Night of the Living Rez

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2022

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“In a Jar"Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“In a Jar” Summary

Following the divorce of his parents, David, the young, first-person narrator, moves with his mother to the Penobscot Reservation. While playing with action figures, David discovers a jar full of hair, corn, and teeth in their new house. David’s mother calls on Frick, a local medicine man, to properly dispose of the jar, which she believes is bad medicine being used to curse their house. Frick performs the necessary rituals, and soon thereafter has moved into their house and begun a relationship with David’s mother.

David’s mother’s fears about the jar taper off when Paige, David’s older sister, comes to visit. Paige reveals that she is pregnant, a development that enrages their mother. David’s mother’s concerns about the jar are reignited when, one night, Paige feels herself getting bitten by an invisible presence. Frick attends to Paige, but it’s unclear what, if anything, attacked her.

Months later, David’s mother picks him up early from staying at a friend’s house. She doesn’t explain why. She takes David home, and David notices that Paige is sitting on the couch looking dazed. David’s mother asks her, “Where is it?” (30), and Paige motions to the bathroom. David overhears Frick in the bathroom telling his mother that they need a container that won’t leak. David offers the receptacle that houses his action figures; Frick emerges from the bathroom with the container filled with water. They all get in Frick’s truck and drive north to a place where they light a fire, dig a hole, and bury the container and its contents. Paige struggles emotionally with the burial, and when she asks Frick if this is the right thing to do, he says, “It’s how I was taught” (33).

“In a Jar” Analysis

“In a Jar,” chronologically the earliest story for David, introduces the complex dynamics between most of the characters in the collection. Most notably, this story centers the tumultuous relationship between Paige and her mother, who is also David’s mother. The two “shared a closeness” (16) that allows David’s mother to open up to Paige as something other than just a mother but often sees the two women arguing without clear resolutions. “In a Jar” also begins to explore tensions between David and Frick, focusing on the ways in which Frick questions the validity of both David’s masculinity and his Indigeneity. By contrast, the story also introduces David’s and Paige’s nurturing, gentle relationships with their grandmother; the levity of the plotline in which the grandmother takes the children to church starkly contrasts the emotional turmoil that characterizes all the story’s other relationships.

“In a Jar” utilizes a complex juxtaposition of symbolic imagery. There are two containers featured in this narrative: the jar David finds, deemed “bad medicine” by Frick and his mother, and the receptacle David uses for his toys. The jar is the first physical representation of Indigenous craft and identity that David comes into contact with in the collection. It is immediately interpreted for him, and kept at bay from him, by the adults in his life. The jar remerges throughout the narrative, but always as a source of mystery and fear, something that mustn’t be spoken of. The jar symbolizes an identity that is inaccessible and illegible to David; an identity that he is only allowed to access through the lens provided by characters like Frick.

By contrast, the toy container is something that David owns fully and is one of the few physical items in his life that he has complete control over. Because it holds toys, it is also closely associated with childhood. In allowing Frick to use the container to bury Paige’s miscarried fetus, David symbolically buries his childhood. At the same time, this gesture also suggests that David is finding his own entry into the customs and rituals of Penobscot culture.