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The Lows and Highs of Drug Use
From the first paragraph, readers discover that drugs play a role in the story, for good and for ill. The narrator goes looking for Georgie, who steals drugs from the hospital. Readers can infer that the narrator is bored and looks to Georgie for more than conversation; he wants to find Georgie for the drugs he has. As an orderly, Georgie has access to drugs. As a clerk, the narrator does not.
The drugs’ harmful effects are evident. Georgie cries and trembles as he mops, hallucinating that the clean floor is still covered with blood. Later, the narrator returns to Georgie who is terrified, staring at the floor, and fearful of the squishing noise his shoes make. The drugs also make Georgie dangerous. While prepping Mr. Weber for surgery, Georgie’s judgment is impaired and he pulls the knife out, which could have been fatal.
At the fair, the narrator and Georgie see a TV crew interviewing a champion for LSD, a psychedelic drug. Johnson’s LSD champion is likely American psychologist and counterculture icon Timothy Leary, who famously coined the phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out.” The counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s rejected traditional views of morality and held contempt for authority. The brutality of the Vietnam War and the uncertainty of the military draft especially fueled the movement. Part of the counterculture’s alternative lifestyle included recreational drug use as a means of escape. The presence of the LSD champion at an ordinary county fair suggests that the drugs of the counterculture are gaining mainstream interest, if not acceptance.
The narrator sees the world through the lens of drugs. He makes cryptic comments like “the sky is blue and the dead are coming back” and “the road . . . cut straight through the middle of the world.” His comments suggest that the world is an anxious and dangerous place. The narrator’s drug-induced hallucinations also terrify him, for example, when he mistakes a drive-in theater for a military cemetery and the projected movie for descending angels.
Despite the negative influence of drugs, however, the narrator also sees the world through a positive lens, often discovering beauty rather than ugliness and fear alone. For example, in the afternoon sun he sees how the truck’s hood, once bright orange, transforms into a deep blue hue. As the sun sets, he notices a mesmerizing streak of sunset beneath the cloud’s edge. At the drive-in theater, he sees “a whirling square dance” in the falling snow and in the morning “an abundance of blossoms on the stems of the drive-in speakers.”
Blindness
Drugs are associated with Georgie’s occasional blindness. Sometimes, his blindness creates humorous absurdity, like when he says that Mr. Weber’s face is dark, so he can’t see what he’s saying. Other times, it causes tragedy, such as when he kills the jackrabbit because he did not see it. And yet, Georgie sees well enough to remove the knife from Mr. Weber’s eye and extract the unborn bunnies from their dead mother’s womb. Although the drugs blind him, Georgie has moments of visual and mental clarity when his kindness and compassion drive him to help others.
Similarly, Mr. Weber is semi-blind. His right eye is artificial, and his left eye has a hunting knife in it. His wife tried to blind him because he was peeping on their sunbathing neighbor. The incident alludes to Jesus’s comment on sin: “And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.” (Matthew 18:9). For his sin, Mrs. Weber tries to blind him. Logically, he should be blind. Yet he is not. Nurse calls it a miracle.
Both Mr. Weber and Georgie’s sins lead them to near blindness. And, yet, neither man is completely blind. The “miracle” of both men still being able to see suggests either that God is more forgiving than might be expected or that astonishing things do happen purely by luck.
The Inevitability of Death and the Persistence Life
The scenes with the jackrabbit and bunnies show that death is inevitable. Due to Georgie’s carelessness, reckless driving or impaired state, he accidentally runs over a jackrabbit. His initial reaction is to retrieve the dead animal for breakfast. Using the same hunting knife that he earlier removed from Mr. Weber’s eye, Georgie dissects the rabbit. The knife creates a natural juxtaposition between Mr. Weber and the rabbit. Georgie saves Mr. Weber’s life by removing the knife. Yet in this case, the rabbit is already dead. In a seemingly fortunate turn, the rabbit is carrying unborn children. With the knife, Georgie expertly extracts the still-living bunnies. However, death is merely delayed and not thwarted. The narrator, entrusted with the bunnies’ safekeeping, accidentally squashes them. Carelessness, drugs, or both result again in death.
Conversely, the persistence of life is evident in Mr. Weber's case. Upon his arrival at the emergency room, his condition appears dire, with the knife perilously close to his brain. Despite the uncertainty surrounding his prognosis, Georgie, an untrained orderly under the influence of drugs, successfully removes the knife. Miraculously Mr. Weber makes a full recovery and is discharged the next day, defying the odds. Although death is an inevitability for Mr. Weber in the future, on this particular day, life prevails as he seems unwilling or unable to succumb to it.
