Kansas
Jesus’ Son is full of unexpected descriptions of images, reflecting the narrator’s interpretation of the world while being under the influence of various drugs. For example, he describes the “Midwestern clouds like great grey brains,” and feels stranded when he arrives in Kansas City: “[W]e left the superhighway with a drifting sensation and entered Kansas City's rush hour with a sensation of running aground.”
The narrator in the pouring rain
While waiting for a ride, the narrator creates an image of hopelessness, which is enhanced by the pouring rain connoting a cold and unpleasant environment: “I rose up sopping wet from sleeping under the pouring rain, and something less than conscious. [...] At the head of the entrance ramp I waited without hope of a ride. What was the point, even, of rolling up my sleeping bag when I was too wet to be let into anybody's car? I draped it around me like a cape. The downpour raked the asphalt and gurgled in the ruts.” Personification and onomatopoeia make the description even more vivid, causing the reader to feel pity for this lonely drug addict.
The narrator in bed with his girlfriend
When the narrator is lying in bed with his girlfriend (who ends up becoming his first wife), he creates an image of birth by describing the perceived increase in brightness around him: “Our naked bodies started glowing, and the air turned such a strange color I thought my life must be leaving me, and with every young fiber and cell I wanted to hold on to it for another breath. A clattering sound was tearing up my head as I staggered upright and opened the door on a vision I will never see again: Where are my women now, with their sweet wet words and ways, and the miraculous balls of hail popping in a green translucence in the yards? We put on our clothes, she and I, and walked out into a town flooded ankledeep with white, buoyant stones. Birth should have been like that.”
Beverly Home
When the narrator starts working at Beverly Home, a hospital for the aged, he mentions that the sonorous name ‘Beverly’ has positive connotations, as ‘Beverly Hills’ comes to mind. However, the image of the hospital becomes a metaphor for the people living in it, as it “lay in a cul-de-sac in east Phoenix, with a view into the desert surrounding the city,” indicating that the patients have no perspective and no future ahead of them.
