Transcending Limitations

In "Musical Apocalypse: Tom Waits' Bone Machine" Angela Jones uses Derrida's theory of apocalyptic tone as a framework for analyzing the music of Waits, and also deconstructs the definition of apocalypse through application. According to Jones, the "act of revelation, of stripping things back and unveiling" is the point of apocalypse, a spiritual disclosure. This declaration is readily apparent in the section "Facade," excerpted from Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novel Dream Country, when the truth of existence is unveiled to Rainie, a woman whose body has been transmuted by the sun god Ra. 

Rainie, once a beautiful woman who worked for the CIA, is confined to her house after a horrific experience in Egypt has left her body transmuted to a gaseous state that can be morphed by thought. Unable to establish relationships and forced to live with a life devoid of purpose, hidden behind masks of her own making, Rainie seeks death. The Endless Death visits her and claims that her life is merely a hell of her own making, that she has the power to change her life if she only seeks that change. Rainie sheds her mask for Death, the masks that tied her to her limitations. In her essay, Jones connected the unveiling process to limitations which denote an opening, where something else is able to bridge the gap between those limits, to "break in." Rainie moves to the window of her home as a supplicant and calls to Ra, but when asked to look at the sun, she balks. Humans are not allowed to stare too long at the sun, a limitation of the human body exposed, even as the truth of the deity is unveiled: that even a god wears a mask. When Rainie looks upon Ra for the first time with understanding, she is no longer transmutable, but transfigured, shed of the burden of her former body. Rainie transcends the limitations of her mortal body after the mask of Ra is unveiled; she herself is stripped bare, unveiled and unclothed to meet her new fate as her body turns to dust, master of her own destiny.