Morris Markey's piece, "Drift," belongs to a subgenre referred to as "the procedural." To your mind, what characteristics of the piece make it an example of the genre? How does this help with or determine the structure/organization of the piece?
The piece has a noir-ish atmosphere. What is the connection of that atmosphere to the point or theme of the piece?
Remember, we're practicing good writing here, not just literary analysis. Your comments should be crisp and clear. Avoid generalizations, tortured syntax, and muddy language.
Your response is due by 4 p.m., Wed., Feb. 13.
20 comments:
"Drift" is categorized as procedural writing because step-by-step it walks the reader thru the lonely world of the lower-class deceased and also the cold and detached process that is carried out by the powers that be. For example, instead of starting the reader's journey at Hart's Island and then flashing back to explain how we ended up there... Markey starts us at the beginning-most place in the story and leads us through to the end. In my opinion it helps the writing because it allows us to read it as a news story -although literary, more so than if he had done the opposite... but for me it doesn't start to really feel like News until the last page when he gives the facts, "burials conducted twice each week..."
The connection to noir-ism is that we sort of feel like 48227 may be identified. Although it all comes to nothing that the woman who traveled East may know him, it was still possible he wouldn't die a stranger. The literary part of the piece, for me, was the contradiction between the officials allowing him to be buried with the Catholics because they thought he should have the benefit of the doubt~ and then at the very last line when Markey said he'd "decided he had enough of living." Not totally factual, or at least not fully explained to us.
"Noir" is a term most associated with a subgenre of suspense or thriller films made after WWII, though many aspects of it actually appeared much earlier -- for example, in the hardboiled detective novels of Dashiell Hammett and the films based on them (for example, Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key & The Thin Man). . . The visual language of film noir derived in large measure from even earlier German expressionist films (Frit Lang's M would be an example). . . But noir is also an attitude, particularly toward the fate of the individual in mass society.
Okay. I wasn't 100 percent sure so I looked it up. Merriam Webster used the definition "crime fiction featuring hard-boiled cynical characters and bleak sleazy settings," so I went with that for my response. Thanks!
As we discussed in class, Procedurals are a series of vignettes or scenes linked together without traditional transition. "Drift" does exactly that. There are four clear cut scenes. The first is the scene where the detective has a release form for a deceased male. The male will be buried unidentified. The next scene prepares the body for burial. The refer to him as a number four times. They also decide to bury him with the Catholics because he wore a scapular and were giving him the benefit of the doubt even though he committed suicide, clearly against the religion. The third scene describes Hart's Island and the burial process. The last scene describes the island from a more distant perspective of how other's come in contact with the island. These scenes have no coherent links between them. The story just skips to a new scene. Each scene makes sense in the story and they are presented in a logical way, but they aren't traditionally connected. These things help determine the structure of the piece because it makes it feel choppy. It adds to the noir-ish atmosphere by making the reader feel the tension. It makes you wonder how it would be if you were an unidentified body being buried in a mass grave. It almost feels like number 48,227 not even a person, or never was. This detective and the grave diggers bury him without a blink of an eye just like everyone else. I feel like this story really outlines human mortality and the fact that it doesn't matter. You can die, and maybe people will miss you, but maybe no one will even know who you are. People are just chess pieces ready to be taken. You don't miss them unless they're the king or the queen.
“Drift” is a series of vignettes stitched together to complete a full story. This is one of the reasons that it is categorized as procedural piece. Morris Markey illustrates the process of burying unidentified body number 48,227 in scenes. First, he writes about the morgue where a detective is doing paperwork and finds the green “release for burial” slip for the body. Then, he writes about the cellar where all the bodies are kept. The workers determine that the body is to be buried with the Catholics because number 48,227 was wearing a scapular when he died. Next, the reader gets a description of Hart’s Island, where the bodies are packed into large trenches. The last vignette tells us more about the burial process and that about eight thousand bodies are buried on the island each year. It also tells us that about five hundred bodies out of the eight thousand are unidentified each year. The vignette style of writing makes “Drift” read like a short story up until the end. The end caps the story with a great deal of newsy details and reads almost like an article.
