Jude’s Self-Harm Symbol Analysis

The cuts, scars, burns, and bruises Jude incurs from his recurrent self-harm symbolize Jude’s childhood trauma and his inability to overcome that trauma. Jude began to use self-harm to cope with feelings of internalized shame, pain, and worthlessness in childhood. When Jude was living at the monastery, he would bang parts of himself (his wrists, his elbows, or his cheeks, for example) against the corner of dinner tables or desks. Doing this gave Jude a sense of control over the monks who abused him: seeing the “anger and noise and power” of Jude’s self-harm scared the monks. It also allowed Jude to reclaim control over his body: it allowed him to inflict pain upon himself, when he was otherwise subject to the pain of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse the monks inflicted upon him. Jude continues to hit and cut himself as an adult. And for the most part, his reasons for doing so remain the same: he wants to regain the control over his body, mind, and life that his abusers took away from him. In this way, then, Jude’s injuries reflect the enduring effects of Jude’s childhood trauma, and his enduring efforts to cope with that trauma.

Though Jude turns to self-harm to cope with his trauma, his self-inflicted injuries are also the source of additional shame and self-hatred. Jude wears long-sleeved shirts to hide his self-harm from others, and for much of his life, nobody besides Andy, Jude’s trusted doctor, knows about them. Jude hides his injuries from others because he is ashamed of them. Not only do his injuries remind him of a past that he’s ashamed of, but they are also a visual manifestation of Jude’s continued failure to work through and recover from his childhood trauma—his inability to leave the past behind him and become a better, restored person. As an adult, Jude recognizes that his continued self-harm is counterproductive: his body has been abused and scarred in so many ways that were beyond his control, and now, he continues to willfully subject his body to further injury. Still, his self-hatred and shame run too deep for him to adopt healthy coping mechanisms to work through his trauma and alleviate some of his inner suffering. In this way, then, the vicious cycle of Jude’s self-harm and self-hatred illustrates the broader psychological hang-ups that create obstacles to his recovery. That is, he hurts himself because he feels that he is “deformed” and unworthy of anything but pain and suffering, and then he sees the cuts and scars he inflicts upon himself as visual proof that he is truly “deformed” and undeserving of healing, compassion, and redemption. Thus, the cycle continues.