Into the Abyss of 'The Little Life': Unearthing Profound Pain, Healing, and the Search for Meaning

 

10 Minutes read.

A Picture of Jude from "a Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara.

This is a story of an man who is deformed both physically and mentally. Through the moments of vulnerability and heartache, the story embraces the resilience of the human soul, forging bonds that transcend the darkest depths of despair. All he has are his four friends who support and care for him. This is my review of a masterpiece. I may not be able to do justice to this book but I'll try my best. 

Beware, This post will contain heavy spoilers for the book, "a Little life" by Hanya Yanagihara.

Trigger warnings: Child Abuse and Child Hood trauma, Self harm and self destructive behavior, Sexual abuse and assault, Mental health Issues, Suicidal themes, Graphic violence, Drug and alcohol abuse, Sexual content, Terminal and Chronic illness, Emotional and Psychological trauma.

This story consists of a number of characters. The main characters are, Jude St. Francis, William Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste, Malcolm Irvine, Harold and Julia stein, Andy, Brother Luke and Celeb.

William, JB and Malcolm are his closest friends, Harold and Julia are his foster parents in his adulthood, Andy is his doctor, Brother Luke is his mentor and celeb is his lover.

The story revolves around the main characters, beautifully switching through different time frames showing the love and tragedy in their life.

The Story Begins at Lispenard's Street. Its just four friends who have passed out of the same college, Came to a big city such as New York, wishing to full fill their dreams. None of them were wealthy for say except Malcolm.

A picture of Lispenard's Street.

Character Descriptions:

JB is an aspiring artist precisely a painter. He has a strong character. He is a black homosexual man. He is a man with loose tongue. He's also an drug addict. He has a loving family. He's the only male in his family because his father dies when he was 4 years old.

Malcolm was born as a rich person. Irvine's controlled several estates of property. His father is always disappointed in him. Malcolm is a half black heterosexual man. He's a aspiring Architect. In the story he is often showed as an insecure person. 

William is a very handsome man. He has an relatively tragic past (not compared to Jude). He Had a younger brother with down syndrome. William cut off his connections with his family after his brother's death. The author elegantly mentions his tragic relationship with his family. Here's a Quote I think is interesting,

"It was like any other relationship, it took constant pruning and dedication and vigilance and if neither party wanted to make the effort, why wouldn't it wither?"

William is shown as a struggling actor at the beginning but he later achieves extraordinary success in his acting career. He is a white, Heterosexual man. Well. Sort of. I would say that he is Jude-sexual (I didn't make it up, its like that in the book).

To be honest, all of them become extremely successful in their professional life but they lack in their social lives. They do not live up-to traditional adult hood paradigm. Except for Malcolm.

The entire story revolves around Jude. Jude is shown as a charming person. But he's subjected to a lot of twisted horrifying stuff in his past. He is diseased, infected. When he was a child, he was involved in a accident. That incident made him handicapped.

He is always in constant pain and suffering. His wounds on his legs and back frequently get infected and ooze out puss and blood. He has what the author calls "episodes". Let me quote one such instance from the book,

"He pulled open the door and found Jude on floor, one leg tucked up against his chest. He had vomited, some of it had pooled on the ground before him, some of it was scabbed on his lips and chin, a stippled apricot smear. His eyes were shut and he was sweaty, and with one hand he was holding the curved end of his crutch with an intensity that, as William would later come to recognize, comes only with great discomfort."

If some of you may think, that's the worst it can get right? No. That was the first episode which is shown in the book. Jude has many episodes through out the book, some being little less intense while some being fatal. 

Harold and Julia: Jude was originally a student of Harold in his university. Jude studied law under Harold. Harold and Julia had a child before. Unfortunately that child dies at an young age due to an highly rare neurodegenerative disorder. The author shows the deep emotion the father has for his child.

It was so disheartening to read those pages. The couple hoped that the disorder was manageable. They begged the Death to delay taking their son from them. At first, it was few months, then it was few days, then they begged for few more hours. Their son ultimately died. They never had children again. Until Jude came along. 

 

Jude was an orphan ever since he was born. He finally gets adopted by Harold and Julia at an age of 30. They simple love Jude that much. Let me quote a line:

"But what was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain, partly because it was so difficult to articulate?"

Main Plot:

Though the story is written in different timelines, I will describe it in a singular straight fashion because I think only then its appropriate for the review.

When Jude was a still a infant, he was discovered in a dustbin by a brother of a monastery. Jude was not always the most disciplined person in the monastery. Jude often stole food and was rude to the brothers. This caused him frequent punishments and that made him hate the monastery. On one such incident, Jude steals a lighter from Father Gabriel. Father Gabe teaches him a lesson by rubbing oil on Jude's arm and lighting it on fire. Jude was also stripped naked and examined by other brothers. He was sexually abused in the monastery. He wanted to get out.

