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
Jude wakes up on Saturday morning. He’s about to turn 36, and it’s a rare morning where he feels okay. These moments are rare and fleeting. But as his condition has gotten worse over time, he’s learned to stop hoping that he’ll heal. And he’s also learned to be thankful for these small moments of respite.
Jude is less disillusioned than his friends are about his condition. They all believe he can get better with time if he tries hard enough. But Jude has accepted that there are limits to his body and mind’s capacity to heal. And he’s made peace with this, if only fleetingly.
Themes
Later, Jude meets up with Malcolm. They’re going to Jude’s suitmaker to have Malcolm fit for a suit for his and Sophie’s wedding, though nobody is certain the wedding will happen—Malcolm and Sophie have a rocky relationship. Jude apologizes for putting off Malcolm’s renovations for so long (Malcolm is supposed to renovate Jude’s apartment)—he hasn’t had the money until now because he’s been paying off the apartment.
If Malcolm and Sophie have a rocky relationship already, it seems doubtful that marriage will fix that. Mr. Irvine has pressured Malcolm and his friends to settle down, and the novel has also made clear that Malcolm is obsessed with impressing his father. So, it’s plausible that Malcolm is marrying Sophie not because he genuinely wants to, but because he thinks doing so will (at long last) earn him his father’s approval.
Themes
Jude considers his apartment. It’s still crazy to him that he has money, much less a space of his own. But he does: he’s a litigator at Rosen Pritchard and Klein, one of the city’s most important firms. He was contacted directly by Lucien Voigt, chair of the litigation department, who had been impressed with Jude’s work in securities fraud at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. When Lucien offered Jude a job, Jude accepted it right away. Money is important to him. He’s come to terms with the fact that he’s disabled, and he needs to know that he can afford to pay someone to provide dignified care for him later in life.
In this passage, the narrative shows how Jude’s injuries—the physical manifestation of his childhood trauma—affect every aspect of his life. He takes a job with Rosen Pritchard and Klein not for the prestige of holding such a position, but to ensure that he can afford care later in life as his condition worsens with age.
Themes
Jude remembers the event that made him accept Lucien’s offer: One Friday night, Jude returns to Lispenard Street feeling very weak and in pain, only to find that the elevator is broken. None of his friends are around to help him—Willem is currently performing in a play, Cloud 9. But Jude is so determined to get into his apartment that he collapses his wheelchair and starts to climb the stairs on foot. The pain worsens. Finally, he can’t take it anymore and leaves Willem a message asking him for help. Jude makes it upstairs, though he can’t remember getting there. When he wakes up the next morning, Willem is asleep on the floor beside Jude’s bed and Andy is in a chair. Jude feels groggy and realizes Andy must have given him an injection; he falls back asleep.
Traumatic experiences continue to shape Jude’s life, like this time Jude’s pain becomes so intense that he passes out and requires an injection. For all of Jude’s efforts to conceal his disability, it ends up coming to the surface anyway, and he has to turn to his friends for help.
Themes
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The next time Jude wakes, Willem is gone but Andy is still there. Andy demands that Jude find a new apartment. And so, the next week, Jude accepts Lucien Voigt’s job offer. When he calls to tell Harold, Harold is critical of the decision. Jude was doing good, meaningful work at the U.S. Attorney’s office, and now he’ll be defending white-collar criminals. Jude is silent. He knows Harold is right, and he hates that he’s disappointed him. Harold tells Jude he could’ve been a judge someday—but now he’s giving this away.
Note that it’s not this health scare itself that convinces Jude to acknowledge his condition and get a new apartment—it’s Andy’s order to do so. So, though the novel offers occasional evidence that Jude is growing as a character, healing, and gradually coming to accept that he’s going to live the rest of his life with chronic pain, Jude really makes little progress in any of these endeavors.
Themes
If money is the issue, Harold says, he’ll give Jude money—enough to let him keep his current job. Jude is on the verge of tears as he explains that the kind of money he needs is more than Harold can give him. Harold doesn’t understand what Jude could need money for besides an apartment. Jude doesn’t say so aloud, but Harold’s naivete about the world can be really frustrating sometimes. His optimism doesn’t let him even consider that Jude may need money someday for hospital stays, a possible leg amputation, prostheses, and surgery.
Jude’s friends offer him comfort and support, but this scene with Harold reminds the reader of Jude’s friends’ limited capacity to understand exactly how his condition affects his life. Harold sees the world through the lens of his able-bodied self. He can’t see how Jude’s traumatic injury and resultant lifelong medical complications bleed into every facet of his life. Harold thinks (genuinely and with good intentions) that loaning Jude money will solve the worst of Jude’s problems, but this is simply not the case.
