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.