Jude’s wheelchair symbolizes his struggle to accept his trauma and disability. Though Jude learns how to walk again after Dr. Traylor runs over him with his car, the attack leaves Jude with chronic pain and mobility issues that persist for the rest of his life. The Philadelphia doctor who treats Jude in the immediate aftermath of the attack vaguely suggests that Jude’s spine and legs might one day heal. So, for many years, Jude lives with the hope that he might one day regain the physical strength and mobility the accident took from him many years before. It’s devastating, then, when years later, Andy tells Jude that the opposite is true: that he will never recover from his injuries, and that his pain and mobility issues will only grow more extreme and debilitating over time. This revelation forces Jude to acknowledge that, despite the professional and financial success he’s experienced as an adult, his physical limitations will always be there, effectively gluing him to the past and all the shame and trauma he associates with it.
As Jude’s condition worsens, some days, the pain is so bad that he must use a wheelchair, and this makes it impossible for him to hide his injuries completely. In many ways, Jude seems to see his deteriorating physical health as a sign of his worsening mental health. His wheelchair, thus, reinforces how unworthy and abnormal he believes he is: ordinary people recover from their injuries over time; meanwhile, Jude’s condition grows steadily worse. Jude’s abusive relationship with Caleb only reaffirms his self-hatred, his internalized shame, and the negative associations he has with his wheelchair. Caleb is visibly disgusted by Jude’s disability and wheelchair. He even cancels their dinner plans on the spot one night when Jude shows up in his wheelchair. Caleb claims that Jude is “weak” for using his wheelchair when he “technically” can walk (though the pain makes it effectively impossible to walk). Caleb’s criticism not only reaffirms Jude’s big fear that other people see him as deformed and different, but also that his failure to work through his trauma and heal (psychologically) is his own fault.
Jude’s Wheelchair Quotes in A Little Life
“But I’m not even in a wheelchair,” he’d said, dismayed.
“But Jude,” Malcolm had begun, and then stopped. He knew what Malcolm wanted to say: But you have been. And you will be again. But he didn’t.
“These are standard ADA guidelines,” he said instead.
“Mal,” he’d said, chagrined by how upset he was. “I understand. But I don’t want this to be some cripple’s apartment.”
On these days, he succumbed to a sort of enchantment, a state in which his life seemed both unimprovable and, paradoxically, perfectly fixable: Of course Jude wouldn’t get worse. Of course he could be repaired. Of course Willem would be the person to repair him. Of course this was possible; of course this was probable. Days like this seemed to have no nights, and if there were no nights, there was no cutting, there was no sadness, there was nothing to dismay.
Jude’s Wheelchair Symbol Timeline in A Little Life
