‘A Little Life’ is a contemporary fiction novel following the lives of four college boys from graduation to middle-age. Jude, Willem, JB and Malcom, an unlikely group of friends, each face their own challenges whilst trying to build careers and lives for themselves in New York City. The novel focuses particularly on Jude, exploring how he navigates life after his traumatic childhood. As we learn more about Jude’s experiences and relationships, we follow his internal battle between the desperate desire to be loved and the excruciating fear of being hurt. The sensitive themes the novel covers, from adoption, mental illness and addiction, to abuse, trauma and suicide, makes it a heavy read. But, whilst this book is heart-breaking, it is also full of love, friendship and compassion.
can we call this ‘torture porn’?
Yes, I cried. I wanted desperately for things to get better for Jude. I hated every second of his suffering. But does this constitute the label ‘torture porn’?
The term was coined by Edelstein to describe the subgenre of horror films depicting sadistic violence and nihilism and has been used by some critics to describe Yanagihara’s novel. Whilst the novel certainly confronts suffering, a key feature of torture porn is that the use of violence does not advance the story or seek to show the torture is wrong. Rowson argues that within torture porn, ‘spectacles of violence do not have a social message and provide no solution or closure for the abundance of pain and anguish that they depict’.
Given this understanding of the phrase ‘torture porn’, it is unfair to place ‘A Little Life’ within this category. The depiction of violence is integral in the characterisation of trauma and its intrusion on the present. However, most importantly, love asserts itself in tandem to the violence put in front of us. The novel contains social and moral allegories, primarily showing us the importance of friendship and human kindness. The point of the book is not violence; it is that love exists despite violence.
Lessons in love and friendship
The moments of love in this novel are endless. We watch the unspoken bond between Willem and Jude develop from a friendship into a relationship, challenging dominant narratives of what a relationship ‘should’ look like and showing that love can exist in many forms. Yanagihara shows how intimacy can be found in many places, even in the mundane, contrary to popular beliefs which focus on the importance of sex in relationships. As sad as it is that Jude often cannot see how loved he is, to the reader, it is screamingly obvious to see the amount of love that surrounds Jude. In a world often dominated by suffering and violence, it seems that love and friendship really is the miracle that redeems it.
“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?”
Yanagihara, A Little Life
the complexity of human life
Yanagihara captures the complexity of relationships, trauma and the self through the tension between love and violence. Whilst violent flashbacks are a key part of the storyline and Jude’s character development, Jude is not a two-dimensional character defined by his trauma; he is complicated and contradictory, just as most humans are. Although at times he views himself as a burden, it is clear to the reader he is not. As Willem realises, ‘he had saved Jude, and just as often, Jude had saved him’. In moments like this, the author highlights that Jude, despite his suffering, is not defined by it. Critics such as Mendelsohn who claim there is a ‘preposterous excess of humiliation and suffering heaped on the protagonist by its author’ seem to brush past the moments where Jude is successful, determined, hopeful, optimistic.
Don’t turn away from pain
Some critics argue the novel contains an excess of suffering, particularly expressing frustration at the lack of a happy ending, a lack of redemption. They claim that because Jude takes his own life, this undermines the heartfelt moments in the novel. One critic notes that whilst the relationships throughout the novel were very moving, ‘all of that doesn’t matter, when the end result is what we’re given’. This sentiment implies that the story loses value because of Jude’s death. But to disregard a book based on the fact that the ending is painful, I believe, is to deny the reality that life often comes with painful endings.
an open discussion
The author uses the character of Jude to highlight how difficult it is to cope with trauma and how hard people have to work to try and appear ok. To quote the book, ‘(t)here were times when the pressure to achieve happiness almost felt oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault.’
Given this reality, we return to the importance of kindness. We each face our own challenges, internal battles, losses, fears and traumas. But despite this, love persists. As Yanagihara shows us, the kindness we give each other is perhaps the greatest gift.
“I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
Yanagihara, ‘A Little Life’