Solid Ground
In A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara presents an argument for why some lives aren’t worth living. She gets it wrong.
Review by Najma Zahira
Is there a life that isn’t worth living? This is the question Hanya Yanagihara sets out to answer in her critically acclaimed book A Little Life, a painfully detailed tale of trauma, loss, and love that has lived in my head rent-free for the past few months. The story follows the lives of four college friends, Willem, Malcolm, JB, and Jude, examining their relationships to each other and themselves and how they evolve over the course of their lives. Yanagihara masterfully weaves together their different perspectives, moving the reader to care deeply about each character, before focusing the latter half of the book on Jude. Despite the praise that I, and others more notable than me, have for this book, my relationship with it is complicated. On one hand, as an exploration into the depths of human suffering and what it means to love someone, it has influenced the way that I see myself and others, and I’m truly glad that I read it. On the other hand, I don’t know if I would recommend this book to anyone else. Setting aside the frankly gratuitous ways that Yanagihara chose to portray scenes of trauma and abuse that make this story unsuitable for many, it is how Yanagihara answers the central question of the book that gives me pause. Is there a life that isn’t worth living? Yanagihara firmly says yes, and she illustrates her negative through the character of Jude.
From the beginning, Jude stands out. He’s described as the “Postman” by his friend JB, meaning that he’s beyond concepts like race, gender, sexuality, religion; he simply exists as himself, with no ties to any external social structures. As we learn about Jude, we see that he has faced unspeakable acts of exploitation and abuse throughout his childhood by those he trusted most. This trauma has led him to strive to create a new identity, one disconnected from the experiences of his past. And for parts of the book, he succeeds. To counter the trauma Jude has endured, Yanagihara gives him incredible success in his professional and personal life. He is smart, witty, charismatic, attractive. He excels at Harvard Law School and becomes an incredibly successful and well-respected attorney. He has an amazing support system that would do anything to ensure his flourishing. Despite this, however, Jude is constantly in the throes of self-hatred born from his childhood trauma, leading him to struggle with self-harm and suicidal ideation. Near the end of the book, through a painful rollercoaster of emotions, we learn that Jude loses the battle with himself, convinced it was the only way for him to find peace. Despite all his material success and his attempts at change, he was ultimately unsuccessful at just living.
Throughout the whole of this book, there are passages that detail Jude’s inner turmoil, which Yanagihara seems to want to use to shape the audience’s own desire for this character to align with his own, to convince the reader that Jude’s life is not worth living. For example:
At night, he prayed to a god he didn’t believe in, and hadn’t for years: Help me, help me, help me, he pleaded. He was losing himself; this had to stop. He couldn’t keep running forever… He was tired, he was so tired. It was taking so much energy to hold the beasts off. He sometimes had an image of himself surrendering to them, and they would cover him with their claws and talons and peck and pinch and pluck away at him until he was nothing, and he would let them.
It is undeniably tragic, but what quality of life will Jude have with these thoughts plaguing his every waking moment? When we inevitably learn of his passing, because of course it was inevitable for this character, we are flooded with a sense of relief. Finally, he was allowed to have peace.
Jude constructs an entirely externally defined sense of self, meaning it is constantly in flux and that any attempts at change are inherently temporary, leading him to believe that he is incapable of long-lasting change.
As I was reading, I felt myself being pulled along in this story, and I too felt relief at Jude’s seemingly inevitable passing. But when I took a step away from the book, I realized how profoundly disappointing this ending was. Not because he passed away—this story is a tragedy and to deny that would be against the spirit of the book—but because Yanagihara presents Jude’s life as evidence that some lives aren’t worth living. She does this by arguing that Jude is incapable of change. She gives him all the material success and support that anyone could want but at the same time a complete inability to redefine himself in light of them; his every attempt at change is futile because he simply cannot. And if that is the case, then why continue to live a life of suffering?
This is where I believe Yanagihara gets the question wrong. Jude does not change, not because he’s incapable of change, but because he doesn’t know what to change. His identity, his sense of self, is entirely externally defined. When he attempts change, he’s not changing internally but rather just adjusting this external imagination of himself. For most of his life he defines himself by his trauma, whether existing in it or trying to escape it. When not by his trauma, he defines himself by how his loved ones view him which, while positive, is still not enough, because Jude lives in constant fear of losing their favor, leading him into self-destructive patterns. Jude constructs an entirely externally defined sense of self, meaning it is constantly in flux and that any attempts at change are inherently temporary, leading him to believe that he is incapable of long-lasting change. And perhaps he is: In order to achieve such change, a person needs a strong, internal identity that is grounded in objective reality, a belief in the Imago Dei, some kind of recognition that self-worth is not dependent on any external factors. If a person can’t recognize why their life has intrinsic worth, how they define themselves will always be lacking, and in Jude’s case it leads to his conclusion that his life isn’t worth living.
This is the main reason why I hesitate in recommending this book. Yanagihara makes the value of life seem transactional, that life is only worth living if it brings happiness and if any suffering that someone experiences is transient. Granted, the totality of abuse that Jude faces is uniquely horrible, such that it’s unlikely to wholly apply to the average reader. But the sentiment remains. Instead of this book being read as a descriptive tragedy, it could be read as a normative portrayal of life, which deeply worries me. I learned about this book from TikTok, a platform where the majority of users are Generation Z or younger—young and impressionable audiences who could be molded by this theory of life. It could shape someone’s perception of life and what it means for their own life to be worth living. To be clear, I’m not claiming that it’s Yanagihara’s intent to bend the youth toward her worldview, but it’s not an unreasonable potential consequence. As we move away from an objective sense of reality, one that grounds self-worth in something immovable, the ground beneath us gives way to alternate theories of life that would allow someone to wrongly conclude that change is futile and death is the only reasonable option. Life is so much more resilient and precious than that.
In A Little Life, Yanagihara created a rich tapestry of complex characters who provide much to learn and discuss and for that, I am grateful. She also created a world where characters are incapable of change and some lives aren’t worth living. Even so, this book will stay on my shelf, collecting dust, as I am unwilling to read it again and unwilling to lend it out, at least for now. For now it remains, as a reminder that people can change and life is worth it, even in the midst of suffering.
Najma Zahira holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Dartmouth College. She currently works at an executive search firm in Boston, where she can be found relaxing outside on a nice day.
A Little Life was published by Penguin Random House on March 10, 2015. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here.
