Monique Ahmad

Joseph Cooper

Intro. To CRWR

6 May 2014

Analysis of The Book Of Jon

I personally really enjoyed the way this book was written. Sikelianos continuously changes the form in which she writes to make the book more interesting. She vividly depicts the happenings in the narrator's life with emotion and imagery. The Book of Jon, is a compilation of memories from the narrator’s life, by Eleni Sikelianos uses various literary techniques such as, repetition, change in stanzas, conflict and a change in point of view.  

Through out the book, Sikelianos uses repetition to either add more emphasis on a subject or create rhyme. On page 9, Sikelianos explains why she would make a movie for her father, even though he was absent during the majority of her life. She repeatedly says the phrase “my father” to show the readers that it doesn’t matter whether her father was present or not, he is still her father. Later on in the book, whilst telling an anecdote, repeatedly uses the word “hon” (28).  Here Sikelianos does this to not only emphasis the waitresses personality, but also to create a rhythmic flow through the lines.

My favorite aspect of this book is that it changes its stanza form between each story or chapter. The first section is a letter, so it uses a paragraph form. The next section is a script for a movie. As the book progresses we travel through stanza poems, prose poems, lists, and various other forms. Sikelianos does this to create a collection of various objects that represent different stages of her family history.  I was very impressed by how she changes her style of writing for smoothly.

This entire book is a conflict. Sikelianos writes this book to show all the conflict that has taken place in her family. She traces her family in her as far she can to explain how she came to be. She starts off by stating all the problems that she had to endure in her early life. Than she talks about her family background and moves on to explain how that has caused a domino effect in her family.           

Sikelianos also changes the speakers point of view very often. By doing so she allows us to get the perspective of all the character. I thought this was a really interesting way to write a book. At times it confused, but I also really enjoyed it.

"The Book of Jon" Analysis by Anna Boyer

Anna Boyer

Cooper

CRWR212

May 6, 2014

Analysis: The Book of Jon

            Eleni Sikelianos’ memoir, The Book of Jon, recalls memories of her father, Jon, who is ultimately a tragic figure that the reader grows to know and appreciate throughout these tales of a chaotic family. In her foreword, the author states that this work is part of a longer family history that is an illustration of the human experience as a whole. The idea of a family story told through multiple generations is a compelling one and Sikelianos’ work has many themes to represent the microcosm of the human experience that is her family as a whole. One of the key themes of this intimate family portrait is the dissolution of one’s quality of life as permitted by the self. Another is the imagery of the desert, both in nature and in life. This tale of the multiple layers of the author’s family and of the fall of her father creates a great deal of empathy for those involved and a world that is both dream and nightmare.

            The central father figure of Jon falls into a pattern of self-destruction that ends in his death inside of a motel room. Naturally, these behavior patterns have a strong effect on the rest of the family, given the nature of Jon’s addiction and the subsequent consequences. The factor that is the most intriguing about the disintegration of this man’s quality of life is that the suffering is largely self-inflicted. That being said, Jon suffers from a drug addiction, which is a mental illness that ultimately takes over his life. One section of the book that is especially powerful in terms of speaking to this tragically frustrating part of his personality is entitled “What Was in His Pockets”. This critically important part goes on for seven pages and includes a photograph of all of the items contained in Jon’s pockets at the time of his death, and also goes into the medications which he had been prescribed. The doctor who performed the autopsy described multiple possibilities for the cause of death. Sikelianos describes some of the medications and their uses: “He had in his possession Xanax and clozapine (indicated for the management of “severely ill” schizophrenic, bipolar, depression and dementia patients “who fail to respond adequately to standard antipsychotic drug treatment”)”. (Sikelianos 102) What follows these medical treatments and their intended uses is the author’s reflections on where her father could have possibly gone following his death. She proposes that people are only shadows of their full selves while living on Earth and that the mind can barely comprehend the space that the dead occupy, free from the harm they experienced on Earth. In the transcription of the obituary that appeared in The Albuquerque Tribune, the reader gets a vivid picture of the nature of this man that harmed himself throughout his life of wild adventure and crippling darkness. (Sikelianos 109) It is true that Jon’s suffering was largely self-inflicted, but Eleni Sikelianos gives us a picture of a man who was eventually defeated by the same elements that made him a gifted creative soul.

