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The Coroner’s Photographs by Brent Staples ~ Literary Analysis   Leave a comment


       

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. ~ Mark Twain ~

Twain’s quote speaks of being prepared to die, just as the character Blake Melvin Staples must have felt. “The Corner’s Photographs” by African American author Brent Staples is a short story that is skillfully written and illustrates the death of a man and his surviving brother’s struggle when he confronts the image of the body.

It is the first sentence that captures the reader’s attention pulling them into the author’s profound thoughts. He uses the first person singular as he claims the feelings and words as his own, “I need this detail to see my brother full” (405). It is through the main characters eyes that we see the world, family and death. His distinctive narrative voice is powerful and filled with sadness, but no remorse. The style includes formal/informal words and strong sentence patterns that emerge because the action verbs that ends in “ing” only appear twice in the piece. The author also varies in sentence lengths which grabs the reader’s attention.

Repetition is applied in key words such as, dead, mourning (ed), and coroner’s report. These words emphasize their meanings to reinforce the theme of life and death. The tone, one is solemn and subdued as the story begins to reveal Staples personal disclosure of the events. This evokes emotions of sadness that lingers in the air above the reader as they absorb the traumatic event. The dialogue is minimal, yet connects to the theme, “Please don’t shoot me no more. I don’t want to die” and “Brent Blake is dead,” he said. Some guy pulled up in a car and emptied out on him with a magnum. Blake is dead” (420). The language spoken by Staples’s brothers is broken English. It depicts a street person, maybe they are uneducated individuals?

As the plot unfolds the reader is taken into a cold and sterile environment as the author places the reader in the coroner’s office with the dead body. The writer flashbacks to when his brother is alive, followed by his demise and then the corner’s examination. In the end it is revealed how a man’s life is summed up by one pouch, “The pouch contained a summary of the trial, the medical examiner’s report, and a separate inner pouch wrapped in twine and shaped like photographs” (421), coroner photographs.

Staples exposes new information in the ninth paragraph with a subtle riff by intertwining the element of irony with the backstory of the essay. It begins by naming a city, state and time, Roanoke, Chicago, six weeks ago. The irony is seen when the protagonist forecasts his brother’s death, “The signs of death were everywhere; his name was hot in the street” and “I told him that he was in danger of being killed if he didn’t leave town” (420).

The characterization incorporated within the essay begins with the protagonist. He is a strong man who has a heavy heart and is family oriented, “I bathed and diapered him when he was a baby and studied his features as he grew” (418). The sensitive doctor who tries to save Blake, the dying man, “I tied off everything I could, he said, and then he wept at the savagery and the waste” (418). The coroner is also a character in this piece through his/her actions. “The coroner dissects the body, organ by organ” (419). This brought the essay to a more complex level as medical terminology is given. In paragraph eleven the reader learns a new fact as part of the backstory, there is another sibling, “Six weeks later my brother Bruce called me with the news…” (420). And last but not least, Blake Melvin Staples, the deceased. His lifestyle and actions as a drug dealer in life and now death affects Staples deeply, “I had already mourned Blake and buried him and was determined not to suffer his death a second time…I skipped the funeral and avoided Roanoke for the next three years” (420).

There are two crises within the essay. The first appears when the author knows his brother is a target, “I sought Blake out to tell him it was time to get out of the business and leave Roanoke” (420). The second is an inner crisis that is uncovered, these are the mixed emotions about the untimely death of Staples brother, “I told myself to feel nothing” (420). The essay has no element of suspense and no real resolution, but hopefully holds closure for the author.

The writer uses sensory imagery and detail throughout the piece for instance, tap handles that mimicking wings…an inverted pyramid, boxy forehead…heart shaped face…a mouth whose lips are pouting and bloody…shattered vessels…a bullet track…pelvic bones jut up…smallest of the brothers…second toe is a signature…shot six times, three in the back…” plus the coroner’s report is very vivid in detail. Figurative language such as metaphors is used, “…taps handles mimicking wings, easily suggests a swan in mourning…his widow’s peak…an inverted pyramid” (417). The swan in mourning can be seen as the foreshadowing of the events that will soon follow.

The narrative arc shows how the protagonist has changed from the beginning to end of the essay. In the introduction, Staples speaks of his brother as a toddler and shows the strength within the family unit, “His feelings are mine as well” (418). It is in the body of the essay information is shared regarding Staple’s brother, the drug dealer. He struggles to have him leave the city for his own good, to stay alive. The conclusion brings the events to reality and stops the author’s world as the coroner’s photographs are viewed, “I opened the pouch; there was Blake dead and on the slab, photographed from several angles. The floor gave way, and I fell down and down for miles” (421).What the character has learned is that it is better to walk away from a loved one who is self-destructive, someone who will never change his ways then to stand by and watch their downfall.

The introduction is captivating and I couldn’t stop reading. The body of the essay developed as the events revolved around a coroner’s actions and flashbacks.  Each paragraph leads into the next smoothly connecting each thought. The conclusion reflected the first paragraph as it defined the medical examination of Staples’s brother in the coroner’s office.

