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 is lifting himself out of the pool after his morning swim when “the world disappears.” When he wakes, he finds that only 10 minutes have passed. The same thing happens after he returns from the office a few days later. He lies down on the sofa to rest. When he opens his eyes, it’s tomorrow. Jude knows what’s happening: he’s not eating enough.
If Jude is eating so little that “the world disappears,” he’s probably experiencing severe and dangerous malnourishment. It’s even possible that he’s attempting to starve himself to death, though he hasn’t consciously voiced that this is what he’s doing.
Themes
Two days later, Jude comes home from work and sees Willem emerge from a vapor before him. Then he blinks, and Willem is gone. The same thing happens the next day. Jude realizes that when he doesn’t eat, he hallucinates; and when he hallucinates, sometimes, he sees Willem. That Friday, Jude cancels his appointment with Andy to stay home and experiment with the hallucinations. That night, though, Willem doesn’t appear. Soon, Jude is cancelling all his plans to stay inside and hallucinate Willem. He hasn’t spoken to so many of his friends in weeks, but he no longer cares.
These hallucinations are evidence of Jude’s extreme starvation; it’s possible that if somebody doesn’t interfere—and soon—Jude may die. That Jude is willing to starve himself to “see” Willem again all but confirms that Willem’s death has caused Jude to lose the will to live. This is reaffirmed by the way Jude repeatedly prioritizes seeing hallucinations of “Willem” over his real, living friends.
Themes
Jude has never cared about his legacy. Unlike his friends, he has no paintings or buildings or films to leave behind. The only thing he’s ever made is money. The spring before Willem died, they’d had a small dinner party at Greene Street—just the four friends, plus Richard and Asian Henry Young—and Malcolm had talked about his regret that he and Sophie had never had children. What, Malcolm wondered, was the point of living? Willem interjected then and explained that he knew Malcolm’s life meant something because Malcolm is a good friend who loves and cares about his friends and makes them happy. Everyone was quiet for a moment, and then they all raised their glasses to him.
Willem’s philosophy of life underscores the importance of human connection. So much of life is uncertain: it’s impossible to know how much fame or recognition or wealth a person will amass over the course of their lifetime, or whether they will have children who will carry on their legacy. The point of life, Willem suggests, isn’t to reflect back on what one has done or amassed. The point of life is to live, and the best way to live, in Willem’s mind, is to love and care about being and find comfort in togetherness.
Themes
Though Jude hasn’t always worried about whether his life is meaningful, he has wondered what the point of living is. Why does anyone go on living when the world is so full of misery and suffering? Ever since his suicide attempt, though, he has known “that it was impossible to convince someone to live for his own sake.” Jude thinks it’s more persuasive to convince people to live for other people. This is how he found the will to live.
Jude’s philosophy of life is rooted in his belief that misery and suffering are fundamental parts of human experience. It’s a distorted version of Willem’s philosophy of life. Life is full of so much suffering already, Jude thinks, and so a person has an obligation to alleviate suffering in those they care about where possible. The only reason Jude goes on living is to alleviate the misery and suffering of someone like Harold, who would be heartbroken if Jude died.
Themes
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These days, though, it’s becoming harder to want to live, and Jude grows weaker every day. He knows he can’t go on forever, and this makes him feel guilty, since it means that he’ll “cheat[] on his promise to Harold.” But he cheats all the time in little ways, like when he uses the excuse of having too much work to cancel plans with friends. (It is true that he has a lot of work—he has an appellate trial next month that he’s funneling all his energy into.)
Jude knows he has an obligation to Harold to stay alive, but he also knows that people let others down all the time. And Jude’s life matters so little to him that breaking is promise to Harold to stay alive is hardly a bigger deal than cancelling weekend plans. Increasingly, it seems inevitable that Jude will die by suicide before the novel’s end.
Themes
The Friday before the trial, Andy comes to see Jude at his office. He asks Jude to stand. Jude says he can’t because his legs hurt, but Andy calls him out on the real truth: he’s lost too much weight, and now his protheses don’t fit right. This confrontation doesn’t faze Jude; he and Andy have had this interaction so many times, and it never changes anything. He’ll agree to improve himself in some way that makes Andy happy, Andy will lecture him, he’ll lie to Andy, and then they’ll repeat the cycle. Jude lies to Andy that he has the flu. Andy is skeptical but leaves when Jude promises to see him next week.
