characteristics seem hardwired, they also seem to be a defense mechanism, deferring the friend’s confrontation with her mortality.
Al Jolson
Al Jolson is a nonfictional person—a 1920s entertainer—interred in the cemetery across the street from the hospital, itself a grim reminder of death. Nevertheless, he appears by name only twice: in the title and the story’s conclusion. He, along with other popular cultural figures, is among the few named characters. Before his death in 1950, he enjoyed a prosperous Hollywood career, making the transition from silent films to those with sound.
His appearance in the story serves several purposes. First, it grounds the story in reality, as his burial site anchors the story’s setting in a real locale in Beverly Hills. Second, as he was a silent movie star and entertainer, his career owed much to gesture and gesticulation. This serves to amplify the story of the sign-language-speaking chimp, reminding the reader that communication in all its facets goes beyond oral language and speech. Third, his screen personality as conveyed through movies is ebullient, the epitome of zestful living. However, Jolson died suddenly while playing cards. The short story subliminally compares the friend to him and suggests that death arrives for everyone, famous or average, young or old, ready or not.
Chimp Speaking Sign Language
The unnamed chimp appears to match many details of Washoe, the first chimp to be taught over 300 words in American Sign Language. The chimp is referenced three times in the story: first, as one of the topics of useless trivia the friend insists upon (1); second, as a conversational fragment brought up by the friend who wonders about the chimp’s fate (3); and third, in the story’s conclusion (10). When details about the chimp are first introduced into the conversation, the narrator suggests there is more that she could say, “[b]ut it will break your heart” (1). The friend then cuts off the topic. After her friend’s death, however, the narrator recalls the conversation and reveals the detail she previously hid: The chimp’s baby died, and the chimp, inconsolable, continued to try to communicate with it using her sign language. The narrator now feels similar to the chimp, each attempting to communicate her grief using inadequate means, each speaking to an absence who cannot hear them: “I love you.”
