The Man Among The Seals, By Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson wrote and published four novels, and one of his novels were “The Man Among the Seals” which was a poetry novel. Denis Johnson used his life situations, memories, and problems for the novels he wrote and published. Johnson’s short story collection, Jesus’ Son, relates to his life by referencing Johnson’s personal struggles with heroin and alcohol. In his short story, “Dundun”, Denis Johnson’s characterization of Dundun (via dialogue) and description of setting results in a warning to readers on the corruptive power of opiate abuse and addiction.
Primarily, Johnson’s characterization of Dundun as a drug addict shows readers how drugs corrupt the user. For example, readers can learn about Dundun through his strangely calm dialogue in times of stress, such as “McInnes isn’t feeling too good today. I just shot him” (Johnson, 1). From this moment in the text, readers can infer that Dundun’s use of drugs has caused a decline in his moral and mental perception. Dundun’s emotionless response to what readers …show more content…
Johnson uses the description in the story to symbolize the actions, attitudes, and moods of the characters such as “There had been a drought for years, and a bronze fog of dust stood over the plains’’ (2). Just as the quote described the setting as “dusty” and “foggy”. That could be similar to a drug user’s brain as “foggy” and “dusty”. From the drugs ruining the brain making everything “foggy” in the head. Johnson was describing one of his characters Dundun in the story by using “The soybean crop was dead again… All the false visions had been erased” (2). Just as the soybean crop was dead so are the brains of drugs users. Which causes some memory to be erased from the brain, and their mindset is gone in showing that they are not or cannot be using their brains to think for their