A Little Life

A Little Life

by

Hanya Yanagihara

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Themes and Colors
Trauma Theme Icon
Identity Theme Icon
Success and Happiness Theme Icon
Friendship and Human Connection  Theme Icon
Pain and Suffering  Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Little Life, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Pain and Suffering  Theme Icon

The world of the novel is a wretched place where suffering, tragedy, loss, and human cruelty spare nobody. Jude endures a lifetime of unbearable pain, health complications, and impaired mobility after a sadistic doctor runs him over with his car when he is 15, and his condition only worsens with age. He also struggles with unresolved trauma from an abusive childhood. Most characters die, many of them young and tragically. By the novel’s end, JB is the only one of the four friends who remains: Willem and Malcolm die in a car wreck, and Jude dies by suicide shortly thereafter. An exception is Jude’s mentor, friend, and adoptive father, Harold, who lives to old age. But Harold’s longevity is no happy thing. In exchange for a long life, he endures the death of two sons: first, his biological son, Jacob, dies in childhood; and then Jude dies by suicide many years later. Thus, the novel portrays pain, misery, and human suffering as fundamental facts of life that anyone alive will inevitably endure.  

Throughout the book, characters struggle to overcome, understand, and accept the existence of human suffering—and each of them fail. Some believe people can overcome and defeat despair. Many of Jude’s friends (Andy and Harold, most notably) believe Jude can heal his psychological wounds through talk therapy. Others try to find a logical or moral framework to explain suffering. They seem to think that if they can understand why people suffer, they might avoid suffering themselves—or at least take comfort in the fact that it has happened for a reason. For instance, after Caleb, Jude’s abusive ex-partner, dies of pancreatic cancer, Harold and Andy express gratitude that Caleb, an objectively wretched person, died a young and excruciatingly painful death. It comforts them to think that Caleb got what he deserved. By contrast, many characters seem to think that Jude’s suffering is especially tragic because Jude is a good person who, they believe, does not deserve to suffer. But neither of these opposing views is quite right. Rather, the novel proposes that nobody deserves or is inclined to suffer more than anybody else: it’s just something that happens, unfair or unsatisfying as this may be. There is no way to explain why good people die young, or why cruelty goes unpunished. A Little Life suggests that human suffering is a fundamental, unavoidable part of the human experience, and trying to overcome or explain it only invites more suffering. 

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Pain and Suffering Quotes in A Little Life

Below you will find the important quotes in A Little Life related to the theme of Pain and Suffering .
Part 1: Lispenard Street: Chapter 1 Quotes

“But Jude,” he said, quietly, “you’re in pain. We have to get you help.”

“Nothing will help,” he said, and was silent for a few moments. “I just have to wait.” His voice was whispery and faint, unfamiliar.

“What can I do?” Willem asked.

“Nothing,” Jude said. They were quiet. “But Willem—will you stay with me for a little while?”

“Of course,” he said.

Related Characters: Willem Ragnarsson (speaker), Jude St. Francis
Related Symbols: Houses, Apartments, and Cabins
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Lispenard Street: Chapter 2 Quotes

Perhaps because of this, he felt he always knew who and what he was, which is why, as he moved farther and then further away from the ranch and his childhood, he felt very little pressure to change or reinvent himself. He was a guest at his college, a guest in graduate school, and now he was a guest in New York, a guest in the lives of the beautiful and the rich. He would never try to pretend he was born to such things, because he knew he wasn’t; he was a ranch hand’s son from western Wyoming, and his leaving didn’t mean that everything he had once been was erased, written over by time and experiences and the proximity to money.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Hemming
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 1 Quotes

But what was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain, partly because it was so difficult to articulate? He couldn’t remember being a child and being able to define happiness: there was only misery, or fear, and the absence of misery or fear, and the latter state was all he had needed or wanted.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Felix Baker, Mr. Baker
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:

But the odd thing was this: by his story morphing into one about a car accident, he was being given an opportunity for reinvention; all he had to do was claim it. But he never could. He could never call it an accident, because it wasn’t. And so was it pride or stupidity to not take the escape route he’d been offered? He didn’t know.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Malcolm Irvine, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Dr. Traylor
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:

“If I were a different kind of person, I might say that this whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Jacob
Page Number: 152-153
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 2 Quotes

Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion
Page Number: 190
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 3 Quotes

Every day the improbability of the situation seemed to grow larger and more vivid in his mind; every time he glimpsed the reflection of his ugly zombie’s hobble in the side of a building, he would feel sickened: Who, really, would ever want this? The idea that he could become someone else’s seemed increasingly ludicrous, and if Harold saw him just once more, how could he too not come to the same conclusion?

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Harold Stein, Julia , The Learys
Page Number: 213
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3: Vanities: Chapter 2 Quotes

“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.”

