Jesus' Son

“I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real.”

Throughout this story, the distinctions between reality and dreams, as well as memories and the present, are continuously collapsed. F**khead’s disconnection from reality is, here, directly compared to the “dream” of a dying man, demonstrating the fractious nature of his consciousness and highlighting the theme of The Slipperiness of Time, as a dream space disrupts and alters time.

“It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.”

Following a disorienting jump into the future, the narrative completely breaks down in this moment, revealing F**khead’s continuous hallucinations and his anger toward the world. The narrative here slips into a direct address toward the audience, implicating them in the choices that F**khead has made throughout the story.

“We bailed him out later, and still later all the charges against him were dropped, but we’d torn open our chests and shown our cowardly hearts, and you can never stay friends after something like that.”

A consistent aspect of F**khead’s character is his near-complete inability to hold any sort of long-lasting friendship. Only a few characters appear in multiple stories, and usually, when they do appear, they are memories or flash-forwards. This scene demonstrates why this might be: F**khead’s selfishness often conflicts with his desire to maintain friendships.