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Foreshadowing
Genre
Explanation and Analysis:
A Little Life is a work of realistic fiction that tracks the lives of four college roommates who grow old, fall in love, and drift apart. Spanning multiple decades, the novel is also partly an exploration of time. Yanagihara’s novel has the feel and scope of an epic, which shows not just in page count but in breadth. Through its patchwork of memories, the seven-part book manages to transform JB, Willem, Jude, and Malcolm from young revelers locked out on an apartment rooftop to middle-aged men contemplating life’s vastness and brevity. Decades pack themselves into pages.
Yet the novel resists classification for almost the same reasons it is divisive, pairing the heartbreaking and heartwarming in new combinations. A Little Life offers intimate accounts love and connection, breaking literary ground through the roommates’ friendship and Jude’s eventual relationship with Willem. At the same time, it pushes tragedy to gut-wrenching new depths. Unlike classical tragic heroes, Jude—the novel’s primary protagonist—suffers his entire life. From his upbringing in the monastery to his abuse at Caleb’s hands, A Little Life chronicles a series of trauma and violence that, at points, does not seem to end. Its forays into the past unearth graphic episodes of sexual abuse and suicide as Jude struggles to come to terms with himself—an emphasis on suffering that has prompted backlash among some literary circles. Through its story of love and pain, the novel has pushed the boundaries of the tragedy genre.