            During his life, Jon experienced the desert, both within nature and within his own mind. The author explains that he lived in several different places, including California and Albuquerque, trying to find the right place for his bohemian sensibilities. He eventually lands a job at the zoo, developing a connection with the animals, especially the bears. However, the desert is unforgiving physically and emotionally in the literal sense. It is hot and dry and offers little in the way of sustenance for those who were not designed to survive such extreme conditions. Jon’s life became like a desert as he slipped deeper and deeper into his addiction and closer to deadly consequences, since no living thing is designed to survive when the body reacts to an overdose. Jon did not belong in the desert due to his ancestral predisposition: “He might have simply sighed and stopped breathing. He might have been, after twenty-eight years of intermittent drug use and alcoholism, very tired.” (Sikelianos 103) Jon had an artistic predisposition that could very well not be satisfied by the dry, flat desert; he instead created an emotional desert for himself that could only be quenched by destructive forces. This is not to say that Jon was a bad person in the author’s eyes. Indeed, he was a troubled man that needed to escape to an environment in which he felt some form of control.

            Eleni Sikelianos’ work can be classified as poetic prose and she uses several poetic devices to tell her father’s story. One of the most obvious devices is that of conflict. Jon is in the midst of a struggle within himself and with members of his family, both of which are equally harmful in the end. She also uses figurative language in this story to describe scenes. For example, in the section titled “Book of the Dead”, she describes the morning of her father’s death: “This morning, the cat interpreted my father’s death for me. The whole theatre was running through her; she was like a TV, but you couldn’t see the show…” (Sikelianos 87) Even though Jon is gone, it is difficult to imagine him not existing in life. A third device Sikelianos uses is that of the flashback, which gives the reader an idea of the family’s experiences with Jon and how everyone’s lives were impacted by his behavior that was frequently driven by addiction. Imagery is also a very powerful device used in this work, describing abstract landscapes and experiences on the journey with Jon. Sikelianos’ style is quite unique in that she switches between prose and free-form poetry. These two structures lend a different mood to each section, moving from straight storytelling to an abstract reflection on a mental state. One of the most important elements to the whole piece is the author’s tone. Since she is writing about her father, the tone is obviously quite sentimental, but there is also a frustrated undertone, indicating that the author is angry with her father about the choices he made that impacted those around him.

Works Cited

Sikelianos, Eleni. The Book of Jon. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2004. 

Book of Jon

Lexie Johnson

Cooper

CRWR 212

6 May 2014

Book of Jon

​Eleni Sikelianos does a wonderful job with capturing the essence of her feeling about her father, Jon. She takes the reader on this nice metaphoric ride with her use of diction. The Book of Jon must have been something very emotional for the author to write. This piece of work has been different from the other pieces we have read in class because of its content. The Book of Jon makes the reader come more in contact with their feelings for their own guardians. Sikelianos found a  way to let the reader  know that what she is writing is very important to her because of the form and writing style of this novel.

​The book of Jon is a novel that is from first person point of view, telling about how the author felt, remembered and wanted to happen in her life. She did not have an easy life and the father figure was very much absent in her life. Though her father was absent in her life the narrator still talks about how she loved her father and just wanted him to be there for her and to stop doing drugs. Sikelianos uses different forms to get this point across  to the readers. Her style mixes between prose and poetry that has stanzas. Reading this novel was like reading a piece of her journal. This seemed to be really personal thoughts of hers which gave it a more journal feel to it.

​The narrator had this conflict of love and hate for her father. It was like she hated him for being on drugs and not knowing any better but she loved him because he did not know any better and she constantly  flashback to memories that she could recall was both happy and sad. It seemed as if in one point of time the author was very proud of her father and she was proud of her family's background. The author then goes through this point where she was disgusted because of her father and that she didn't want to have anything to do with him. She always overcame her struggles of hating her father with love because deep down the author knew that Jon was like a child and he never grew up. He never grew out of his state of doing drugs.