Jude’s longing to die has started to manifest physically: his thin, weak limbs are evidence of the weeks he’s spend starving himself. This is yet another way that Jude’s body has betrayed him over the course of his life: it carried the scars of his trauma, it prevented him and Willem from having a satisfying physical relationship, it became infected when Jude wanted to heal, and it refused to succumb to infection when Jude wanted to die. Now, his body is attracting unsolicited concern from his friends.
Themes
Jude goes to trial, and it doesn’t go well. He goes home and sleeps all weekend. Reality starts to slip away from him. He thinks he sees Brother Luke and Dr. Traylor. He feels very weak. He can’t hallucinate Willem anymore. He tries to tell himself that things will get better.
Jude continues to deteriorate. Starving himself, at first, was a way for him to reclaim control over his life and body in the wake of Willem’s death. Now, as Brother Luke and Dr. Traylor force their way into Jude’s starvation-induced hallucinations, his body has betrayed him once more.
Themes
Then it’s Harold and Julia’s move-in day. When Jude arrives at their apartment, it’s immediately clear that he’s walked into an intervention. All his friends are there, and he learns that everyone has been monitoring his food intake for weeks. Andy explains that Jude is at a Grade Two weight loss, which is when people are typically put on a feeding tube. Desperate for relief, Jude turns to Harold and pleads with him, “Release me from my promise to you. […] Don’t make me go on.”
Jude is torn between his desire die and alleviate his suffering, and his desire not to break his promise to Harold. Jude believes that he’s spent his entire life disgusting and disappointing people, and he doesn’t want disappointing Harold and knowingly causing Harold to suffer to be the last thing he does, but he’s out of ideas.
Themes
Jude’s friends take him to the hospital, and he fights until someone sedates him. When he wakes, he’s strapped to a hospital bed. He thinks it’s going to be the same process it always is. But this time, they don’t give him any choices: they hook him up to the feeding tube, and they make him see Dr. Loehmann. They watch him constantly to makes sure that he eats and keeps his food down.
Jude’s friends, by this point, are effectively holding him hostage. He has no desire to live, and yet they keep him alive nonetheless, prolonging his suffering. If, as Jude previously put forth, people have an obligation to live for others, might it also be true that people have an obligation to let others die, especially if the mere fact of existence causes them undue suffering?
Themes
This is Jude’s new life. With it, “he has moved past humiliation, past sorrow, past hope.” Even at work, he has no relief, since Sanjay is watching him constantly and will text Andy, who will have Jude committed, if Jude tries anything. Jude starts seeing Dr. Loehmann again, though he resents being there and refuses to talk to him. He goes to Harold and Julia’s for dinner Thursday nights and is rude to them, too. Tonight, he tells Harold the chicken stew they made him “tastes like dog food.” He is daring Harold to tell him to get out and not come back. If Harold insists that Jude stay alive, then Jude will show him what a monster he is: what a “monster” Brother Luke and Dr. Traylor have made him become.
Jude goes through the motions, but “he has moved past humiliation, past sorrow, past hope.” He resorts to punishing his friends in retaliation for the hell that they have put him through by keeping him alive. He unleashes the “monster” that he has spent his life trying to conceal from them, fearing they would abandon him if they knew of his monstrosity. Ironically, the thing that Jude used to fear most is now the thing he wants most: for all his friends to abandon him, so that he can finally die in peace.
Themes
Jude stands at the table and announces he’s leaving. Harold is angry. He tells Jude he can’t leave until he’s eaten, and Julia pleads with Jude to stay. Then, inexplicably, Jude remembers the first time Harold saw one of his episodes. Jude had gone into the pantry to wait out the pain. Harold found him there. Harold crouched beside Jude, and for a moment, Jude thought Harold would unzip his pants and make him do what all the others made him do. But Harold only stroked Jude’s head and sang a lullaby to him. Jude knew that after that episode, he and Harold would either grow closer or more distant. He wanted his episode to continue forever so that he’d never have to learn how Harold’s song would end.