At an time like that, Brother Luke cared for him. Looked after him and treated Jude like an human. Thus Jude trusted him. Trusted him so much that he accepted to escape with brother Luke from the monastery. Brother Luke was a pedophile. He made Jude a sex slave and prostituted him to many men. Do not forget, Jude was just 10 years old at this time. Brother Luke himself sexually abused Jude many times. He promised Jude that someday they will go to a place, a home built in woods, where they would live peacefully. 

Fortunately, a few years later, cops caught them and Brother Luke committed Suicide to avoid the humiliation. It doesn't stop there. The cops abused him in many ways. He was subjected to a lot of torture. He escapes from the cops hoping that he would go to an different city and his life would be different. But he gets caught by an doctor. The doctor treats him well, feeds him and cures his infections. Jude thinks that his struggles are finally over but little did he knew, the doctor was a inhumane scum. He forces Jude in to various situations, locks him up in his room for many months and Ultimately crashes his car into him. He was an sadistic badtard. This damages his spine and makes him crippled for life. There are numerous scars on his back and legs caused due to the abuse he faced throughout his childhood.

Jude then with the help of his social worker, joins a college where he meets his friends. Another quote:

“Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.”

Apart from occasional episodes, his life goes on. The author explains their professional careers at this phase. Jude becomes a defensive lawyer at a large private firm, where he makes a lot of money. Malcolm becomes a very successful architect, William becomes a star in many famous films. The most ambitious among all of them is JB. He makes a series of paintings every few years. He also makes a series based on his friendships. JB as I mentioned was also an serious drug addict from which he revives later in the story. His last painting series is known as, "Jude, Alone."

Jude has an history of self harm. He cuts himself regularly to let the pain numb away his thoughts. He sometimes cuts himself so deep that the wounds get infected. But he is a very cautious person too. He always cuts on the regions which are not visible in public. He always wears clothes to fully cover his body. He hides his stash of blades and razors in a bag in his apartment so that his friends wouldn't spot them. But he Absolutely hates his body. He never lets anyone touch him or hug him except for his  close friends.

Celeb's is first emotional love relationship of Jude. He meets him at a party. Celeb doesn't mind with Jude being crippled at first, but later on he reveals that he absolutely hates the fact that Jude's crippled. He later beats up Jude so badly. He abuses him physically and mentally. At an particular incident, he grabs his neck, parades him to the front gate of the building naked, pushes him out into the street, his body, his scars all are shown to the streets. Then he beats him up more and pushes him down a long stair case till he hears a crack of bones.

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”

His second relationship is with his dearest friend William. The author shows this phase so beautifully. Firstly Jude hesitates in everything while William helps him feel comfortable. Slowly they fall in love.

“Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.”

This all is destroyed when William gets into a car accident. William dies in that accident. This breaks Jude's heart into a 1000 pieces. Jude then attempts suicide but he fails. Harold makes him promise that he wouldn't try it again.

“And now he is once again finding life more and more difficult, each day a little less possible than the last. In his every day stands a tree, black and dying, with a single branch jutting to its right, a scarecrow's sole prosthetic, and it is from this branch that he hangs. Above him a rain is always misting, which makes the branch slippery. But he clings to it, as tired as he is, because beneath him is a hole bored into the earth so deep that he cannot see where it ends. He is petrified to let go because he will fall into the hole, but eventually he knows he will, he knows he must: he is so tired. His grasp weakens a bit, just a little bit, with every week.
So it is with guilt and regret, but also with a sense of inevitability, that he cheats on his promise to Harold.”

William's accident has so much impact on Jude. He just works and works to avoid his thoughts. He stores Williams shirts and items. He carefully "uses" his clothes at times of discomfort. As Jude describes it, he wears his shirts to sleep and after a few sleeps, William scent is lost forever. So he carefully rations William's belongings. Jude cuts himself much more now. He sort of made up a ritual when he works for 20 hours a day, 5 days a week and drugs himself strongly on Saturday morning to wake up in half-dead half-alive state next Monday morning. 

No matter how hard his friends try to prevent it, it finally happens. Harold gets a call from Andy. He says that Jude has killed himself by injecting a air bubble into his artery.

Quotes:

“they were inventing their own type of relationship, one that wasn’t officially recognized by history or immortalized in poetry or song, but which felt truer and less constraining.”

“It was precisely these scenes he missed the most from his own life with Willem, the forgettable, in-between moments in which nothing seemed to be happening but whose absence was singularly unfillable.”

“Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of them.”

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”

“Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.
Right and wrong, however, are for—well, not unhappy people, maybe, but scarred people; scared people.”

Dyeing itself isn't a difficult task. Watching your dear one die and living with that pain forever is a terrible punishment anyone can get. That's what happened to Harold. Almost everyone he knew died before him. They all died young. It's a fate far worse than death. 


So this, ends the review. I hope you like it. I cant rate this book because I don't think I'm qualified enough to judge this masterpiece.

If you want me to read and review any other book of your choice, feel free to let me know. I'll try my best to do it. 

Feel free to check out my other blogs where I talk about the great emotions like nostalgia, regret and despair-->Right here or

Where I talk about my thoughts about monsoon --->Right here.

Thank you for sticking till the end.