​Though the author never really did much to help her father after she realized his issues, she still never turned her back on him. She would still call to check up on him and see if he was alive. Whenever he father wanted to see her, the author would still see her father. In psychology I learned that some people have this certain need and feelings of self worth. This seems as if the author wanted her father to stop doing drugs and develop a new lifestyle which is healthier for her. It seemed as she wanted him to stop for her because she never turned her back on him. Though he caused her a lot of emotional trauma, the author still seemed as if her life was together and the fact that her father did drugs, was absent in her life and then died did not seem to have effect her that much. She still became successful and didn't fall down to his downfalls in life.

​The death of her father was a bittersweet moment for the author. It didn't really seem to have effected her that much because deep down Jon was never there for her and he was a major contribution to her life. I think that the narrator regrets never having the opportunity to actually have a father in her life so that they can do father/daughter things. His death was ore like something that was expected to happen in her life. she did morn over it because Jon was finally a finished chapter in her life and though his death was painful, it was better for him to be dead than alive because while he was alive he was killing himself anyway. 

The Book of Jon Analysis

Crystal Fulp

Cooper

CRWR 212Y

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Analysis: The Book of Jon by Eleni Sikelianos

            Have you ever read a book and then wondered if the meaning you got it from it was what the author was actually trying to say or if the meaning you took from it was just your own point of view shining through? I’m faced with this conflict after reading The Book of Jon. I have many deep-seated father issues (who doesn’t?) that inevitably change the way I perceived this week. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t think I understood this work in the way it was intended. In fact, I think this work isn’t at all what it seems, at least not at first glance.

            At first glance one is likely to see that this book is a patchwork collection of anecdotes about the narrator’s father. These anecdotes are presented to the reader in the form of poems strewn haphazardly through the book. Some poems are traditional in style whereas others are more experimental in nature. There are also quite a few pieces of prose poetry included. Basically, there are all types of poetry present spanning many years and many anecdotes. I also couldn’t connect a reason behind the organization of the book. I perceived the book as being highly unorganized with content thrown in wherever the author saw fit to put it. I then realized that this “disorganization” could be a very intentional style choice meaning to reflect the chaotic relationship between the father and child. It’s also possible that the alternating styles could reflect the author’s feelings about a particular anecdote, for instance, some anecdotes span many pages while others only span a couple? It could be argued that the anecdotes that meant the most or caused the most feeling in the author are reflected in the longer passages. However, that is just one of my many musings about this book and probably holds no real value, but is interesting to contemplate nonetheless. The only organization takes place in the sectional divisions, but I’m not sure what the merit of that was. There was “The Book of Jon” and the “Book of Death”. Obviously the former section is about his life whereas the latter section details what took place after his death, however, aside from that there is no real organization.

            The tone of this book is also interesting, as it tends to change frequently throughout the book. In the beginning, I detected pain, hate, and anger, especially during the first few poems. The poem entitled, “Notes Towards a Film about my Father” was especially powerful since pain, anger, and agony clearly shown through in that piece. It really demonstrated to the reader that loving Jon wasn’t easy and it wasn’t something that the narrator even understood. It seemed like the narrator was asking the reader, “Why do I even love him? Why do I even want to remember him? Why can’t I just move on?” It was about the conflict that results when you love a parent who just doesn’t have the capacity to love you back, at least in the way that you think they should. In fact, I’d argue that, that is what this entire book is about…conflict and purging. It’s the author’s way of detailing the conflicts through writing where the writing purges the author of their pain and agony…or at least attempts to. I’d even argue that the theme of the book is about loving someone who can’t you love back in the way that they should or in a way that you don’t expect or even understand. It’s a very powerful book because of this.

            The author’s use of literal and figurative language also helps to convey the messages in this book. There are times when the author is very literal and states things as they are, but there are other times when the author speaks of dreams and how dreams down. It seems like the figurative language helped to balance out the brutality of the literal language by giving some of poems a whimsical quality that makes one think of what could have been or even should have been. The whimsical quality doesn’t always convey happy feelings either as its also used to convey agonizing thoughts. I think the author was simply trying to soften the blow, but I can’t be sure.

