Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery

Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery is a fixed landmark in a story of uncertain belonging: it is visible from the home of the man claiming to be Norma Jeane’s father, and later lies on a route she takes while trying to find him. When she becomes lost in the hills above the city, the cemetery returns as part of a disorienting landscape that includes Griffith Park and Glendale.

Setting and Associations

In his letter to Norma Jeane, the man who claims to be her father describes living near Griffith Park, with a view from his house of Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery. He identifies the cemetery as the resting place of his beloved Agnes and imagines that he, too, will one day be buried there. The view makes the cemetery part of his account of age, bereavement, and the home he may sell: a costly property, he says, for a widower nearing seventy with ascetic habits.

Norma Jeane’s Search

Aboard a borrowed car, Norma Jeane drives east on the Ventura Freeway, first to Griffith Park and then to Forest Lawn Cemetery. She does not know where I.E. Shinn is buried and feels ashamed of that uncertainty. She continues driving for hours through residential neighborhoods, thinking of the number of people around her and believing that she would recognize her father if she saw him, though she does not know exactly whom or what she is seeking.

A Landmark in Disorientation

The cemetery appears again when Norma Jeane wanders among the hills above the city. She becomes lost in Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery, Griffith Park, and eventually around Glendale; after making her way back toward Hollywood and Beverly Hills, she cannot remember where she lives. The sequence turns a place first linked to the imagined certainty of a father’s home and burial into one element of a fractured geography: a recognizable landmark offers no way to orient herself or resolve the search that brought her there.