Themes
Ultimately, Harold is right—Jude does miss the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He misses being surrounded by people who care about the cases they’re working. Rosen Pritchard encourages its lawyers to take on pro bono work, so Jude starts working for a nonprofit group that offers legal counsel to artists. Even if the artists aren’t any good, Jude admires them for “making beautiful things” and for investing so much of themselves in their hopes and dreams. Jude’s friend Richard is on the board of the organization, and they sometimes talk in between Jude’s meetings with clients.
Jude’s admiration for the artists’ ability to “mak[e] beautiful things” reflects, perhaps, a central regret of his own life. Most of his friends are artistically inclined, and Jude perhaps wishes he could express himself through art and creativity like they do. And yet his disability (in Jude’s eyes) ends up ruling his life. Every decision he makes, every career he pursues, must adhere to the limitations his disability imposes on him.
Themes
One day, Richard invites Jude back to his apartment for a drink. Richard lives in a narrow building with no lobby—but it does have an industrial elevator, which is bigger than the living room at Lispenard Street. They ride the elevator to the third floor and step inside Richard’s apartment. Jude is in awe of the bright, open space. There are no dividing walls, and Richard’s bedroom is encased inside a transparent cube of glass. It’s the biggest apartment Jude has seen. Richard gives Jude a tour of the building, including his studio on the second floor.
Richard’s wide, open apartment is a revelation to Jude: with the building’s industrial elevator and lack of narrow passageways, it’s (by coincidence) a space that’s both accessible (Jude, by this point, must use a wheelchair from time to time) and beautiful. Jude sees a space his disability won’t exclude him from inhabiting.
Themes
Richard and Jude have beers in Richard’s studio and chat. Richard asks if Jude has seen the paintings JB plans to show at his next show in six months. Jude hasn’t, but he knows that he’s in a lot of them. He changes the subject, admiring Richard’s apartment. Richard admits that he in fact owns the place—his grandparents invested in several buildings many years ago and gifted them to their grandchildren. He’s nearly finished clearing one of the other apartments and offers to sell one to Jude.
Jude’s impulse to change the subject once Richard starts to talk about JB’s new series of paintings suggests that Jude is still uncomfortable with JB featuring him in his work. Yet the fact that the show is happening at all also suggests that Jude has decided to accept JB’s work despite this discomfort. Jude’s willingness to forgive JB’s betrayal shows how far he’ll go to preserve their friendship.
Themes
“Why me?” asks Jude. Richard shrugs off Jude’s deference. He hesitates before mentioning, too, that Willem told him about the incident about the elevator breaking recently—Jude wouldn’t have to worry about things like that here. Jude immediately feels betrayed and exposed that Willem talked to Richard about the elevator. He tries to hide things from his friends because he wants them to see him as an equal.
Jude’s irritation comes from him mistaking his friends’ concern for pity, and also from his failure to accept the reality of his disability. He seems to think that his friends’ mere acknowledgment of his disability means that they’re looking down on him. But the reality is that (at least outwardly) nobody has expressed that they pity or think less of Jude for his limited mobility or chronic pain—they merely acknowledge that Jude’s disability exists and want to make sure he’s taking care of himself appropriately. Jude, on the other hand, is too ashamed of his disability to even acknowledge it to himself.
Themes
Jude thinks back to a time when Willem was still with Philippa. They were joking about how when she and Willem were old someday, they’d move into her parents’ house in Vermont, and all their kids would move in with them. Willem cut in to say that Jude would be living with them, too. “Oh, will I?” Jude responded jokingly, though inside, he was happy that Willem included him in his fantasies about old age. Willem smiled at Jude, but Philippa was no longer smiling. Afterward, she stopped being friendly with him. Jude understood why she’d feel this way—Willem invited Jude everywhere they went to the point that he was a third wheel. When Willem and Philippa later broke up, Jude blamed himself.
This memory contextualizes Jude’s continued inability to accept his disability. Though Jude initially is happy when Willem includes him in this fantasies about old age, this happiness fades once Jude sees Philippa’s adverse reaction to Willem’s suggestion. In Jude’s mind, Philippa’s adverse reaction—and the breakup that later follows—is confirmation that most people see him (and the accommodations his disability necessitates) as a burden. Perhaps Jude fears that Willem, too, will start to see him as a burden—that the costs of being friends with him outweigh the benefits.