            The author also uses a lot of imagery throughout the book; however, it’s the most powerful in the last section. I’m not sure if this is because the last section talks about death and death just hits us harder or if it’s something else entirely. I can see the images from the poem entitled, “What was in His Pockets” very clearly. The author spoke of longing to see their father in the hallway, on the steps, or anywhere. The images intertwined with the tone (of longing…almost begging) to create a powerful image that left my heart splayed wide open. Simply put, it hurt to read it. It hurt because it helped me realize that no matter how badly our parents hurts us that we will always love them…it’s involuntary, no matter how much we wish it wasn’t.

            This book is powerful. It’s powerful because it touches on one of the very few things that connect us all as people and that is that our parents sometimes hurt us. In some cases they deeply wound us leaving us scarred for all eternity. They may hurts and make us angry, but we still love them and want them to love us. It’s seems as if we will always crave something from them. For some of us, that’s a life-long prison sentence because some of love people (parents) who don’t love us back (appropriately), which means that we’ll always search and long for it. It isn’t something that we can run from and this book perfectly illustrates the human condition in this regard. It also drives home the point that humans tend to destroy the people they love the most.

The Book of Jon Analysis

Deyanira Bustos

Joseph Cooper

CRWR 212 Y

May 6, 2014

Analysis of The Book of Jon

In the book, The book of Jon, Eleni Sikelianos creates many works such as letters, poems, pictures, and journal entries in order to capture the image of her father and his entire life. This was a very emotional and touching piece that provided various descriptions and images of her father. The author throughout her work provided imagery and different styles and techniques of writing in which she expressed all her feelings.

In one of her works in the book, Notes Towards a Film About My Father (Jon), is a distinct form and technique of writing. Throughout the work she questions “Why should I make a movie of him?” creating a questioning, yet confused and unsure tone throughout the work. This work demonstrates how she was not able to see her father often, but only “once a year” which then answers the question of her not being able to create a “movie” of her father because there would not be enough images to make the movie and portray her love for him.

The writing and style in this work also is very distinct because it includes slashes (/) in order to separate the words but slashes are usually used to represent “or”. The use of these slashes cause there to seem to be a pause between the words but she also includes the word “pause” in parentheses throughout the work. In her work she also includes various numbers to list of the “Stories” she has of her father. She goes off to describe things about her father but the story seems to be separated into numbers.

Imagery and her use of diction also play a big role throughout the whole work because she is trying to depict and describe her father to the reader. An example of imagery in her work is “ Before he got old and craggy” allowing the reader to see her father as an old man. The use of the word “craggy” is able to describe his “old”, uneven, and rough skin. Another description that she incorporated into her work was “The small voices of children escape from windows across the courtyard” this represents imagery as well as personification. Voices are just sounds but she provides them with the ability to “escape” and “rise” giving them humanly characteristics.

This was a very interesting and depressing story that describes her life but mainly the life of her fathers. It depicts the hard times as well as the good times that she lived through throughout her lifetime. It depicted how she loved her father and loved him through thick and thin, despite everything that he did because in the end he was and will always be her dad.

Analysis of Book of Jon

Claire Lenore Smithers

Joseph Cooper

CRWR 212

May 7^th, 2014

Analysis of Book of Jon

            In this novel entitled Book of Jon written by Eleni Sikelianos, the author uses several different formats that embody the essence of her drug addicted father. The author uses formats such as poetry, proses, letters, snippets of memories, and photographs.  One way in which the author tells the mesmerizingly morbid story of her father’s heroine-filled life is by using very effective diction which creates an exciting yet dark tone. My personal favorite line is on page 15 which writes, “A bird of my tongue, and a beast of yours, the body of your discourse is discarded in fragments,” which is an example of the author’s beautiful word choice that sets the tone of contrasting images of light, dark, and shows fragmentation.

Another way in which the author expresses the idea of representing her father in different lights is by using a unique form of stanzas and line break. Seen throughout her poems, the author uses enjambment frequently, breaking off lines between sentences and thoughts. This break causes a dramatic pause between certain words or phrases, drawing specific attention to these ideas, and adds to the drama of the piece. Some of the pieces are allegorical, which the author uses to show ideas and her relationship with her father. The combination of all of the forms of writing show the author’s confused and mixed relationship with her father. The snippets of her life expressed through this style of writing is similar to a photo album, similar to The Pink Institution in which the writing style was changed to emphasize a photo album-like effect. Another way in which this style helps convey a certain tone and message to the readers is by writing in such a clattered way in order to intensify the feeling of being inside the mind of an addict.

