Samuel Johnson the Just Representation Term Paper

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The symbolism of the story is very suggestive. The title "Emergency" hints at the main event in the story: Georgie, an orderly at the Seattle hospital saves in a mysterious a man who had come at the E.R. room with a knife thrust deep into his eye. Ironically, the other eye was artificial. The doctor who is presented with the case takes it as something that is part of the routine, but admits that it is beyond his competence: "He took his time getting down the hall to her, because he knew she hated Family Service and her happy tone of voice could only mean something beyond his competence and potentially humiliating. He peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk-that is, me-standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face. 'What seems to be the trouble?' he said."(Johnson) the image of the knife piercing the eye is symbolic: the author hints at the impaired sense of true vision that people have in general. The fact that the case is resolved by the befuddled orderly and not by the experienced and knowing eye-doctor is also significant. Georgie can perform a miracle unknowingly, without having any precise medical knowledge. The dream-like state is which he is therefore triumphs over science and reason. The author thus suggests that all reality is strange and spectacular, and that we are always in a state of "emergency." The ordinary world can always give place to the miraculous one. After this particular event, the two friends, Georgie and the narrator take a ride in the car through the snow. On the road they hit a rabbit but manage to save the little baby rabbits that were about to be born.

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Another saving act is therefore performed by Georgie. The narrator has a vision of angels falling from the sky: "that seemed to be a military graveyard, filled with rows and rows of austere, identical markers over soldiers' graves [...] on the farther side of the field, just beyond the curtains of snow, the sky was torn away and the angels were descending out of brilliant blue summer, their huge faces streaked with light and full of pity" (Johnson, 81) the image is of course, an allusion at the spiritual world that coexists with the material one. The spell is however shortly broken and the story teller realizes he has accidentally killed the rabbits they had just saved, during his vision. This turn of events is extremely important: Johnson thus proves that miracles themselves are mutable and unstable, just like the concrete reality. Nothing is absolute, not even wonders, and every time someone is absorbed by a certain part of reality, as the narrator was in his vision, something else happens in the other, unseen world. The whole of reality can never be thus seen in one glance.

Thus, the two stories showcase the way in which the 'just representation of nature' can influence the power a certain literary piece is likely to exercise over its audience.

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