"Jesus' Son" reaction assignment

"Jesus' Son" is as frightening look inside the life of a bottom feeder, harvesting all the drugs that trickle down to his spot in the cold abyss he knows as life. On the contrary to most people I have discussed this work with, I enjoyed this roller coaster ride with my arm raised in the air. I feel that there is hope for our narrator when it is all said and done. In "Car Crash While hitchhiking" he is involved in this horrific car wreck but is not hurt. He stands around as if nothing is wrong, almost as if he is hallucinating the whole scene. I feel his main problem is recognizing weather things are really happening or if they are a product of the drugs he has been ingesting. He is very descriptive of the pain and carnage going on around him, but is unable to feel the pain, only see it. Although he does nothing of real help in the situation, the optimism here lies in the fact that he can at least recognize that there is something askew. We can feel that he has guilt about the way he lives his life. In "Out on Bail" we see on page 40, where they are going to forge the Social Security checks, how he believes that this is the last time he will pursue a crooked fix. He truly feels guilt about the way he does business. That he will turn his life around, not right now, but when the time is right, he will get it going for himself. He may even start tomorrow.
This is a typical addicts train of thought. Just this one last time, just one more fix and then He'll start the turn around. The problem is addicts think this before every fix, they truly believe that this one will be the last one. Until the next one that is.
The metaphors Johnson uses in this book are deep and direct, sometimes so direct that we can barely notice them. In "Work" he keeps describing how there is something about the bartender that he loves, but can not put his finger on it. Maybe it is her generous pouring style, or maybe it is that fact that she was his mother. It is revealed in the final sentence of the story that the woman was indeed his mother. The whole time Johnson spends on her he describes her caring, motherly approach to the pouring of a drink. These subtleties were almost overlooked by me until I read the last sentence, but then it was quickly realized that all that description was motherly metaphors. To go further with it I started to think on a deeper level that alcohol is the mother's milk of an alcoholic, who would be more appropriate to be serving it than his mother herself.

Michael clark