Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Little Life, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma
Identity
Success and Happiness
Friendship and Human Connection
Pain and Suffering
Summary
Analysis
An unnamed narrator (Harold) speaks or writes to an unknown person, addressing them as “you.” Harold describes the moment this person asked when the narrator “knew that he was right for [the narrator’s audience.]” Harold made something up because it sounded poetic—like something a person might say in a movie—but it wasn’t true. “You” had asked the question in the hospital; you’d come in from Colombo, travelling across cities and countries to be there. Now, Harold wants to be truthful.
Harold, speaking from the first-person perspective, addresses an unknown audience. It’s unclear when this address is happening, but Harold’s remark about wanting to be truthful now suggests, perhaps, that some significant event has happened to prompt him to speak more honestly. The detail about Harold’s audience having travelled from Colombo suggests that this person is successful—either they have a job for which they travel, or a job that allows them to afford to travel for leisure. And this person’s question of when Harold “new that he was right for [Harold’s addressee]” suggests that Harold is talking to this person about their romance with another person.
Themes
It’s hard to know where to begin. Harold says that he liked the person he is addressing from the start. Back then, Harold was 47, and the person he is addressing was 24. Harold recalls the summer “the group of you” visited his vacation home. Harold saw in the group what Jacob might have become, and this was hard for him.
Based on the age difference between Harold and his audience, and the detail about “the group of you” visiting Harold’s vacation home, it seems likely that Harold’s audience is Jude or one of Jude’s friends. In addition, Harold’s mention of Jacob in the past tense offers further evidence that Jacob is no longer living.
Themes
But what stuck out to Harold most is a moment when he and Julia were walking together, and “you and he” were walking together. Harold describes watching “you” tenderly “retie[] one of his shoelaces that had come undone” before stepping back into rhythm with Harold and Julia. In this moment, “he” looked at Harold, an expression on his face that conveyed the luck and “impossibility of finding someone to do such a thing for another person, so unthinkingly, so gracefully!” It was then that Harold learned what it meant “that something could break your heart.”
With this detail about Harold’s audience tenderly “ret[ying] one of his shoelaces that had come undone,” the audience is likely not Jude, since it’s most likely Jude whose shoelace the addressee tied. So, putting together the context clues Harold has offered thus far, Harold is perhaps talking about a romance between Jude and some other person. Willem is the person Jude trusts most, and they’ve long had a very close and even intimate connection, so it makes sense to assume that Harold is addressing Willem in this chapter. However, through what medium Harold is addressing Willem (a letter, perhaps?), whether the address is actually happening or is hypothetical, and at what point in time Harold is making this address remain unknown at this point. Finally, Harold’s remark about this moment of intimacy between (likely) Willem and Jude “break[ing his] heart” suggests that even life’s happiest, most tender moments contain a kernel of sadness, perhaps because those moments are so fleeting.
Themes
Harold never planned on becoming a parent. His mother died when he was young, and it was just Harold and Harold’s father after that. Harold’s father, a doctor, loved him very much and called him “darling.” He married his office manager, Adele, when Harold was eight, and she became a mother to him. When Harold asked her if she wished she could have children of her own, she told him that he was her child, and so he never questioned her love.
Just as Jude has started to think of Harold and Julia as family (recall his fantasy about the couple being his parents in an earlier chapter), Harold easily shifts to thinking of Adele as his mother. The novel has already stressed the importance of friendship, and here, it makes a case for the importance of having loving people in one’s life, even if those people aren’t family. Any connection can become meaningful and offer a person support and refuge from life’s inherent cruelty.
Themes
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Harold’s first wife, Liesl, was a composed and practical woman. Harold recalls one of their first dates, when they were out walking and a stranger vomited all over her sweater. Liesl closed her eyes and shuddered, and then she was ready to move on. Harold and Liesl met in New York when Harold was a law student. They moved to Boston for Harold to start a clerkship and Liesl, who was training to be an oncologist, to start her internship. Harold and Liesl never really saw themselves having a child, but then one day, when they were both in their early 30s, Liesl announced that she was pregnant. They decided to go through with the pregnancy and eventually had a boy, Jacob. They loved Jacob dearly. But love for one’s child is unlike any other kind of love: it’s a love rooted in fear.
When Harold describes his love for Jacob as being rooted in fear, he’s alluding to the way a parent’s love for their child is clouded by their fear that something—whether that something is an outside threat, a natural disaster, or an illness, perhaps—will harm their child, and they won’t be able to protect them. The novel’s view of life is that every aspect of the human experience is underpinned by the looming threat of suffering and misfortune, and this stance comes through in Harold’s thoughts on parenthood.
Themes
Having Jacob taught Harold that when your child dies, you feel all the things people say you’ll experience in grief. It comes in waves, and things feel strange, and nothing makes sense. What nobody tells you is that you also feel relief. Because now the worst thing—the thing that has grounded the fear-love—has happened.
Harold now explicitly confirms that Jacob has died, it’s not yet clear how he died. Harold’s remark about feeling a sort of relief in the aftermath of Jacob’s death is curious. In a way, it complicates the typical understanding that bad things bring suffering and good things bring pleasure. In Harold’s case, Jacob’s death brings him relief, which many would consider a positive feeling. This is yet another way that the book complicates the relationship between the conventionally opposing forces of suffering and happiness, fortune and misfortune, and deserving and undeserving.
Themes
Harold shifts his focus to Jude. He always knew Jude would make a brilliant lawyer, but Jude hid his greatness behind humility. Jude could understand a case, but he couldn’t separate the mechanics of it from the morality of it. And what’s “right” and “wrong” often has little to do with the law. Harold describes a hypothetical case he proposes to new students. In it, the parents of student athletes who die when a van drives off the road successfully sue the van’s owner—even though she wasn’t the driver. Many students think this outcome is unfair. Jude, though, had little interest in fairness—fairness is for naïve, “happy people,” whose lives have always been fair. Jude understood the difference between “right” and “fair,” and this was where he ran into issues. He understood the law instinctively, yet he never failed to introduce a moral argument into it.
To call Jude’s self-effacing personality humility is to put a decidedly positive spin on the unresolved trauma that has caused Jude to pathologically undermine his positive traits and downplay his accomplishments. And this should make the reader wonder: does Harold, at this point in time, know the extent of Jude’s suffering? Or has Jude continued to keep all these things from Harold? Jude’s fixation on morality could come, in part, from his desire to impose moral justice onto his legal cases in a way he wasn’t able to do in his own life, which has been so filled with injustice and suffering.
Themes
Jude became a successful lawyer, but Harold has always felt bad about this. He wishes he could’ve convinced Jude to pursue something else—something that allowed him to take full advantage of his mind and to be creative and moral. Harold feels guilty—he didn’t drive the van off the road, but he opened the door and let Jude inside, and then he drove Jude somewhere cold and awful and left him there.
Harold’s hypothetical case involving the van raises the issue of whether suffering is ever fair or unfair, or right or wrong—that a person’s actions bring about corresponding good or bad consequences. Harold feels guilty for not pushing Jude to pursue something creative, as though doing so would have made Jude’s life better. But Harold’s logic assumes that whatever misfortunes befell Jude were consequences that one can connect back to direct causes. In reality, life is not so logical, and suffering happens totally arbitrarily and independently of any person’s efforts to control it. It’s not clear when this section takes place, but the way Harold expresses regret over Jude suggests that he’s speaking from some point in the future, after which something bad has happened to Jude—something for which Harold feels responsible.
Themes