 The author also uses figurative language to create beautiful images and express ideas of the hardships her father faces through addiction and homelessness. This book is a roller coaster of high moments of joy to low moments of depression and anger. Following the story of the author’s father through the author’s figurative language is extremely powerful. The author consistently contrasts these moments of highs and lows, perfectly outlining this tragic story of one man’s struggle.

Works Cited

Sikélianòs, Eleni. The Book of Jon. San Francisco: City Lights, 2004. Print.

Book of Jon - Analysis

Denise Bateman

Joseph Cooper

CRWR 212Y

May 5, 2014

 

The Book of Jon – Analysis

 

Eleni Sikelianos’ The Book of Jon is a tribute to her father, a combination of her poems, open prose, and journal entries that chronicle his life and his life’s impact upon his family. She writes with astonishingly candid honesty about her father’s heroin addiction. As a daughter of a father who fought his own battle with alcohol addiction, I found this piece to be hauntingly heartbreaking in its raw, unapologetic remembrances. I struggled to get through the book.

 The theme of addiction, whether it be narcotics or alcohol, is all too familiar to too many of us. wondered as I read through the pages why Sikelianos’ chose to write about her father’s addiction. Was it to help her make sense of her childhood? Was she trying to connect or identify, perhaps resolve in some way, her father’s inability to choose his family and health over a momentary drug-induced high? She seems to understand her love for her father and his imperfections even in that “here you are, part of a long, boring trend of absent fathers and junk-high assholes” (pg 7) reflection.  I believe her goal with The Book of Jon was to recognize her own internal conflict with her father, somehow giving herself permission to love this flawed man regardless of his addictions and to forgive him for the harm he caused her and others. I believe all daughters want to love their fathers. In the perfect world, in the hearts and flowers world society paints for us, fathers should be loving, doting role models for their daughters – someone who nurtures their child and provides stability for them. When that is not the case, how does one reconcile the preconceived notion of what a perfect father should be with the reality one ends up with in real life? Sikelianos speaks of the childhood father she would have wanted to have had on pages 32-33, musing that what she would have wanted would have been a father that came to see her regularly, gave up his addiction and replaced it with a regular job, nice home, and a future relationship with him in which she can visit for holidays and reflect on good times from her childhood. But sadly, as she confesses on page 8, she “has no hopes of you meeting grandchildren, or seeing my sister live into adulthood”. Again, the theme of reflection, of resolving the painful truth with the desired reality, permeates into her writing.

  I believe by writing about the truth of her father’s addiction, Sikelianos’ not only shows her deep affection for her father, but gives her readers (particularly those who can identify with a love/hate relationship with a father consumed by addiction) a reason to pause and reflect on their own parent/child relationships.

Although the tone of her work is sad and reflective throughout much of the work, Sikelianos’ descriptive languages and use of some beautiful similes while describing times and settings of her memories in her book give her readers much needed distraction from the ugliness of addiction.  On page eleven, she describes the night skyline in Albuquerque as seen from a plane’s view as “lights like shining asters melting at the edges”.  Page 48 she describes time as “laid out in dark gloppy hands, like black clumps of glistening seaweed stretching both ways, forward and back”.  Also on page 61 in “…winterfat bushes like chubby wicks scrubbing up the dirt”.

I found Sikelianos’ father’s admission on page 49 that while traveling cross country with his current girlfriend and most of his children from other women, regardless of the chaos with fighting with his girlfriend and having heard his daughter, Eleni, admit that she never really thought her father loved her, he felt that during that trip he was “living his family dream” simply because everyone was all together. It’s a heartbreaking scene simply because it makes you long for her father to have been strong enough to have pulled himself out of his self-imposed addictive darkness and actually lived that family dream, but yet, he was not able to do so. Is it truly as Sikelianos says on page 8 that “there are factors, chemical predisposition, habits, weaknesses of will” that prevents an addict to change?

