A Character Analysis of Dundun in Dennis Johnson's Jesus Son Essay

Denis Johnson s stories are not for everyone, but ifyou enjoy literature you can appreciate the sodalities of this writings. His style of writingis not completely original but aspects of it express their individuality. Basically all of hiswork deals with the bleak under tones of society, especially in the collection ofprogressive short stories in Jesus Son. In Jesus Son one of the short stories is titledDundun. In this short Johnson does an exceptional job of conveying personalities of thecharacters to you as soon as you begin reading. And the way that he expresses theirpersonalities sets the tone for the rest of the story. It s difficult to explain Johnson s'writing to someone who has never read one of his stories, but to give an example . . .When the narrator in Dundun (who s name you never learn, only the nick-name Fuckhead)first talks to the reader he says how he is hoping to get some opium from Dundun, but hewas out of luck. This intentionally gives the reader a low image of the narrator. Itsdoubtful that if it was intended for the reader to look up to the narrator that the first thingJohnson would mention is that he s a drug addict. After the narrator tells you about hisdrug use he goes on to describe how Dundun looked as he greeted him, from there on outthe desensitized nature of all of the characters in the novel begins to show. McInnes isn tfeeling too good today. I just shot him. You mean you killed him? I didn t meanto. Is he really dead? No. He s sitting down. If you look at thepunctuation in this conversation between the narrator and Dundun you notice that thereare no exclamation marks at all! If you were to read it as the author wrote it you wouldsound as if you had a so what attitude towards learning that a person you know hadbeen...

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