Doors in Lodato’s “Jack, July”
Of the many resources that a writer may employ to transmit his or her thoughts, metaphors are usually some of the most powerful. In this sense, Victor Lodato beautifully uses doors in his story “Jack, July” in order to represent the divide that the main character feels towards the rest of the world. They are constantly opening and closing, showing that he is wasting away the opportunities that life is giving him because of his drug use.
Throughout the story, doors open and shut, mostly remaining in this latter state. This shows the difficulty that the main character has with relating to the outside world. Doors divide, marking a separation between two different areas. In this sense, one can see how there is a great gad between the main character and the real, external world because of his drug use. Nevertheless, unlike a wall, a door allows people to move through the different spaces, showing that the main character does have opportunities. However, one can see that he does not really take advantage of them in a correct way.
In one of the most interesting passages, Jack seems to be courting a door. In this scene, he offers it flowers and the door seems to talk (Lodato 25). Even though this may be a drugged hallucination, one can see it as being metaphoric for this druggy’s place in the world. Even though he may be somewhat courting the outside world, he does not achieve it because he cannot see it in a proper way, his perception being altered by the illegal substances.
Structure is one of the most important components when writing a text. It is one of the most efficient and useful ways to get one’s main idea across. In “Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant?”, Wells Tower uses this element of texts to astonishing effect. By changing the order of the events, he highlights his emotional journey through the experience of learning about a woman who goes to Africa to kill an elephant.
In this sense, the story is told in such a way as to emphasize the feelings and ideas that the writer has about the subject, instead of the story itself. Tower breaks down the chronological order of the tale in order to give his psychological experience, climaxing in the killing of the elephant. Nevertheless, here one can see that the elephant and the huntress are not the main subjects, but the sentiments of the writer. “As I watched the elephant go down, what obtruded into my consciousness was a kind of a thing, a psychological sensation with a very particular shape and weight and texture” (Tower 12-13). The author takes more pain to show how he feels towards the situation than the situation itself, a subjective narration that is supported by the non-chronological structure.
Finally, it must be noted that the ending is quite elegant in its depiction of the relationship of nature to men. It shows that people are inferior to animals in many ways, and that even when men kill animals, they still have the last say. In the form of nature, animals are allowed to have the final say, as it finally eats and regurgitates the elephant that they had been craving so much. One could see it as nature spitting in the face of man one final time, showing humans that she will always have the final say.
Works Cited
Tower, Wells. “Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant.” The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015. Eds. Adam Johnson and the Students of 826 National. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2015. 1-19. PDF.
Lodato, Victor. “Jack, July.” The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015. Eds. Adam Johnson and the Students of 826 National. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2015. 20-40. PDF