The last chapter of her book was very effective. She collects letters from her step-mother and siblings on their own remembrances and dreams of her father after he had passed away. Interesting to see how each had distinctively different, yet, almost each dream Joe is still alive. There is a tone of spirituality about this…how each reader will interpret this is greatly due I suppose to their own spiritual and religious beliefs, but, in the most basic sense, it seems to speak to love transcending death. Love is greater than death, and once a person has been a part of your life, they remain, even after death. Sikelianos summarizes one opinion of our life from Dante’s viewpoint, that we are only ghosts of our true self while on earth and only find our complete self when he break free from this world (pg 106).

The most difficult part of the book to read for me was the section on pages 100 – 101 when the writer speaks of the material possessions in her father’s pockets on the day he passed away. In a box in the top of my closet, I have such a collection from my own father. Things he had in his wallet and work clothes pockets the day he died. There was a pair of green dice that he always carried for luck, brought back from Korea when he was in the army. A gold pocket watch that I gave him as a Christmas gift when I was sixteen. Pictures in his wallet – one of me at age seven, another from my high school graduation, and a picture of my mother and himself from 1962 while they were still dating. A Red Cross blood donor’s card, crumpled and well-used. In the end, do just a few things like this sum up a man’s life? His desire for luck, family that loved him, time?

I think that Sikelianos did an excellent job of capturing a daughter’s reflections on her father. She looked at the imperfections of the man, attempted to analyze his life and his actions, but ultimately concedes that while he may not have been the man nor father she would have wanted, he was still her father, and loving him was never a question.

 

 

 

 

The Book Of Jon Analysis

Kaitlin Dixon

Prof. Cooper

CRWR 212

5/6/2014

Book of Jon

Throughout this reading I’ve been overwhelmed by the powerful imagery. The imagery that really began to infiltrate my thoughts was on page 11 and said, “Lights like shining asters melting at the edges, vagrant star-like pinpoints winking from the foothills.” The imagery in not only this sentence but this passage gives me the overall sense of being in a world where everything coexists, whether in peace or not. This is what I feel because of the transitions from light to dark, then into the lights symbolizing ideas lighting the world. This piece makes me feel like Sikelianos is trying to tie in the connections from one to another in daily life.

            Throughout this book, I enjoy the author’s use of flashback from other perspectives in order to give the reader new views of the man that is being discussed. On pages 18 and 19, I really enjoyed reading the little blurbs about stories that were told by Elayne. It adds a personal touch to the work, and even gives the reader a sense of recognition that this man, however flawed he may be, had other sides than what one person sees. To Elayne, this man is a crazy man who fought with her but also spent good time with her as well. He wasn’t always bad. I think the author is trying to show the reader to consider how a person acts in all different roads of life before judging them as a positive or negative person.

            In the rest of these works, I thoroughly enjoy the vivid imagery, many examples of simile and metaphor (including that on page 11), and other literary features. I love the way the author wrote this, especially her use of diction and style to format each piece perfectly for the reader. My interpretation of the pieces as individual members in a group was extremely reliant on the form she uses and the diction chosen to portray her father. I feel that she really connected to the audience. Throughout her works, she gives many different views of her father, including one that tells how she used to treasure the limited time they had together, but now realizes what a difference it has made in her life to know the truth about him. She uses her own new found (or developed) clarity in order to point out differences in her thoughts.

            I really enjoyed this work and liked the way it was written. The depth of the work, along with its well thought out organization really helped the reader move through the reading smoothly. I think the author did a wonderful job at capturing my attention, and letting her story flow through many different perspectives. She may or may not have met her own personal goals, but I believe that her work is well written and constructed.

Humanimal Analysis by Anna Boyer

Anna Boyer

Cooper

CRWR212

April 22, 2013

Analysis: Humanimal

            Bhanu Kapil’s Humanimal is a story written in poetic prose form and is based on the story of two girls who were found dwelling with wolves in the city of Bengal, India in 1920 (Kapil IX). While these girls still had their human form physically, they were in another, non-human space mentally. Through living amongst wild creatures, the girls are essentially dehumanized and live outside any written system of law. Kapil’s work, through historical account and first-hand experience as a filmmaker, explores what exactly it means to be human and what it means to be an animal and just how blurred the lines are between those two realms.

