Response to Denis Johnson's "Emergency"

Throughout his short story “Emergency,” Denis Johnson infuses his narration with a dream-like state. This, coupled with the fact that the narrator explicitly states that he regularly takes pills stolen from hospital cabinets, casts doubt on the credibility of the narrative voice, creating the perception that the narrator is unreliable.

This sense of an unreliable narrator is enforced by the voice calling into question his own memory of the events. This self-questioning is especially prevalent toward the end of the story. Following his description of the bunnies and the freak snowstorm, the narrative voice questions his recollection, saying, “Or maybe that wasn’t the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn’t matter” (Johnson 392). He recognizes that in his memory, these should be two distinct events, yet in his preceding description of said events, the snowstorm, sleeping in the truck, and squishing the rabbits are all part of the same memory. Finishing his reflection with “It doesn’t matter” reveals that not only does the narrator realize that his memories are not reliable, he does not care whether or not he is mistaken in his recollection, thus further depleting his credibility as a reliable narrator.

His descent into unreliability mimics the normal progression of dreams. In dreams, things may start out normal and make sense, but by the end of the dream nothing makes sense. Sometimes things get put together that do not go together naturally; other times, the dream shifts from event to event without any gap or discernible change in time. By the end of “Emergency,” the narration has become so like a dream that the narrator is in a confused stupor, though whether it is a result of something wrong with him mentally or the result of his drug trip is not revealed.

Unreliable narrators are used for a specific reason. Under normal circumstances, the reader believes everything that the narrator tells them, for they have no other lenses through which to view the story. Therefore, when an unreliable narrator is introduced, it is done in order to shift a reader’s perception of things. Once the reader realizes that the narrator is unreliable, they will begin to view the story differently, interpreting things in such a way so as to compensate for the unreliability of the narrator, thus forcing the audience to draw conclusions without being directly handed information. Through the usage of an unreliable narrator, Johnson forces readers to draw conclusions about the narrator himself and how he views life.