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis (speaker), Malcolm Irvine (speaker), Dr. Traylor
Related Symbols: Jude’s Wheelchair
Page Number: 290
Explanation and Analysis:

He could be more like Malcolm, he thinks; he could ask his friends for help, he could be vulnerable around them. He has been before, after all; it just hasn’t been by choice. But they have always been kind to him, they have never tried to make him feel self-conscious—shouldn’t that teach him something? Maybe, for instance, he will ask Willem if he could help him with his back: if Willem is disgusted by his appearance, he’ll never say anything.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Malcolm Irvine, Sophie
Page Number: 293
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: The Axiom of Equality: Chapter 1 Quotes

“You’ll find your own way to discuss what happened to you,” he remembers Ana saying. “You’ll have to, if you ever want to be close to anyone.” He wishes, as he often does, that he had let her […] teach him how to do it. His silence had begun as something protective, but over the years it has transformed into something […] that manages him rather than the other way around. […] He imagines he is floating in a small bubble of water, encased on all sides by walls and ceilings and floors of ice, all many feet thick. He knows there is a way out, but he is unequipped; he has no tools to begin his work […]. He had thought that by not saying who he was, he was making himself more palatable, less strange. But now, what he doesn’t say makes him stranger, an object of pity and even suspicion.

Related Characters: Ana (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Ana
Page Number: 339
Explanation and Analysis:

When he has clothes on, he is one person, but without them, he is revealed as he really is, the years of rot manifested on his skin, his own flesh advertising his past, its depravities and corruptions.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Caleb Porter
Related Symbols: Jude’s Self-Harm
Page Number: 347
Explanation and Analysis:

But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself—his very life—has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed […]. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated. And in that microsecond that he finds himself suspended in the air, […] he knows that x will always equal x, no matter what he does, or how many years he moves away from the monastery, from Brother Luke, no matter how much he earns or how hard he tries to forget. It is the last thing he thinks as his shoulder cracks down upon the concrete, and the world, for an instant, jerks blessedly away from beneath him: x = x, he thinks. x = x, x = x.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Brother Luke
Related Symbols: Houses, Apartments, and Cabins
Page Number: 386
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: The Axiom of Equality: Chapter 2 Quotes

I had meant what I told him that weekend: whatever he had done didn’t matter to me. I knew him. Who he had become was the person who mattered to me. I told him that who he was before made no difference to me. But of course, this was naïve: I adopted the person he was, but along with that came the person he had been, and I didn’t know who that person was. Later, I would regret that I hadn’t made it clearer to him that that person, whoever he was, was someone I wanted as well. Later, I would wonder, incessantly, what it would have been like for him if I had found him twenty years before I did, when he was a baby. Or if not twenty, then ten, or even five. Who would he have been, and who would I have been?

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Julia
Page Number: 397-398
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: The Axiom of Equality: Chapter 3 Quotes

He was careful never to say his name aloud, but sometimes he thought it, and no matter how old he got, no matter how many years had passed, there would appear Luke’s face, smiling, conjured in an instant. He thought of Luke when the two of them were falling in love, when he was being seduced and had been too much of a child, too naïve, too lonely and desperate for affection to know it. He was running to the greenhouse, he was opening the door, the heat and smell of flowers were surrounding him like a cape. It was the last time he had been so simply happy, the last time he had known such uncomplicated joy. “And here’s my beautiful boy!” Luke would cry. “Oh, Jude—I’m so happy to see you.”

Related Characters: Brother Luke (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Harold Stein, Dr. Traylor
Page Number: 480
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5: The Happy Years: Chapter 1 Quotes

“Willem’s not a health-care professional,” he remembered Andy saying. “He’s an actor.” And although both he and Jude had laughed at the time, he wasn’t sure Andy was wrong. Who was he to try to direct Jude’s mental health?

“Don’t trust me so much,” he wanted to say to Jude. But how could he? Wasn’t this what he had wanted from Jude, from this relationship? To be so indispensable to another person that that person couldn’t even comprehend his life without him? And now he had it, and the demands of the position terrified him. He had asked for responsibility without understanding completely how much damage he could do.

Related Characters: Willem Ragnarsson (speaker), Andy Contractor (speaker), Jude St. Francis
Page Number: 537-538
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5: The Happy Years: Chapter 2 Quotes

Eventually, he made some rules for himself. First, he would never refuse Willem, ever. If this was what Willem wanted, he could have it, and he would never turn him away. Willem had sacrificed so much to be with him, and had brought him such peace, that he was determined to try to thank him however he could. Second, he would try—as Brother Luke had once asked him—to show a little life, a little enthusiasm.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Brother Luke
Page Number: 546-547
Explanation and Analysis:

But there was the Jude he knew in the daylight, and even in the dusk and dawn, and then there was the Jude who possessed his friend for a few hours each night, and that Jude, he sometimes feared, was the real Jude: the one who haunted their apartment alone, the one whom he had watched draw the razor so slowly down his arm, his eyes wide with agony, the one whom he could never reach, no matter how many reassurances he made, no matter how many threats he levied. It sometimes seemed as if it was that Jude who truly directed their relationship, and when he was present, no one, not even Willem, could dispel him. And still, he remained stubborn: he would banish him, through the intensity and the force and the determination of his love.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson
Related Symbols: Jude’s Self-Harm
Page Number: 589
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’m not Hemming, Willem,” Jude hisses at him. “I’m not going to be the cripple you get to save for the one you couldn’t.”

