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Part 6: Dear Comrade: Chapter 3
Themes
and Colors
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
Harold, speaking in the first person in the novel’s present, addresses Willem and recalls the events that happened after Willem’s death. On the second anniversary of Willem’s death, Harold, Julia, and Jude go to Rome. They attend Malcolm and Sophie’s memorial. After the memorial, there’s a nice meal, but everybody is too sad to speak or eat.
Note that the scene Harold is describing takes place some time before the therapy session that concluded the previous chapter. This builds tension, as the last chapter left the reader uncertain as to Jude’s fate. He told Dr. Loehmann that he wanted “to stay,” implying that he wanted to live, but Harold gives no indication as to Jude’s condition just yet.
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A couple days later is the day that “you” (Willem) died. Jude leaves a note that he’s gone walking, and nobody sees him until breakfast the next day. He doesn’t say where he was yesterday, and nobody asks. The next evening, Jude, Harold, and Julia meet JB and Richard for dinner. Then Harold and Julia head to Florence, and Jude returns to New York. He says he’ll see them in two days. As Harold waves goodbye to Jude, he remembers thinking: “Don’t you dare.” Jude has been mostly stable lately, but he’s experienced two setbacks over the past year. Harold has always thought “that life tethered life,” that the longer one lives, the more one is “anchored to [the world].” But after Caleb, Jude became untethered, like a balloon whose cord was cut.
Harold continues to send mixed messages as to whether Jude is alive or dead. On the one hand, Jude seems to handle the anniversary of Willem’s death stoically, though he maintains his characteristic secrecy and doesn’t tell anybody what he did or where he went on the anniversary. In addition, Harold’s observation that Jude is no longer “anchored to [the world]” and no longer invested in life itself is cause for concern. When Harold thinks, “Don’t you dare,” he’s pleading with Jude not to end his life. This scene illustrates the agony of having Jude in his life: it’s a constant battle between constantly worrying about him and setting aside that worry to be present in the friendship.
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But Harold and Julia return home, and Jude has not died, and things return to normal. Jude comes over for dinner the next day, and as he’s washing dishes, he drops and breaks a plate. He apologizes profusely. Though Harold tries to calm him, Jude insists that he “mess[es] up everything.”
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Then a few weeks later, at Lantern House, Harold goes to Jude’s room to see if he wants anything from the store. The door is cracked open, and Harold watches Jude putting on his protheses. Jude is still underweight, and so the protheses are too large for his body. And when he tries to stand, he loses his balance and falls onto the bed. He rips off the protheses, and to Harold, it looks as though he is ripping off a piece of himself.
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Harold knows it’s hard “to keep alive someone who doesn’t want to stay alive.” Even if you can use logic or guilt to convince them, it doesn’t change the fact that they don’t want to be there. One night, Jude shows up to Thursday dinner, and there are bruises all over his neck and face. He claims he fell, but Harold doesn’t know. Jude misses Willem, and Harold does too. And Harold misses seeing Jude and Willem together. JB’s painting, Willem Listening to Jude Tell a Story, depicts what they had so perfectly.
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Still, there are happy times after Willem’s death. That fall, Harold suggests that Jude teach him to cook. Jude agrees, and they have a lesson every Saturday. They go walking after their cooking lessons. When they are upstate, they walk along the path that Malcolm designed. They admire the house from afar, and Harold tells Jude that it is beautiful. He hopes that Jude catches his meaning: that he is proud of the life that Jude built for himself.
In February, Harold and Jude have a cooking lesson at Greene Street, and then they go for a walk. Jude shares that he’s been asked to be his firm’s chairman—and he’s going to turn down the offer. Jude explains that he’s going to leave the firm soon anyway. He might travel instead. Harold quietly offers to join Jude in his travels. Jude agrees—Harold and Julia could meet him in some places—and this reassures Harold.
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Jude and Harold continue walking, and Harold realizes that they’re approaching Lispenard Street: “The Worst Apartment in the World,” Harold proclaims. Jude laughs. Jude says he has good memories of the apartment, and the mood shifts: they’re both thinking of Willem. Then, Jude asks Harold if he ever told him the story of how he jumped off the fire escape. Harold is shocked—no, he says, he’s not heard that one.
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Five months later, in June, JB calls Harold to say that Jude has died by suicide—he injected an artery with air and gave himself a stroke. Andy lies to Harold and says the death would have been painless, but Harold researches and discovers that Jude’s death would have been horrifically painful.
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Harold and the others go to Jude’s apartment. All his letters and documents are laid out on the dining room table. Everyone wonders if they could have done something differently. Andy takes the death horribly—he thinks it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t told Jude he was retiring. They both agree that it’s good that Willem isn’t here to see this—but, they also wonder, wouldn’t Jude still be alive if Willem were here?
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Everybody dies so young: Andy dies of a heart attack three years later, and Richard dies of brain cancer. In the end, only JB remains. He has a serious boyfriend now, Tomasz. Harold and Julia like Tomasz and know that Willem would have, too. Now, JB is 61. Harold is 84. It’s been six years since Jude’s death, and nine years since Willem’s. JB’s latest series is called “Jude, Alone,” and it features paintings of Jude in the years after Willem’s death. Harold tries but can’t bring himself to look at the paintings.
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In the end, there was so much Harold never knew about Jude. In the days after Jude’s death, he and Jude’s other friends go through his things at Greene Street and at Lantern House, and they cry each time they find a photo nobody has seen before. One day, Harold finds the CD and letter Jude tucked inside Harold’s bookcase the day of his adoption. He listens to the CD and cries when he hears Jude’s voice. It takes him longer to read the letter. But he eventually does, and he learns about everything that happened to Jude. Jude apologizes for “deceiv[ing]” Harold. Harold has always wanted the answers the letter gave him, but now, with Jude gone, “those answers only torment.” Most of all, he hates that Jude died alone, thinking he owed everyone an apology.
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Harold often goes downstairs at night and stares at Willem Listening to Jude Tell a Story, which hangs on his wall. He asks Willem if he (Harold) made Jude happy. Jude—and everyone—deserves happiness. But we don’t always get it. For Harold, the worst thing isn’t Jude’s death—it’s “what he died believing.”
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But back when Harold and Jude were standing before, Harold didn’t know anything about Jude’s past, or what Jude believed about himself. As they looked up at the old building, Harold was pretending that Jude was done hurting and scaring him, and Jude was letting Harold believe these things. They both pretended that the future would be happier than the past. So, when Jude asked Harold if he’d like to hear the story about the fire escape, Harold said yes, and Jude told him the story.
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