The Intoxicated - Ridiculously Detailed Analysis

Let's follow Thomas Foster's guidelines and look at Shirley Jackson's "The Intoxicated" like an amateur professor:

Quests

First, is this story a quest? Sort of. The man is going to the kitchen to sober up. The man is on the quest, not the girl, because the story is about him going to the kitchen. The girl is already there. By the way, the man is nameless, but the girl is Eileen.

The girl is the closest thing the man encounters as a challenge or a trial. His real reason to go there [this is easy] is to learn something about himself, because self knowledge is always the real reason. But what does he learn? That's the hard part. Most reviewers would say the man learned from the girl that he and his generation are irresponsible and bringing the world to the brink of destruction. I, on the other hand, think the man might have learned that he and his generation used to think like Eileen and her generation and took things too seriously and overreacted to events and trends, but eventually matured and learned to accept the world as it is, that life goes on, so make the best of it while you can.

Communion

Eileen gives him coffee, which makes him feel better, and they have an interesting conversation. This is where they exchange ideas and where the man learns about himself (whether you believe his point of view or Eileen's on the future of the world)

Vampirism

We have an older man who could represent outworn values, and a young, virginal woman, but there's no stripping away of energy or life force. So there's no vampirism in "The Intoxicated".

Intertextuality (Prior text)

I am reminded of Aesop's "Ants and the Grasshopper" and the Biblical flood. The girl thinks more people should be preparing, like responsible ants, either to prevent the world's destruction or for life afterward, rather than party on like irresponsible grasshoppers. In the Bible, the flood erased all that was bad in the world and gave it a fresh new start for Noah. Total destruction, as the girl describes, would have the same effect and give the survivors a chance to live in the utopia she envisions.

Both cases of prior text tend to support Eileen's point of view, that the man's generation is wrong and things will be corrected by Eileen's generation after the current ways are destroyed, but didn't God tell Noah he wasn't going to destroy the world again?

Weather and Seasons

Regarding atmospherics: it's hot. That's about it. No rain or fog. Nothing murky. It's probably summer.

Does summer mean anything? Maybe. If spring is the season of youth, then that would be Eileen's season. Summer would be the season of adulthood, so that would be the man's season. Eileen came downstairs because it was hot and when she did, she came into the adult world--and didn't like what she saw.

Other Symbols and Metaphors

There is no flight, geography, or obvious Christ figure.

Regarding politics, there's an obvious generation gap. Eileen feels the younger generation is more responsible than the older generation and blames the older generation's irresponsibility for the world's imminent destruction.

Regarding sex: There's nothing overt. The guy mentions teen girls should be thinking about "necking" rather than the end of the world. Foster explains sex is often hidden under symbols or metaphors because of cultural taboos. I still can't find anything that might indicate sex.

Violence? Eileen's predicts the end of the world will be very violent.

Symbols? Eileen represents her generation and the man represents his generation. In Eileen's eyes, her generation is serious and studious and the man's generation is intoxicated and irresponsible.

Illness

Markings, blindness, or illness? The man is intoxicated. Foster says illness is never just an illness, so neither would be intoxication. The man's intoxication would mean he and his generation are impaired, which again tends to support Eileen's point of view.

Irony

Many Jackson short stories end with a kind of morbid irony. This one isn't as poignant as usual. The man talks to Eileen's father on the way out. They agree she is an extraordinary girl and appear to tacitly accept that she's overreacting to life and current events. Her father even looks around quickly as if he's afraid she's going to spread more gloom among the party goers.

If you're not sure how to read literature like a professor, I highly recommend Foster's book. It makes reading a lot more fun--no matter what you figure out, right or wrong!

References:
Shirley Jackson. The Lottery and Other Stories. 1948, 2005. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Thomas C. Foster. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Harper. 2003.

Fitzgerald and the American Dream in the 2000's

According to today's current events, 1% of Americans own 40% of the nation's wealth and income inequality is the greatest it's been since the 1920's--Fitzgerald's time.

Fitzgerald believed the American Dream was already over in his time. To him the Dream was the opportunity for a man and his family to enjoy freedom, self sufficiency, and just rewards for hard work. Class was determined by what you made for yourself--not what you inherited. By the 1920's, however, the wealthiest Americans had formed an untitled yet exclusive aristocracy on par with that in Europe and managed to block class mobility, ending opportunities for ordinary people and ending the American Dream.

Three of Fitzgerald's great novels were written in the twenties. Money and class are major themes in each, and The Great Gatsby, in particular, conveys the loss of the American Dream.

Economic changes afterwards, however, had a resetting effect, I believe, and the dream came alive again for the 50's through the 90's. Plenty of new money arose mainly from technology but also from retail and real estate: Hewlett and Packard (HP), Warren Buffet, Sam Walton, and Bill Gates just to name a few of the more famous.