Jude has long avoided close relationships with others. He’s done this out of self-preservation: if Jude doesn’t let anybody inside, he’ll spare himself the pain that will come when they inevitably betray, disappoint, or abandon him somewhere down the road. But Jude’s attempt to shield himself from pain has in fact caused him to suffer, as it’s robbed him of the opportunity to give and receive love. As Harold sings to Jude in the pantry, Jude realizes the error in his ways. When Jude states that he never wants his pain episode to end so that he doesn’t have to hear the end of Harold’s song, he’s proposing that he’s been going about things the wrong way all along: in shutting people out, he’s simply substituted one pain (the pain of abandonment and rejection) for another (the self-inflicted pain of self-imposed loneliness).
Themes
And now Jude is back in the present, in Harold and Julia’s New York apartment. Jude picks up his plate and throws it against the wall. Harold moves toward Jude, and Jude waits for Harold to strike him—but Harold only wraps his arms around Jude. Julia hugs him too. “My poor Jude. My poor sweetheart,” says Harold. Jude starts to cry, then, because the only other person who called him “sweetheart” was Brother Luke. Willem would try, but Jude always made him stop. It felt “filthy” to him. But this time, Jude lets Harold continue. He wants and doesn’t want Harold to stop; he wants to feel what it’s like to “believ[e] that to someone he is special despite all the mistakes and hatefulness, because of all his mistakes and hatefulness.”
Something breaks in Jude the minute Harold calls him “sweetheart.” Normally, when something in Jude’s present triggers a memory of Brother Luke, the memory of Brother Luke overpowers the present, as when Jude had to make Willem stop calling him “sweetheart” because it felt “filthy” to hear Brother Luke’s word on Willem’s lips. Now, though, something is different: Jude lets Harold continue to comfort him like the father Harold has tried to be to Jude all these years, who loves Jude “despite” and “because of all his mistakes and hatefulness.” Brother Luke recedes into the background, and Jude almost seems to believe that Harold’s fatherly love for him might be true.
Themes
The spell breaks when Julia goes to the kitchen and returns with a new sandwich for Jude, which he eats. When he is finished, Harold and Julia kiss him good night, and he returns to his apartment. He wonders if time is regressing: if he might experience what it’s like had Harold and Julia been his parents from the start. Maybe he could be a normal kid. Maybe he’d “be a better person,” or “a more loving one.” Maybe “it isn’t too late.”
Jude has had moments of clarity like these before; he’s repeatedly entertained the notion that “it isn’t too late” for him to change into the “better” and “more loving” person his abusers stopped him from becoming. One wants to believe that maybe, just maybe, Jude has finally seen the light and recognized that he is capable of change, recovery, and redemption—but Jude has been down this path so many times before, and it’s never stuck. Still, that Harold’s compassion triggered—and the overpowered—Jude’s memory of Brother Luke is a huge breakthrough for Jude and suggests that recovery might still be possible.
Themes
Jude is still thinking these things when he sees Dr. Loehmann next week. In their session, Jude tries like he has never tried before. He answers the doctor’s questions, even though they are difficult, and he tries to tell the doctor his story. But he can’t tell this story without thinking of Willem, and he breaks down.
Jude appears to be taking therapy seriously for the first time in his life. He even attempts to tell his story to the doctor—something he has done only twice before, first with Ana, and then with Willem. This continues to suggest that Jude may be on the road to recovery.
Themes
Suddenly, Jude can’t breathe, and he runs out of Dr. Loehmann’s office and into the bathroom. Then “he plays his old game of ‘If,’” imagining all the ways his life might have turned out differently if he hadn’t gone with Dr. Traylor or Brother Luke. But Jude realizes that if these horrible things hadn’t happened to him, then he also wouldn’t have met Harold, or Andy, or Willem. Jude calms himself, and then he wheels his chair out of the bathroom and back into Dr. Loehmann’s office, where the doctor has been waiting for him. Jude tells him, “I’ve decided to stay.”
Throughout the novel, Jude has oscillated between hopefulness and hopelessness about his capacity to heal and find life meaningful in the aftermath of betrayal, abuse, and devastating loss. Now, though, he seems to have undergone a major change of heart. “I’ve decided to stay,” taken literally, means that Jude has decided to stay at Dr. Loehmann’s office and resume their session. Taken figuratively, though, it conveys Jude’s renewed appreciation for life: he’s “decided to stay” alive. He reaches this decision upon realizing that, maybe, all the suffering he's endured has been worth it, since this suffering eventually gave way to fleeting moments of happiness and meaningful human connection.
Themes
