Synopsis
God and other things left out in the rain is a collection of poems with short stories, prose, & one line sentences that contain enough depth to spark a story. Dunlops poetry explores existentialism & nihilism and shines a light on the paradox of life and death.
'' eternal life is what matters apotheosised revered in death, thankful after a life spent dying''
'' is this real? or is the ocean in a silent film?''
Analysis-
I first came across this book when my sister brought it home one day after she found It on the side of the road, ever since then I've revisited the poetry and began to analyze it from a deeper perspective each time. After looking on good reads for review's I struggled to find any it seems that Dunlop's book was not a profound one in the media, however, that does not tarnish the legitimacy of its significance. My favorite poem within the collection has to be ' Icarus suicide note'. The poem based heavily on greek mythology explains how death is a new fresh start and how the ' legacy of the name' will outlive the labyrinth. What I find so intriguing about the poem is the last line which I quoted at the very start of the review. Dunlop exposes this paradoxical vitality of human life how our lives are spent dying and when we die we are eternal. Although hard to wrap your head around at first Dunlop here conveys his ideology of nihilism of how nothing matters as death is eternal and life is dying.
The darkness and raw brutality of Dunlop's poetry is conveyed strongly through the poem ' pale peach casket' the poem is about a boy with illness who had a casket in his basement as he knew the sickness was becoming worse, he talks about letting the bones rest for all the weight they carry. Something which seems highly symbolic as throughout life our body become intoxicated with memories and Stories and there will be a time when we need to rest. This poem too me shows an acceptance of death and the normalization of the predatory nature of human existence as we see the boy's friend accept his friends end. In theory we all have a pale peach casket waiting for us, by using the colours of pale and peach dunlop creates a positive sweet like lexical field around the taboo topic this alone shows how the poem is about acceptance.
To fully understand the poetry it's important to analyze the title. From a philosophical perspective ' God and other things left out in the rain' illustrates how in life God is not significant how he is part of the storm and not the one that will bring the sun. The title indicates that the poetry will be without hope or happiness as this symbolic savior is left out. This is true as much of the poetry is about illness, suicide and death which create discomfort for the reader. Dunlop wanted to create a book stripped from the facade of happiness and this philosophical idea of wish fulfilment, in which he successfully did.
A significant short story within the book is young blood. It is loaded with human brutalities such as suicide and war. A significant quote is ' war is a perpetual cycle, intends human flesh to stay alive.' this quote explains the predatory nature of human existence and how war is an ongoing cycle of torture and pain caused by us ourselves. It then says ' no fucking God would let allow that war, any war to happen'. Here again, we are met with the ideological significance of externalism and nihilism as we realize life has no meaning. The meaning we think life has is to please God, however this is an facade of western culture as we see war and suicide within the short story offer evidence to this idea of the inconstant triad of God. Elijah (a popular biblical name) continues to talk to this man who Adam his friend visited about God trying to convince him to believe. The man replies ' you think there's some fuckinall-seeing being in the clouds? watching and judging? what does that say about our lives?' Here we see this idea of God being unrealistic and how his existence does not add meaning or an explanation to human life. The man despite this negativity offers a solution ' the only faith I have is in humans if we could eliminate the false hopes and so-calledd happy endings of religion, we would be better to each other without the guise of an afterlife'. This line here shows how Human life is the savior, not religion how this facade of happy endings paints an unrealistic image of life something which throughout the book Dunlop unpicks at. He shows that although life is brutal and horrible it is life stripped of the wish fulfillment religion plasters onto us. He then says ' life is a wonderful and random existence, why wish it away?' this line is highly ironic as we see the man kill himself as when he was telling the story he was taking pills which he was slowly overdosing on.
In the last line of the short story, Youngblood strikes immense pathos as we see that at the end for the religious Elijah God might not be real and that the satisfaction of an after life (which humans use to fill the void) lies within the living. ' he was wrong about one thing, the afterlife.' ' His memory will beat on inside me.' This short story explains how the things we look for in God all loving and a promised afterlife can be found within each other. Dunlop exposes the vitality of humanity and how the afterlife and love can be found within every one of us eliminating the need for a God to save us.
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