Dominique Delgado on Jo Ann Beard's "The Fourth State of Matter"

As I started reading this essay I had no idea where it was headed. I was under the impression that this writer was writing about her dull, somewhat lonely and sad life. The first thing I noticed was the ways she described certain things, almost in a poetic way. This happens immediately in the second line, “…as I row my boat through a dim, complicated dream”. I think it is lines like this that makes this piece creative non-fiction, opposed to non-fiction. The way the writer draws the reader in by descriptive and stimulating words. She begins her story talking about her helpless, dying dog. There is a part in the second paragraph where she is standing outside in the middle of the night waiting for her dog to pee, and she is describing the night sky in a way only somebody familiar with astronomy could describe it. Looking back, she is foreshadowing a major part of the story.

            Jo Ann Beard has followed the “street-car” rule in a way, when it comes to this non-fiction piece. The essay is very well organized. It starts with the dying dog, the stars, and the night sky. It continues with other main points along the way, but ends with the dying dog, stars and the night sky. It does a perfect loop, yet by the end there is a totally different meaning and feeling.

            As the story progressed, I started to feel bored. She talked about the squirrels in the spare bedroom, her “missing husband” who constantly and pathetically called her, her dull job that she really had no passion for, and then her co-workers. The squirrels and missing husband did have a bit of an interesting storyline, added a bit of kookiness to her otherwise boring life. I liked how she described bits and pieces of those stories because they had interconnectedness. The squirrels were loud and noisy, uninvited, living in the spare bedroom where all of her husband’s belongings were quietly out of the way. Little did I know in the beginning that these miniscule parts of the story would end up having a mighty emotional role in the end of the piece.

            When Beard speaks of her work, she speaks as if she didn’t belong. She was just there because it was a job, but she didn’t have the passion that the others had for physics. She just knew how to put together a journal. She speaks of her co-workers; Some she doesn’t have a close relationship with, but works side by side with them everyday, but seems to know them on a personal level none the less. She has a passionately awful relationship with one person in particular, Bob. They constantly butt-heads, argue, and slam doors. Bob is best friends with the person Beard is closest with, “I spend more time with Chris than I ever did with my husband”. She talks with Chris about everything, her dying dog, her missing husband; and he shares his life with her, his depressed mother, his crazy dog.

            The way Beard eventually explains her co-workers came as a bit of a surprise to me, but was intriguing. She explained each of their personalities in a negative way, through the eyes of a student that worked with them, Gang Lu. The first time reading this piece, I found the way Beard explains Gang Lu’s emotions a bit odd. How did she know what he was thinking? How did she know that “he’s sick of physics and sick of the buffoons who practice it”? Then she starts describing her co-workers through Gang Lu’s eyes, all in a negative connotation. (Little did I know that there were letters that Gang Lu had written, letters I am assuming Beard got the inspiration or information to make these assumptions of Lu’s emotions towards his life and his co-workers).

            Then the turn of events happens. Beard says, “It’s November 1, 1991, the last day of the first part of my life”. As I’m reading I try to figure out what the big event is that is going to change this woman’s life so drastically. Then, she starts to write of the shooting. It kind of comes out of nowhere, but if I would have been paying attention to all the foreshadowing in the previous pages, I probably could have caught on quicker. She explains it in timeline form, describing where each person is sitting when they get shot, where they get shot, the smoke that comes from the gun, the actions of the surrounding people, the next steps Gang Lu, the shooter, takes. The description is fast, like the gunshots. It took twelve minutes to shoot everyone on his list. That is a short amount of time in real life, and only takes about a page in the book to describe the incidents.

            From then on she describes her denial as she starts to hear the news. Describes her numbness, how her mind goes blank, how she tries to convince herself that none of this has happened. She tells herself that Chris is not amongst the dead. But he is, and she is numb.

            The first thing she finds comfort in is her dying dog. It seemed like the reason she kept him alive all this time was for this moment. She needed him, and he was there for her just like she had been throughout his dying days. Next, her husband, who hasn’t shown his face in who knows how long, shows up at the door. He hugs her and tells her he is there for her. The part I found the most emotional was towards the end when she describes standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting to hear the scurrying of the squirrels that she had kicked out of her house shortly before all this. She was waiting to hear them, and sadly she remembered they were gone. “Silence. No matter how much you miss them. They never come back once they’re gone”.
            The essay ends with her lying at night with her arm on her dying dog, propped up so that she can see the night sky and planets through her window.

            This essay was composed in a perfect circle, or route I should say. It started with the dog in the night and the stars in the sky. Went on to talk about her husband, the squirrels, her work and co-workers. Co-workers went to shooting of the co-workers, then back to the husband, the squirrels, the dying dog, and the night sky.
            If I take anything from this essay, it will be Beards amazing yet sly way of foreshadowing. The second time reading the essay, I caught on to the foreshadowing and how it left a sense of eeriness. I also liked how she described people through others eyes, whether it be through Gang Lu’s, Chris’, or her friend Caroline’s. Out of everything, I like how the story ended up interconnecting and making its way back to where it originally started. She tied this essay back up perfectly, in a way that the reader felt a connection with her because she had walked you through it all before.