            One of the main themes woven throughout the tale is that of dehumanization. The two girls who were living with the pack of wolves, Kamala and Amala, wear white dresses as their only clothing, as the author observes from a photograph. This seems to be one of the factors that distinguishes them as members of the human species apart from their physical bodies. At the Home, others watch in fascination as these beings are taught to eat and speak as humans do. The action of the staring automatically gives them an animal-like designation, since such a situation is eerily similar to what happens on either side of zoo enclosures. The narrator describes the scene in which she first discovers the girls living amongst wolves: “Her elbow as thick as a knot. I said it was cartilage-the body incubating a curved space, an animal self. Instead of hands, she had four streaks of light. An imprimatur, she saw me and flinched” (Kapil 6). A being that fits this description is not viewed as fully human in the context of society, and “domestication” is the order of the day. Kamala and Amala cannot speak the way that humans can when raised and socialized amongst other humans, and that lack of speech is a sharp dividing line between the human realm and the animal realm. The girls are dehumanized and are forced to conform to what the society expects, essentially spinning a tale comparable to those of colonized nations that were forced to adopt the ways of the invading culture.

            The second theme that runs through Kapil’s work is that of animals living outside a world governed by systems of law. Animals live outside the structures of human law and order, not because they are stupid or ignorant, but because they are not expected to. Although the mental space that Kamala and Amala occupy is questionable and a cause for concern in the minds of many people, it is their physical form that assigns them to the difficult task of learning the ways of “civilized” life and the laws, written and unwritten. This, in part, is what makes Kapil’s descriptions of the girls being roughly shoved into human society so brutal: they do not know how to function as humans, but only as wolves without a thick coat of fur. When Amala tragically passes away during the process of these domestication efforts, Kapil writes: “Red worms came out of their bodies and the younger girl died. Kamala mourned the death of her sister with, as Joseph wrote, ‘an affection’” (Kapil 55). The law, in a social sense, not a legal sense, killed Amala and eventually Kamala as they try to cross the thin border that separates humans from other animals, which includes the display of emotion. Social constructions ultimately brought around the deaths of these two girls in society’s demand for human conformity.

            Kapil also uses several poetic devices in her work to describe this emotionally and intellectually challenging tale, even though it is written in narrative prose. One of the devices she uses most powerfully is that of imagery, particularly in descriptions of the jungle. The following passage is simply one example of an image built through language: “At the edge of the jungle was a seam, a dense shedding of light green ribbons of bark. A place where things previously separate moved together in a wet pivot” (Kapil 6). Even though the description is abstract, one can still construct the scene mentally. A second device that Kapil uses is a foil. Dr. Joseph Singh serves as a foil to Kamala and Amala as the head of the Home and eventual officiator of their burials. He is not necessarily an antagonist but he does take the girls from their environment and is present for the difficult journey. This piece, as a whole, is a narrative poem, in that is uses poetic language and form to tell a compelling and very complex story of the thin veil between human society and the animal world.

The point of view of the narrator in this work is quite interesting because it is Kapil herself as a filmmaker tracing the steps of a journey that happened in the past. The narrator tells the story based on knowledge from primary and secondary sources as well as what she has observed herself, blending to create a story rich in emotion and sensory details. The use of symbolism is also quite heavy in this work, especially within the jungle itself. The jungle represents the unknown and is a concealer of things not present in modern human society. The fact that Kamala and Amala emerge from the forest adds even more to society’s need to domesticate them. Another device that Kapil uses is that of syntax. She orders her words in a very poetic way, giving them meaning that goes well beyond the surface, creating both mystery and empathy for the historic figures and the author.

Works Cited

Kapil, Bhanu. Humanimal: A Project for Future Children. Berkeley: Kelsey Street Press, 2009.

Humanimal Analysis

Crystal Fulp

Cooper

CRWR 212Y

April 22, 2014

Humanimal Analysis

            Humanimal was an interesting read from start to finish. Upon picking it up one isn’t really sure what to make of the work, as it doesn’t follow the typical form for poetry or even works of fiction. The subject matter is also difficult to pinpoint, as it tends to change sporadically as one reads. This piece is very difficult to sort through, but one can argue that the author did this quite purposefully. The main purpose behind this work is to stimulate the readers’ ability to think on an intellectual level. The author wants the reader to sit with text and ponder its meaning and to even give it their own meaning. The text is simply an elegant mish-mashing of different forms and content that presents the reader with a literary patchwork quilt to piece together as they read and the “story” unfolds.