I found this essay to be filled with love and a broken heart as it evoked strong emotions. It portrays the reality of life. It defines a man’s life as a pouch and the questions begin, what is life and death. Life is reaching your hand out to someone who is falling, “down and down for miles” and it is up to the individual to extend their hand or accept their fate. Blake Melvin Staples met his fate in death. I wonder, did Blake die in vain?

Works cited

Staples, Brent. “The Coroner’s Photographs.” Tell it slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 417- 21.

Buckeye by Scott Russell Sanders ~ Literary Analysis   2 comments


     

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, unnerves his strength, invites his end ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetic quote speaks of a close relationship between man and nature. It is a bond that if broken affects the inner and physical balance of man’s strength resulting in his demise. This reflects the author’s character the father and the sentiment regarding how he lived his life. A comparison is made as a man is old and vulnerable as trees and the earth are too while what is loved is slowly passing away. “Buckeye” by American essayist Scott Russell Sanders is a short memoir that skillfully reflects the author’s reminiscing of his father. It begins with the theme of buckeyes and their meaning, two objects that are focused on through images given to the reader, “…the brown seeds are shriveled now, hollow, hard as pebbles…” (384), with the subtheme of the love of nature shared by a father and son.

The first line immediately captures the reader’s attention as it pulls them in with an experience that is universal, death. The writer uses the first person singular to tell as well as show his personal experiences including backstory, “I learned to recognize buckeyes and beeches, sugar maples and shagbark hickories, wild cherries, walnuts, and dozens of other trees while tramping through the Ohio woods with my father,” (385) and “I listened, and heard the stir of breath” 385). The writer’s distinctive narrative voice is lyrical, innocent, authentic and intimate while his tone is soft as if he speaking to an old friend. The style includes formal/informal words such as the true names of trees, hornbeam, canoewood, hoop ash and hackberry. The exposition is of a story about a man’s life work through nature. There are strong sentence patterns and structure that includes strategic placing of commas to slow the reader’s pace down and the varying in sentence length, short next to long, mostly long. There does not seem to be a specific setting yet included in the backstory is the state of Ohio.

Sanders uses figurative language such as similes, “So he fondled those buckeyes as if they were charms…,” (285) and a simile that slows the reader down with commas, “To his eyes, their shapes, their leaves, their bark, their winter buds were as distinctive as the set of a friend’s shoulders” (385). The author’s choice of words helped the reader to visualize the scenes as the sensory imagery and details created concrete images, “…walking in a circle around the splayed roots of a sycamore. Laying his hand against the truck of a white oak, ruffling the feathery green boughs of a cedar,” (385) and “We came upon lone bucks, their antlers lifted against the sky like the bare branches of dogwood” (386). The dialogue is minimal for instance, “He would flex his hands and say, I do so far,” (384) and “That’s why the old-timers called it stinking buckeye, he told me” (386).

It is through backstory that personal information is revealed to the reader, “Only much later would I discover that the tree he called ironwood, its branches like muscular arms, good for ax handles, is known in books as hop hornbeam…” There is clear characterization incorporated within the essay beginning with the protagonist as a youth. The reader is taken through the author’s own natural progression of maturing as well as his father’s. The father is the second character who lived life through his hands, “I mean to tickle my grandchildren when they come along, he told me, and I mean to build doll houses and turn spindles for tiny chairs on my lathe” and “He sought to ward off arthritis not because he feared pain but because he lived through his hands, and he dreaded the swelling of knuckles, the stiffening of fingers” (384). In this essay the buckeyes could also be considered a character as they depicted years of survival as well as the affect they had on the characters, “He used to reach for them in his overalls or suit pants and click on them together…,” and “Do you really believe buckeyes keep off arthritis? I asked him more than once” (384).

Foreshadowing is evident in the beginning as the author describes the buckeyes, “…yet they still gleam from the polish of his hands” predicting the comparison to a deer’s eye, “…within a few paces of a grazing deer, close enough to see the delicate lips, the twitching nostrils, the glossy, fathomless eyes (386). Irony is present as the story unfolds to reveal the father was right, buckeye seemed to help prevent arthritis, but couldn’t help his heart in the end. The inner conflict within the essay addresses growing old and the fight to keep a man’s hands agile. The suspense arises as the fight against time and old age affect the characters resulting in death and the memories of a love shared of nature that lingers on. Its narrative arc begins with a boy learning of his father’s trade and love of nature. The body of the piece tells of a man who knew his trade but was not book smart. The end portrays the connection of understanding and love of nature, a common bond shared with his father which evokes emotion in the reader.

My holistic analysis is that the essay is effectively focused and the author presents the theme within the first two sentences. The transitions were smooth as each paragraph moved into the next subtly. The essay is well written through its organization and development.

Work Cited

Miller, Brenda and Paola, Suzanne. Tell It Slant. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2011.