The theme of the story is morality. The dark subject is what makes “Drift” noir-ish and it is almost written like a crime novel at points. The mystery that surrounds number 48,227 adds to the grim atmosphere and gives us an inside look at a process that we would not normally hear about. We are also given details about how the bodies of veterans are buried which ties in to the noir-ish style of the piece. We are walked through how an unidentified body is pushed through the system and in the end we sympathize with someone who is now gone. Someone who nobody else knew was dead. It is a chilling realization for the reader. It made me think of how fragile life can be and how quickly it can be snuffed out, like a lit candle.
Morris Markey's piece,"Drift," is considered to be procedural because of it's scene by scene, vignette-like structure, which shows the different stages of the story. The stages of "Drift" are clear and defined, but still work together to create a complete story. The first scene introduces the unidentified body, Number 48,227, and his release, along with a conversation about the body. We are then taken to the actual burial day, the preparation of the bodies including the division between Roman Catholics and those who were not and the trip up the river. The next and last scene is at Hart's Island where the actual burial is described along with background info/description of how mechanical these burials are and how desensitized people involved have become. We are taken through the process of this unidentifed body being released, prepared for burial, taken to the island and finally buried with many others. These various parts work to form a complete story and experience but the way it is written is very broken up to establish the procedural style.
The piece has a noir-ish atmosphere mainly because of the subject matter, I think. It's obviously a dark subject and situation that illuminates mortality and how this man is just another dead person going through the system. I also felt that the dialogue had an extremely noir-ish tone and captured the mystery surrounding this unknown man.
The procedural genre is well an piece of writing isn't transition movement but rather snap shots of a situation. It leaves the reader to capture the single most important scenes to explain a bigger picture. Drift shows this throughout. Showing first the body at the morgue then moving to releasing it, then the burial. This piece has a linear construction and grabs the reader by the hand while showing them little messages that can be formed together to form a bigger truth.
Drift presents a hint of noir-ish tone. This can be seen in all the snap shots of imagery shown in the article. Besides it having a very morbid and ominous feeling in it, like many noir films it also showcases a very black and white perception of the situation. One example is the dialogue between the attendants. It seems to lack emotion and could as well be about anything although they are working around dead bodies.
Markey’s piece “Drift” can be referred to as “the procedural” through its inclusion of short vignettes, each taking the reader step by step into what is actually occurring in the story and then tying each scene together by the end. By starting off trying to identify the body at the morgue, to moving the body and then releasing the body, the story portrays this through different scenes. By using this format it helps to determine the structure/organization of the piece by giving the reader an easy way to follow what is happening in the story, as well as captivating the reader.
As well, this specific piece connects to a noir-ish atmosphere through the overall plot of the story being rather morbid and lack of emotion from different characters in the story, such as the attendants.
Unlike Crane’s stories which flowed and had scene-by-scene transitions, Markey’s procedural approach in “Drift” shows vignettes with no transition save the reader’s knowledge that each scene comes one after the other. It serves as a representation of the procedural piece because it is cut and dry about how the scenes are sequential to one another. There’s no doubting that each scene comes after the other, and the way this piece is delivered and digested shows that the procedure comes to a definitive end, even though it has no real resolution. We don’t know the identity of the man who is buried and we aren’t sure of how he died and if there is anyone out there who’s related to him.
The unanswered questions to me are what help to make this a fit into the noir genre. While the setting and story itself set the scene for a common noir plot, I also feel like the murkiness and lack of resolution are what make it dark as well. Most noir pieces have a few unanswered questions at the end, but this story doesn’t give you anything compared to when you started reading. It shows you what happens to the deceased from the time they reach the morgue until they’re laid into the ground, but like a noir piece all of the information wrapped in the basic plot are shrouded in mystery.
"Drift" would be considered a procedural piece because the author uses vignettes to move in and out of each scene. This works in this piece because although it may seem choppy, each scene gives the reader a certain understanding--what happened to number 48227, the burial procedure, and then the burial site itself and its history. The burial site is given an extremely detailed description so the audience can "see" the setting. This gives the story a movie-like feeling, which also supports its procedural genre.
