In Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” we see a complicated relationship unfold between many different characters. The main character in “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” is the narrator; we see the relationship between the narrator and the narrator doesn’t have a gender, but a distinct personality. Though we don’t know this for sure Al Jolson is dying from cancer and it assumed. Al Jolson doesn’t want to admit it to himself or others. Much of this story is left up to how the reader interprets the text while something’s are very obvious.
A huge moment in this story was the development with the narrator and Al Jolson when the narrator spent the night, but in the morning the narrator said they had to go.
They were close friends in college and began to get sick and the narrator pushed off seeing her as much as possible until it was close to Al Jolsons death. The quote
“Then it hit me like an open coffin. She wants every minute, I thought. She wants my life.”
The fact the narrator fears that by wanting one-on-one time with the friend, is even in correlation with wanting there life, is worrisome. Because the fact of the matter is he does, he does want to be able to go to the beach, and get up as this person feels, and leave the bed, but he can’t. Even after the friend dies, he refuses to confront the situation, the situation of missing her, or just the plain thought of fear for the narrators own life. The narrator says that Al Jolson,
“…was moved to the cemetery…”
In a way that the narrator was forcing themselves not to feel any emotion, which I feel has made sense because since Al Jolson and the narrator has been in the hospital together. Al Jolson doesn’t want to hear stories that would dim the spirit or make him sad. He has been trying to suppress the actuality of himself dying, in the same way the narrator has been protecting themselves from even the thought of him dying. The narrator does mention that
“Was I the only one who noticed that the experts had stopped saying if and now spoke of when?”
Since this piece was written in 1983 there were still quite a bit of racial inequality happening, and Al Jolson is a real person. He started doing black face and I feel that this was to cover up the fact that he was sick throughout time, and needed to get his mind off of the fact of him dying, though this is not acceptable he had to find the light from this darkness.
Though noticing that Al Jolson was dying did not want to admit that, or to Al Jolson wanting to spend as much happy moments as possible.
Fear of death in this story is very prominent as well, as I talked about earlier. For example, she loops a phone cord around his neck and exclaims
“end o’ the line.”
They both dance around the fact he’s dying and finds it comforting but also humorous that they don’t bring up death directly. But the both of them fear the unknown and the unknown is when and how someone is going to die. Will it be painful? Will it be quick?