            When many people read books they often wish to nail down the genre and form of the piece that they are reading. They do this in hopes of being able to create a framework that they can use to help them understand the story. The problem (or a point of contention) with Humanimal is that one can’t really nail down its genre or form. Personally, that threw me for a loop as I read the book. I kept saying, “What am I reading?” The book doesn’t present one specific genre because of its changing content and style. I wavered between it being literary fiction and prose fiction. Obviously the book has literary merit in that it’s a complex and multilayered story that discusses a multitude of important things, such as the balance between humans and nature and even the wild that lives in each individual person (think instinct here, like how animals behave in the wild). The changing form also threw me for a loop as I read. I went into the book thinking that it would be prose, but it’s so much more. There is a mixture of form here and even reference material for the author. There is obviously some material that is somewhat true to life (especially with the wolf girls), but the work is still fiction in nature because of observations, memories, and memoir-type anecdotes that are shared with the reader throughout the work. The form is very dynamic in that the observations, anecdotes or whatever can be shared through prose poetry or a simply sentence that isn’t poetic at all in nature (at least to me). It should be noted that this only my personal understanding of the work therefore it’s subject to argument.

            The book is troubling until one gets passed the initial shock of reading such a strange and different text. Until one understands that it is meant to be strange and thought provoking no real thought can be given to the content of this book. There were definitely parts of the book that were told in story form, especially in relation to the wolf girls, Kamala and Amala. However, most of this book seems to be an extended metaphor for life and nature. The story is easy to understand, but the metaphor is the meat of the book and is definitely where the struggle for comprehension begins.

            The author communicates the metaphor through imagery and a deep intellectual probing of sorts. In the beginning, all I could see in my mind as I read was a lush jungle forest full of greens, browns, and yellows. It started out to be a peaceful scene, but the image changed or evolved as I kept reading. It turned into a dangerous place full of unknown diseases, dangers, and even death. The inclusion of the feral children in the storywork greatly distorted one’s peaceful image of the jungle and made it something wild and uncontrollable. This reminded me of child psychology courses where I learned all about child development in growth. I have always thought that young children are very wild in nature and are similar to wild animals in many aspects. For instance, they only think and articulate their own needs and they also have to be taught not to bite, hit, kick, yell, scream, etc. Basically, all young children must be socialized (or civilized). In this way, normal children aren’t very different from the feral (wolf) children at all. The exception comes when normal children are socialized. Obviously feral children aren’t socialized at all, so they become “stuck” or “controlled” by their baser instincts. For me, this book spoke to the “wild” that each of us has inside of us. In a way, we are all nothing but wild animals that society has socialized or “broken”.

            After I finally came to this conclusion and felt comfortable with it, the metaphor began to change again and be all about some type of metamorphosis. Actually, as I read this book all I could think about what Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, which is a novella about a traveling salesman who morphs into this grotesque insect-like creature that repulses himself and everyone else around him. The main character spends the greatest part of the story adjusting to his metamorphosis. This book is definitely related to The Metamorphosis in that they both talk about a point of no return. In this instance, once people are socialized they have reached the point of no return and their metamorphosis into human beings truly begins. It works the same way in the case of the feral children. Their metamorphosis began when they weren’t socialized. In either case, the metamorphosis forms the basis for our experiences, which is the basis of our lives. Yes, the metamorphosis can be undone, but at a great cost to the individual. Look at the feral children, many of whom couldn’t survive in captivity. The same can be said for a socialized individual who ends up spending years alone in seclusion. The theme of a metamorphosis (of some type) was very important for me in understanding this text.

            This book is a beautiful, poignant, and lyrical exploration of human nature at its most basic form. The numerous experiences, observations, and historical anecdotes in this work fit together in such a way that it produces an experimental piece of poetry. For this piece, the poetry had nothing to do with form and everything to do with the meaning that the reader makes from the words.