In “Nirvana” (2014), Adam Johnson describes a period of life of a successful IT expert, which at that point revolves around two items – his wife's paralytic illness and his success in making a hologram projection version of the recently assassinated President, which can be easily downloaded online. The story progresses in two lines – the main character's relationship with his paralyzed wife and the development of his career in the IT business. Johnson succeeded greatly in describing a man in search for himself under the circumstances that underwent a drastic change. In this search, the character finally manages not only to come to terms with other people's understanding of his success in creating the talking hologram of the President, but also finds out the means to bring his wife back to life with the use of the same technology, although confronted with many harsh conditions and hard choices. Overall, Johnson’s tone is depressive, apathetic, and nostalgic.
One passage in Johnson’s story illuminates this tone particularly well. This passage appears nearly in the middle of the short story. The main character explicates the conditions of his wife's illness, Guillain-Barré syndrome, which causes body paralysis. In the beginning of the short story, the reader gets acquainted with the fact that Charlotte is paralyzed and is explained the “mechanics” of the syndrome. As the story progresses, the narrator chooses to reveal how his wife fell ill. In this passage, Johnson takes the reader through the process of how Guillain-Barré syndrome gradually causes the paralysis of the entire body. Johnson starts the revelation simply: “The woman you love gets the flu” (Johnson). This sentence is extremely simple in syntax and word choice, but for the reader, who has already read half the story, it inevitably signals some ghastly continuation. The continuation does follow – in the horrid excess of medical terminology. Further, the passage consists mostly of medical terms which signify grave health conditions. Johnson puts them one after another: “After an ER doc inserts a Foley catheter, you learn new words—axon, areflexia, dendrite, myelin, ascending peripheral polyneuropathy. - starts simply, complicates later” (Johnson). A scary conclusion creeps into the reader's mind: the mentioned terms are not familiar to the ordinary person, but they have become a normal part of the narrator’s life. The situation gets more depressed when Johnson engages metaphors in order to aggravate the effect which the excess of medical terms has on the reader. Johnson writes: “Soon, you behold the glycerin glow of a fresh-drawn vial of spinal fluid” (Johnson). This kind of narration shows the extent to which the narrator is depressed to see his wife in such a condition even though he is capable of thinking of metaphors. The way that Johnson depicts Charlotte's illness greatly influences the depressive and apathetic tone of the story.
Another important section of the story in which one can clearly see the melancholic tone is in the first paragraph. As with many texts, Johnson takes advantage of this first encounter he has with the reader in order to establish the atmosphere that will determine the rest of the text. First, one can see emotional negativity through grammatical negations in the first two sentences. In both of them, there is a description and then a negation: “can’t sleep” and “doesn’t help” (Johnson). This makes the reader feel the despair from the beginning. This is emphasized by having spring air, a typical symbol for freshness, be useless. The use of whispers, which one can read three times in this short paragraph, is also important. It sets an ominous, secretive tone. Furthermore, the inclusion of the band Nirvana also helps establish a disquieting tone, as the lead singer, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide while at the height of his fame. In addition, he and his band were famous for singing depressive songs. Finally, the author establishes a relationship between the two characters, yet with a marked separation. In truth, the narrator is relating more to the President than to his wife; conversely, his wife is listening to Nirvana, not to him. The final sentence is especially telling, as one can see that they sleep in separate beds, despite being husband and wife. This becomes especially disquieting when the bed that Charlotte uses is revealed to be mechanical.
Finally, a third passage in which one can see the disconnection and the depressive nature of the text is when they are preparing to have sexual relationships. They have not done it in a long time, in part due to the wife’s disability, and it seems mechanical, distant, everything that sexual relationships between husband and wife should not be. The narrator is astonished that he has an erection. Furthermore, the change in point of view from him to the drone is very interesting. “I see the moment coldly, distant, they way a drone would see it,” Johnson writes. The narrator does not identify with either himself or his body, which is in such a compromising predicament. Instead, he is seeing the action from a far off, electronic being. The narrator confesses that “everything’s the opposite of erotic” (Johnson) and it seems to be that one of the most passionate human acts has been finally reduced to its reproductive function, as one would with a robot. Nevertheless, it establishes a stark contraposition, as robots can do many things that humans cannot, which one can see throughout the whole tale, yet robots can never reproduce. Therefore, as mechanical as the sexual encounter may seem to be, it is still related to one of the few activities in which humans surpass drones.
In conclusion, Adam Johnson’s “Nirvana: A Great Story About Love in a Time of Drones and Holograms” establishes its depressive, melancholic mood throughout the whole story, mainly through the use of distance, mechanical descriptions and negativity. As its title states, the author attempts to represent the loneliness that can come from a contemporary sort of love in which machines become a third entity in a pair’s love life. Long from helping enhance the situation, electronic objects end up representing the rift between the couple, and maybe even deepening it. Therefore, it is important to read and examine this tale because it helps see what is wrong with the world today, and try to change it as much as possible.
Works Cited
Johnson, Adam. “Nirvana: A Great Story About Love in a Time of Drones and Holograms.” Esquire. n.p., 30 Jul. 2013. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. <http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a23504/nirvana-adam-johnson/>.