The piece has a very suspenseful, noir-ish tone to it. Throughout the piece, the reader is learning more about the burial of veterans and how it involves 48227, but still, the reader learns no more about 48227's identity. That absence of knowledge creates an eerie and dark suspense because the body is buried alongside so many other unidentified soldiers. The many unknowns creates this noir-ish feeling, and the theme of the story is the unknown: his unknown identity and his unknown loyalty to his religion.
"This was Wednesday and burial day" sounds oddly similar to something like "Wednesday and garbage day". The system of mass burials Markey describes in "Drift" seem so routine and mundane that you could have replaced the word "body" with the word "garbage" in the story and the process wouldn't seem so odd at all. There seems to be no sanctity or importance in the burials, it's just a procession, thus the piece's procedural(scene setting)literary structure is effective in describing it. The noir-ish tone of the story is evident in the detective-like stoicism and lack of stated emotion in the author's writing. Instead emotion is implied by way of a gut wrenching quiet paired with observations of light and shadow.
Drift is a procedural piece because it shows multiple scenes in choppy sequence. The prose plays out like a movie, or a series of photographs that explain the larger situation. Like we discussed in class, the scenes are not connected in a traditional manner but it still has a noticeable structure and organization.
Like my other classmates mentioned, the piece is noir-ish because of the ominous nature of the scenes. Drift takes place during the Depression and is about the lower class, the poor men who are buried, unidentified and for 48227, anonymous. While reading this piece I was reminded of the writing style of "The Black Dahlia", a story enveloped in mystery.
The procedural as a form is very direct, very linear. I think anyone who watches a crime show can see all the elements lined up in front of them: the crime, interviews with witnesses, interrogations of suspects, careful study of the clues until one hopefully yields a break in the case, further investigation of that new information, a 'red herring' where the police or investigative team catch the wrong guy (or two), and then finally the successful apprehension and confession of the actual criminal. Most procedurals, no matter how inventive the framing concept is, follow this exact order unwaveringly.
"Drift" very much follows the same rigid line of procedure. Its scene-by-scene construction outlines the four steps of a day in the morgue: the detective sergeant receiving the release for burial, the preparation of the body for the burial, the body's journey to the island where it will be buried, and the burial and return home. We know from this rigid order that the staff is bound by these protocols and can't waver from them. Indeed, the very last sentence lets us know about another procedure whose instructions must be strictly adhered to: the process that will allow the City Treasury to claim and take possession of Number 48,227's $34.70.
I believe the noir feel comes from the general subject matter of the piece: the burial of a nameless body. Nobody can identify him and nobody's really bothered by that; the superintendent even makes a snide remark about how they'd be saved a lot of trouble if loners like Number 48,227 would write sometime their name and addresses down prior to their death. There's the simple fact that Number 48,227 may or may not have committed suicide rather than live in such dreary, disheartening times. There's the staggering and upsetting reduction of a man's life to a number in an endless chain of unidentifiable dead bodies. The noiresque tone of the writing highlights the impersonal nature of the Potter's Field and the dark and depressing reality of the depression.
"Drift" is very clearly a procedural piece because it moves the audience through all of the steps required to bury an unidentified lower-class man, known simply as Number 48227. Markey begins the story at the Morgue just after they have exhausted the process of identifying 48227, and it ends very quickly after he has been interred.
The connection to "noir-ism" could simply be because we are dealing with the disposal of dead bodies, which always carry with them a certain aura of mystery. Furthermore, the main subject of the piece--Number 48227--is a mystery; we have no idea who he is, what he did, or how he died. All of us identify with him, because the fear that we will die and immediately be forgotten is a common one. That little hint of fear and suspense pushes this story into the category of noir.
"Drift" is procedural writing because the piece is written in steps. Morris Markey takes the reader on a journey with 48277 from the morgue to his burial and does so in order. Doing this genre of writing lets Markey show the emotional coldness of the piece. To the people working around these bodies, this is just another day's work. The story is told in a process. There are no flashbacks, or background information on the body.
I think the noir-ish atmosphere of the piece connects with the mystery of not knowing who 48277 is. Also the emotional coldness of the people talking and working around the dead bodies is an example of noir. This aspect helps with the theme of the story.