Things were different by the 2000's though. Somehow people became convinced that trickle-down economics works for them, jobs were outsourced, and a housing bubble made people feel richer than they really were--enticing them into debt.

Special interests perverted the American Dream into borrowing money to pretend you own your house whose title is really held by a bank. (You don't own your house until you possess the title)

Then the housing bubble burst, credit collapsed, and we entered the Great Recession. Demonstrations against Wall Street indicate people are catching on to the trickle-down scam. People are realizing the perverted version of the American Dream is false and beginning to feel like Fitzgerald that the dream is lost once again. Maybe it is--temporarily--but maybe this latest recession will have another resetting effect and bring in a new era of prosperity. Realize of course, the next few years are still going to be rough. It may take a decade or two or more to recalibrate the economy. It's bigger and globalized now and special interests are more entrenched now than they were in Fitzgerald's day.

References:
F. Scott Fitzgerald. This Side of Paradise. Scribner's. 1920.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and the Damned. Scribner. 1922.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. Scribner. 1925.

More Shirley Jackson Stories (1948)

After "The Intoxicated", the next 5 stories in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and Other Stories are:

1. The Daemon Lover
2. Like Mother Used to Make
3. Trial by Combat
4. The Villager
5. My Life with R. H. Macy

Each of these is about a lonely person, making bad decisions, while struggling with reality and identity issues. They start out with someone intently preparing for something. At first they seem pretty ordinary. The detail makes you identify with their activity and you begin rooting for them as you begin to notice things aren't quite right. They get progressively unreal, turn creepy, and finally end with some twist to reality or loss of identity.

The psychology is reminiscent of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, and the loneliness is reminiscent of the Beatles's "Eleanor Rigby" and Tom Selleck's Jesse Stone TV movies.

It's not pleasant reading. Even the Macy story, which is supposed to be witty, and is to an extent, but the protagonist's total ignorance of the real world is so bizarre it overwhelms the wit--in my opinion.

I think I'll skip to the last story, "The Lottery", which I last read in school, and then put the book down for a while and read something a little less morbid.

References:
Shirley Jackson. The Lottery and Other Stories. 1948, 2005. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
"Eleanor Rigby". Wikipedia. web 2011.
Jesse Stone: Stone Cold. Dir. Robert Harmon. Perf. Tom Selleck. Brandman Productions, 2005. TV Movie.

The Intoxicated by Shirley Jackson (1948)

“The Intoxicated” is the first short story in the collection of The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson, first published in 1948, with an introduction by A. M. Holmes.

My analysis is based on reading How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. My conclusion is a little different than some of the others I've read, but I'm sticking with it, for now, because Foster convinced me that stories can have more than one valid meaning.

Basically other reviewers believe the girl is smarter than the adult and he found that kind of irritating and embarrassing. I saw the opposite. The girl is caught up in teen angst—this is 1948 and the world is just recovering from World War 2; the atom bomb and Communism are threatening; and she's been reading Caesar's Gallic Wars. She's convinced the world is about to end, but the man knows better. While he agrees they're living in “interesting” times, he knows teenagers tend to overreact. Adults know from experience that they'll eventually get through whatever's going on. He obviously got through World War 2, right?

I can relate to this. I was a teenager 30 years ago. Protesters warned us not to trust anyone over 30. The population explosion was threatening. We were going to run out of copper. The economy was in “stagflation”. I was ready to head to the wilderness and become a survivalist. But then came the “Big 80's”. I got a job, got married, settled down, had kids and got past all that. Now we have global warming, the Great Recession, partisan politics, and peak oil.

Before our time, humanity survived the rise and fall of Rome, the Black Death, the Great Depression, and countless wars. Obviously past performance doesn't guarantee future performance, but the long term trend is promising...

That's my take on the “Intoxicated”. After reading other reviews and rereading the story, all the other reviewers make perfectly valid points, but I guess I just relate better to the guy than the girl.

The “Intoxicated” is amazing because it's so short yet gives so much to think about. It's easy to read and reread and offers so much to analyze and re-analyze. Jackson's style and tone are unique and intriguing. This collection culminates with "The Lottery", which every American my age must have read in middle school and probably never forgot.

For more, see my detailed analysis of "The Intoxicated".

References:Shirley Jackson. The Lottery and Other Stories. 1948, 2005. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Heidi. "The Big Read IV: Shirley Jackson's The Intoxicated and The Daemon Lover". Adventures in Multiplicity. Nov. 4, 2008. web 2011.
Sydney Byrd. "Review of the Intoxicated by Shirley Jackson". examiner. Aug. 3, 2011. web 2011."The Big Read IV: The Lottery and Other Stories". bookshelves of doom". Nov. 3, 2008. web 2011.GradeSaver. "The Lottery and Other Stories Study Guide". GradeSaver. 1999-2011. web 2011.Håvard Nørjordet. "The Tall Man in the Blue Suit". DUO University of Oslo. 2005. web 2011.Thomas C. Foster. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Harper. 2003.