Themes
The week after Richard asks Jude to buy the apartment, Richard’s father draws up a contract for Jude to sign. When Jude tells Harold about the apartment, he doesn’t tell him that he bought the place, since he doesn’t want Harold to offer to help him pay for it.
Jude doesn’t want Harold’s financial help because he doesn’t want Harold to see him as a burden, either. Even though Harold is now Jude’s legal adoptive father, Jude still seems convinced that Harold might reject and abandon him at the drop of a hat. Once more, Jude’s lingering trust issues demonstrate the long-term consequences of his childhood trauma.
Themes
Three years later, Jude has finished paying off the apartment. One day, he has an appointment with Andy. Andy enters the examination room, a “grim and yet oddly triumphant” look on his face, and hands Jude an academic study about an experimental keloid-removal surgery Jude had been wanting to get. It’s really just quackery, and many of the patients have emerged from the surgery with further disfigurement. They’re also more likely to suffer from infections. Andy knows that Jude has been considering this surgery (and he has—it’s what he’s saving for now) because the doctor sent Andy a request for Jude’s files. Andy promises that Jude can attempt a treatment that’s proven to be safe, whenever that happens.
Andy’s bad news about the experimental surgery symbolically reaffirms one of Jude’s greatest fears: that his injuries (and, by extension, his psychological wounds) will remain with him forever, no matter how successful he becomes or how hard he tries to reinvent himself as a new, recovered person. His physical scars (a keloid is a type of scar) will be with him for the foreseeable future, until medicine advances a bit further.
Themes
Jude tries not to be too disappointed by what Andy told him. Now that he knows he can’t get the surgery, he can pay Malcolm to get started on the renovations. And he’s excited about that. Malcolm has developed into a skilled and confident architect ever since he quit Ratstar and founded a firm with some of his old architecture school friends. Still, Jude’s been arguing with Malcolm over his latest blueprints. He bristled when he saw that Malcolm had included grab bars in the bathroom. Malcolm explained that he’s following ADA guidelines, but Jude snapped that he didn’t want to live in “some cripple’s apartment.”
Jude’s condition dampens even the excitement of buying and renovating his first home. For Jude, the apartment becomes not a symbol of his successes and accomplishments, but instead, a reminder of the endless ways his chronic pain and disability rule his life. And he reacts so adversely to Malcolm’s recommendation that he adhere to ADA guidelines because 1) it suggests that Malcolm can’t separate Jude from his disability, and 2) these accommodations are a symbolic and visual reminder that, no matter how far Jude goes in life professionally or economically, he cannot escape his past, and he will always be “some cripple[].” He might be successful enough to afford an apartment, but his disability limits the type of apartment he can live in.
Themes
Now, Malcolm shows Jude his latest plans. This time, there are no grab bars, but there’s a seat in the shower—“just in case.” He makes Jude promise to think about it. Jude doesn’t know it now, but many years down the line, he’ll be grateful to Malcolm for putting all this thought into his future.
Malcolm isn’t incorporating these accommodations into his blueprints because he thinks less of Jude—he’s doing it because he’s a thoughtful friend who cares about Jude. But Jude, at least for now, is too consumed by self-hatred and shame about his disability to realize this. As well, he also seems unable to accept, on some level, that his condition will only worsen with time.
Themes
After their suit fitting, Malcolm and Jude have lunch. They’re both excited for Malcolm to begin work on the apartment. They finish lunch early and go for a walk. Finally, Jude turns to Malcolm and asks what everyone’s been thinking: is the wedding going to happen? Malcolm says he doesn’t know. He lists all the pros and cons. Then he asks Jude what he thinks. Jude inwardly considers how it could be good to be more like Malcolm—to ask his friends for help, to “be vulnerable around them.” He thinks about asking Willem to help massage the prescription scar cream Andy prescribed for him at his appointment earlier. But then he realizes he can never do this—he can never show Willem who he really is.
As Malcolm frets over his upcoming wedding, Jude recognizes one way that he’s different from his friends that he can control: his unwillingness to “be vulnerable around them.” Yet, though Jude seems to recognize that Malcolm’s vulnerability is a positive thing, he can’t bring himself to apply the same logic to himself. Also note how Jude is especially worried to let Willem see his scars, believing that doing so will cause Willem to look down on Jude. This further cements Jude’s scars (and injuries, in general), as a symbol of his internalized shame. Jude believes that his scars are visual evidence of the way his past has left him damaged and deformed—and letting someone see this damage and deformity up close is a degree of vulnerability Jude simply isn’t yet ready to experience.
Themes