Morris Markey’s “Drift” belongs to a genre called the procedural because it follows a process—one specific “burial day” in the city morgue. While there are multiple scenes, the story is concentrated upon one main climatic event that requires several steps in order for it to be completed. Due to this the story must be structured slightly differently than other types of creative nonfiction. Markey introduces the story’s subject and main, albeit nonliving, character and then slowly builds tension and adds detail to make a rich, flowing narrative about a dismal, all too human process. The story aims to make a point about people with the unidentified suicide victim who is a burden on the records, the Catholic priests who won’t perform a burial service for any of the non-Catholics, and the desensitized gravediggers. The noir atmosphere of a group of deceased lower-class people whose treatment in death is as hurried and burdensome as it probably was in life delineates the harsh realities of an unconcerned world that existed back then and still does today. “Drift” is quick and dirty, but its gravity lies in its ability to captivate the reader with sad truths about a state of life that is reduced to responsibility and routine, poverty and toil, until you are hidden from the daylight in a dark hole with your fellow wallowers.
Morris Markey's "Drift," has the markings of a procedural in that it moves logically and technically from scene to scene. There aren't necessarily unanswered plot questions between vignettes 1, 2, 3, and 4 and they commence like a series of events. The passage of time makes perfect sense and it ultimately helps form the structure of the piece. It is an account of a journey taken and Markey simply, yet specifically, wrote down his journey.
The noir-ish atmosphere is definitely prevalent in his writing. He talks about the, "Air of mystery," about number 48,227 and the various, "somebody's" that choose the means and place of his burial. It is never specific to the person, but rather the event. In a way this captures the theme of insignificance. Or rather, as Howie put it, the "fate of the individual in mass society," and in this case, the specific fate of an unknown individual in a mass grave.
As everyone’s said, Morris Markey’s “Drift” is obviously composed of vignettes, or seperate scenes that are woven together to create a full story. In terms of the procedural, this piece had the technical details usually associated with the subgenre. For example, “Number 48,227 was male, white, about twenty-eight years old, dark hair, blue eyes, five feet and eight inches tall, weight one hundred and fifty four pounds” and “thirty-four dollars and seventy cents found on a dresser table” (94). It’s these details that both heighten and lessen the mystery—we are learning about the dead man, but the details are fairly arbitrary and non-descript. We also move from the identification (or lack of identification) of “Number 48,227” to the burial (with details of who is assigned each job) to the ending (when the man’s property is absorbed by the City Treasury).
This tension between revealing and concealing is also apparent in the structure of the piece. The blank spaces between the sections are reminiscent of the venetian blinds popular in noir films, like Double Indemnity. The spaces between scenes are also like jump cuts in film. The story does not stagnate, but continues on without us being privy to all the details. Markey’s piece has a noir atmosphere as well. When reading it I was struck by how I kept picturing the color gray, because of the squalor and misery. Obviously because of the dark subject matter of murder and anonymity, but there also seems to be a perpetual cloud hanging over this piece.
The story "drift" is an example of procedural writing because the story starts with finding the man's dead body and taking the reader through every step in the process of burying an unclaimed or unidentified person.
When it comes to the connection with a "Noir-atmosphere", number 48,227, the man's fate as a person to the mass society would be very well described in how they bring him to Hart's Island and describe the place as "featureless" and "flat". It then continues to describe how he is buried with 70 other people. Societies attitude towards this man's fate is respected in the traditions of death, however the importance of his life is almost nonexistent, for example, "...and of these five hundred are in the plight of Number 48,227-- unidentified dead who carry no name for eternity" (I noticed "number" is capitalized as if to give him some form of real identity)
"Drift," as everyone has previously mentioned, seems like a series of vignettes strung together to create a complete story. Stories that follow the procedural process provide these sort of vignettes strung together in no particular order to create a full story. At first, I thought that this story was blandly put together and did not have a concise ending point, but then I realized that the "character" being explained (Number 48,227) has a story similar to the one written: unfinished.
The noir-ish atmosphère of the piece has to do with the fact that the unidentified body remained unidentified throughout the story, sort of going with the explanation you mentioned about "the fate of the individual in mass society." In the beginning of the story, there was a debate over whether the individual should be allowed to be buried in a Catholic cemetery because he committed suicide, which plays upon the theme of the fate of the individual in mass society.
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