Page 9
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Animal considers sunlight, sea, islands and cities returning to dunes. In a speech about sin, he recalls a mother being discarded, rejects a poet's pit of stone and promises rum and cokes; the closing paragraph places drinkers and merchant Englishmen aboard a Caribbean ship.
Animal's speech sets maternal hurt beside American prosperity, science and the cost of living. The final contrast between drinks ashore and workers tucked in the lower deck brings those claims into a shipboard scene.
The typed prose follows Animal by the sea: 'Animal looking out wonders about being the earth of / things.' Animal then speaks of a mother who 'wept' and of 'pitchers of rum and cokes', before the scene shifts to the Caribbean and 'its Merchant Englishmen'.
The passage moves from lyrical sun and sea to Animal's bitter speech about family and America, then to a ship's deck. Its images are dense and associative rather than plotted.