Naked Lunch

Chapters 6-10 contain some of the novel’s most shocking scenes and imagery, including Dr. Benway performing surgery in a toilet with a plunger and a scene in Hassan’s “rumpus room” where “boys by the hundred plummet through the roof, quivering and kicking at the end of ropes” (67). Beyond mere provocation, these events serve a deeper purpose: They’re designed to develop an opposition outlined in the first five chapters. This opposition is set against the world of conventional morality and social order that Freeland represents. The preoccupation with “hygiene” there symbolizes this conventional morality and contrasts with a deeper truth about how these standards repress human life, as represented in the two surgery scenes. Using a plunger to resuscitate a patient then “swishing it around in the toilet bowl” (51), Benway subverts our ordinary sense of medical practice based on an idea of cleanliness and scientific objectivity. In having Benway deliberately pursue contamination and unsanitary conditions, Burroughs shocks us out of a complacent faith in modern medicine.

This subversion recurs in the second surgery scene, where Benway—in front of an audience—performs a procedure that he explains has no medical purpose other than “pure artistic creation” (52) and showing the surgeon’s skill and daring. Thus, Burroughs again subverts our ordinary sense of science and medicine. The doctor’s personality and “performance” in terms of a procedure’s entertainment quality, is not an ordinary feature of surgery. However, in likening surgery to bullfighting and putting on a show, Benway encourages us to question the lines of propriety that underscore such behavior. That is, he urges us to suspend belief in the principle of “hygiene” and the clear delineation of areas of life so that we can see the world anew. Likewise, the “rumpus room” scene might tempt us to view the strange revels simply as the expression of the author’s sado-masochistic fantasies. However, what’s occurring on a deeper level is the subversion of an ordinary and “hygienic” way of approaching reality as applied to human sexuality.

This is because in liberal, western culture we typically view sex as something private, adult, and peaceable. In addition, we associate sex with procreation. The imagery in the “rumpus room” disrupts these associations. The events, like Benway’s surgery, take place in front of an audience and “guests” (64). They also involve multiple agents, and as in the final scene with the American women, whole “battlefields” of participants. Just as significantly, they involve the young as well as violent executions. Typically, the executions take place via hangings or, as in one scene, when a waterfall snaps a boy’s neck. This precipitates an intense orgasm in the person killed. However, the point here is not to offend or to suggest that sexuality connects to violence and even death. Rather, the intent is to imaginatively link the creation of new life in sex with the perpetual play of destruction and rebirth. This is evident in Lee’s comment that “the copulating rhythm of the universe flows through the room, a great blue tide of life” (69). The violence, as with the strange “battle” between A.J, dressed as a pirate, and the excited American women, becomes a form of play.

The term “rumpus room” suggests a room for playing, and the light-hearted tone of these scenes implies is a joyful breaking-down of boundaries. It’s not a dark or literal suggestion that gratification can or should come from the destruction of another. Rather, it’s the setting free of the imagination in a context of laughter and playfulness, with the goal of unifying all the participants with each other and the world. Its aim isn’t sadistic. That is, its intent isn’t to establish hierarchies of power or use that power to destroy others. Although the imagery is shocking, as with Benway’s surgery, it’s a comedic shock designed to liberate the imagination from the rigid and comfortable confines of Freeland thinking.