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis (speaker), Willem Ragnarsson, Harold Stein, Andy Contractor, Hemming , Julia
Related Symbols: Jude’s Self-Harm, Houses, Apartments, and Cabins
Page Number: 599
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5: The Happy Years: Chapter 3 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Malcolm Irvine, Harold Stein, Hemming , Julia
Related Symbols: Jude’s Self-Harm, Houses, Apartments, and Cabins, Jude’s Wheelchair
Page Number: 649
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6: Dear Comrade: Chapter 1 Quotes

He hadn’t needed to catalog his life after all—Willem had been doing it for him all along. But why had Willem cared about him so much? Why had he wanted to spend so much time around him? He had never been able to understand this, and now he never will. I sometimes think I care more about your being alive than you do, he remembers Willem saying, and he takes a long, shuddering breath.

Related Characters: Willem Ragnarsson (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Harold Stein
Page Number: 731-732
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6: Dear Comrade: Chapter 2 Quotes

He stopped. What he wanted to say—but what he didn’t think he could get through—was what he had overheard Malcolm say as Willem was complaining about hefting the bookcase back into place and he was in the bathroom gathering the brushes and paint from beneath the sink.

“If I had left it like it was, he could’ve tripped against it and fallen, Willem,” Malcolm had whispered. “Would you want that?”

“No,” Willem had said, after a pause, sounding ashamed. “No, of course not. You’re right, Mal.”

Malcolm, he realized, had been the first among them to recognize that he was disabled; Malcolm had known this even before he did. He had always been conscious of it, but he had never made him feel self-conscious. Malcolm had sought, only, to make his life easier, and he had once resented him for this.

Related Characters: Willem Ragnarsson (speaker), Malcolm Irvine (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Richard
Page Number: 748-749
Explanation and Analysis:

He hopes for infection, something swift and fatal, something that will kill him and leave him blameless. But there is no infection. Since his amputations, there have been no wounds. He is still in pain, but no more—less, actually—than he had been in before. He is cured, or at least as cured as he will ever be.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson
Page Number: 754
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6: Dear Comrade: Chapter 3 Quotes

Finally he lifts his head and sees Harold staring at him, sees that Harold is actually crying, silently, looking and looking at him. “Harold,” he says, although Andy is still talking, “release me. Release me from my promise to you. Don’t make me do this anymore. Don’t make me go on.”

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis (speaker), Willem Ragnarsson, Harold Stein, Andy Contractor
Related Symbols: Houses, Apartments, and Cabins
Page Number: 787
Explanation and Analysis:

“Jude,” Harold says to him, quietly. “My poor Jude. My poor sweetheart.” And with that, he starts to cry, for no one has ever called him sweetheart, not since Brother Luke. Sometimes Willem would try[..] and he would make him stop; the endearment was filthy to him […]. “My sweetheart,” Harold says again, and he wants him to stop; he wants him to never stop. “My baby.” And he cries and cries, […] for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a child’s whims and wants and insecurities, for the privilege of behaving badly and being forgiven, for the luxury of tendernesses, of fondnesses, of being served a meal and being made to eat it, for the ability, at last, at last, of believing a parent’s reassurances, of believing that to someone he is special despite all his mistakes and hatefulness, because of all his mistakes and hatefulness.

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Julia
Page Number: 792-793
Explanation and Analysis:

“Jude,” says Dr. Loehmann. “You’ve come back.”

He takes a breath. “Yes,” he says. “I’ve decided to stay.”

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis (speaker), Dr. Loehmann (speaker), Willem Ragnarsson
Page Number: 794
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 7: Lispenard Street Quotes

When Jacob was a baby, I would find myself feeling more assured with each month he lived, as if the longer he stayed in this world, the more deeply he would become anchored to it[…]. It was a preposterous notion, of course, and it was proven wrong in the most horrible way. But I couldn’t stop thinking this: that life tethered life. And yet at some point in his life—after Caleb, if I had to date it—I had the sense that he was in a hot-air balloon, one that was staked to the earth with a long twisted rope, but each year the balloon strained and strained against its cords, […]. And down below, there was a knot of us trying to pull the balloon back to the ground, back to safety. And so I was always frightened for him, and I was always frightened of him, as well.

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Caleb Porter, Jacob
Page Number: 800
Explanation and Analysis:

“It’s such a beautiful house,” I said, as I always did, and as I always did, I hoped he was hearing me say that I was proud of him: for the house he built, and for the life he had built within it.

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson
Related Symbols: Houses, Apartments, and Cabins
Page Number: 806
Explanation and Analysis: