Junkie by William S. Boroughs | Themes, Summary, Analysis

Junkie by William S. Boroughs | Themes, Summary, Analysis

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. William S. Boroughs was an American writer, and visual artist known for his ‘Shotgun Art.’ He was born on February 5, 1914, and died on August 2, 1997. He was one of the primary proponents of the Beat Generation and Beat literature and celebrated nonconformity and spontaneous creativity. He is mostly known for his Naked Lunch published in 1959, which is considered as one of the best examples of Beat literature. In addition, he also wrote The Nova Trilogy in which he experimented with the Cut-Up technique.

His first novel was Junkie which was published in 1953. The novel was published under the pseudonym William Lee and he used the same name for the main character of the novel.

Themes of Junkie:

William S. Burroughs was a morphine addict and he also peddled and sold heroin and other drugs to support his own addiction. The novel appears to be a confessional writing. Many scholars argue that Junkie is not fiction rather it is a semi-autobiographical memoir. The character William Lee directly represents William S. Burroughs in some instances in the novel while offering a fictionalized caricature of him in others. The novel is based on the theme of drug withdrawal and associated struggles. The novel illustrates how a person is stripped of his humanity when he becomes drug-dependent.

In the novel, William S. Burroughs used a metaphor to describe the situation of a drug addict and compared a drug addict to a plant. He says that when a person becomes a junkie, he becomes as dumb as a daffodil. The writer also compared the opioid addicts to wooden puppets or deep-sea creatures.

"Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a painkiller. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding. Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life." ~~ Passage from Junkie.

The novel follows a first-person narrative style and William Lee is the narrator. However, the writer didn’t delve much into the psychology or motivations of William Lee, nor did the novel condemn or justify William Lee. On the other hand, the novel does criticize the governmental crackdowns, anti-drugs legislation, and police procedures which make the struggles of Junkies, even those who are trying to get rid of their addiction, much more difficult. The novel emphasizes the negative aspects of addiction and the pain of withdrawal, with relatively little focus on the pleasurable effects of drugs. The author describes addiction as simply the path of least resistance, not a conscious choice.

Summary of Junkie:

The story is set in the 1940s. William Lee is a thirty-year-old married man living in a Midwestern state of the United States. Though he is married and has children, he hardly cares for his family. William Lee is struggling financially as he is unemployed. He gets a job selling stolen morphine that may give him a good profit. Lee decides to take a shot of morphine and saves some from the stolen morphine. He sells the remaining to a friend named Roy who is an addict. Roy warns him that though he is engaging in the opium business, Lee must remain away from morphine and how its addiction can ruin life. Lee doesn’t listen to him and over a few months, he keeps using the morphine he saved for himself. As a result, he too becomes an addict. However, it is difficult to get any more morphine. He and Roy try to get a prescription for morphine from various doctors whom they visit but they get no help.

In his desperation, Lee uses a fake name on a prescription to get some morphine and gets caught. His wife bails him out and Lee promises to keep away from morphine. However, he begins experiencing withdrawal symptoms and suffers hallucinations. He tries to look for an alternative to morphine to ease himself. In such a situation, Roy introduces him to a Heroin dealer and Lee begins using heroin. It doesn't take long for Bill to develop a full-fledged addiction. "I drink a lot of coffee," he says, "but you know what's really addictive? Heroin." His habit propels him through the dark underworld of New York City. He engages in petty crime and becomes a small-time dealer himself to support his growing dependence. As his drug dependence continues to increase, he becomes more and more alienated from his wife and children. He becomes a partner of Bill Gains, a drug dealer, to buy, cut, and resell heroin, keeping some for himself each time.

Lee continues to lose all his respectable friends and colleagues while he forms a new social circle of addicts and customers. The police decide to crackdown on drug dealers and users and this creates problems for Bill Gains in the business. He decides to close his drug business and gets admitted into a medical hospital to treat his addiction. Lee tries to sustain but fails and he too decides to get admitted into the medical hospital for curing his addiction.

He recovers and after remaining away from morphine and heroin for four months, he decides to go to the Brownsville area of Texas and manages to stay sober for a few more months. However, he feels alone and bored. Thus, he goes to New Orleans and begins visiting a gay bar where he is invited by a man to have sex with him. The man takes him to a private place and then robs him. William Lee gets disheartened and relapses. He continues to visit the gay bar where he starts having regular sex with men. To support his expenses and addiction, he begins selling heroin again. During a police crackdown, the police find evidence of drugs in his possession and arrest him again. In jail, he fails to get any help and again suffers withdrawal symptoms. His lawyer helps him to get into a sanitorium where a new medicine is being experimented to help heroin addicts.

Though he goes down a dark path, Bill is aware of his actions and the consequences they have; namely, the loss of humanity that one experiences when in the throes of an addiction. And while he understands that getting clean is a necessary pain for the addict who wants to become sober, it's one he struggles to make peace with.

After getting out of jail, while awaiting trial, Bill heads back to Texas. There, he makes a valiant attempt to control his drug use—though, now again in the grips of a full-fledged addiction, he does not surrender the habit completely. Bill realizes that he will face long-term imprisonment, so he decides to relocate to Mexico City. His wife and children follow him. He makes a genuine effort to get his drug use under control and remains sober for more than a year. He maintains a low-key life away from chemical temptation, wiling away his days reading newspapers in the city's cafes and generally lying low. But old habits die hard, and once more the more humdrum aspects of a sober life begin to grate on him. He continues having sex with men, both with male prostitutes and other partners. However, that, too, pales in comparison to junk.
He accidentally meets a group of drug users and soon he relapses and his addiction returns. He discovers that heroin is more expensive in Mexico than in the US since dealers have to bribe the police. He seeks out a new set of doctors to prescribe morphine, then learns he can get a permit to purchase it himself. After a year or so, he again decides to get rid of his addiction. He quits the junk, switching it out for heavy drinking and prescription amphetamines. Inevitably, these take a toll on his health, and his mental stability starts to falter. His doctor warns that he's drinking himself to death, and his wife leaves town with their kids. Lee becomes sober and contemplates returning to the US.

He again meets Bill Gains who informs him about the heavy crackdown of police on drug dealers and users. Bill Gains informs that Roy died in police custody. Lee decides that he will never return to the United States to face his trial. He begins using morphine again and helps Bill Gains get a large amount of heroin but the heroin was adulterated and Gains nearly died when he injected it. Lee decides not to use heroin again. He hears that there is a new drug that has the mind-altering ability to awaken dormant telepathic and mystical powers in the user. As the novel ends, Bill travels to South America on a quest to find this miraculous drug.

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!