It was impossible to explain to the healthy the logic of the sick, and he didn’t have the energy to try.
This quotation shows Jude's inner reflection when Willem becomes frustrated and asks why Jude didn't call for help. The quotation occurs just after an incident where Jude hurts himself badly by dragging himself up the stairs to his apartment on Lispenard Street after the elevator breaks down. When Willem finds out what happened, he demands to know why Jude didn't call for someone to help him, and Jude finds himself unable to explain his motivations and inner workings. Even though Jude and Willem are very close and share some aspects of a similar background (Willem also has no family to rely on), they have a key difference in the fact that Willem is healthy and able-bodied. In fact, as an actor, Willem is very reliant on his fit and responsive body, along with his ability to control it. The quotation shows that Jude is indeed trapped in isolation because none of the healthy people around him can fully understand what his experiences of pain and precariousness are like. However, it also shows Jude's refusal to try to share his experiences with others. Willem loves him and would surely try to understand and empathize. Jude is so stuck in the narrative that no one could possibly understand him that he does not even try to explain what his life is like. By doing so, Jude limits the scope of relationships in his life.
Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?
This quotation occurs as Willem reflects on all the unexpected good fortunes he and Jude have encountered in their lives. Because Willem grew up poor with few prospects for his future, he never loses his sense of wonder that he ended up being a rich and famous actor. As an orphan, Willem is also deeply appreciative that he ends up finding love and close relationships, especially his friendship with Jude. Willem experiences almost as much life-changing good fortune as Jude does, but he responds to it very differently. Willem is always humble and grateful, but he doesn't question whether he deserves his good fortune, nor does he try to push it away. He embraces his life and tries to show as much love and compassion to others as he can. When he reflects on his friendship with Jude as a kind of miracle, Willem shows humility and awe, but he does not believe himself to be unworthy of this friendship. He is simply grateful that he and Jude get to be a part of each other's lives.
But these were days of self-fulfillment, when settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice.
This quotation occurs early in the novel when Willem is still struggling to launch his acting career and making a living by working as a waiter. Sometimes he wonders if he should pursue some other kind of work, but he observes that it would feel shameful for him to do so. Unlike many of the people around him who come from more privileged and cosmopolitan backgrounds, Willem has not grown up with any expectation that he would be able to achieve his dreams and live the life he wanted. He is able to observe in a detached and interested way that people's expectations of pursuing whatever career they want result from privilege. Willem would not be embarrassed to abandon his dreams of being an actor and find another career, but he gets the sense that it would be socially unacceptable to do so. This quotation sheds light on the conventions, norms, and social expectations of Willem's environment.
What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.
This quotation takes place when Jude reflects on a cruel comment Malcolm once made to Jude about his lack of a family; it shows Jude's awareness that Malcolm cannot understand Jude's experience as an orphan. The only thing Malcolm knows about the experience of growing up without a family comes from reading books. The quotation is ironic because Jude's comment about books depicting someone without a family being inaccurate is situated in a book about someone who does not have a family. The quotation also sheds light on what might be some of the author's motivations. In literary history, many novels about orphans and individuals who have had difficult childhoods end with them being wealthy, finding love, and being happy (for example, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, or Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre). Yanagihara subverts this convention by telling a story where someone is never able to recover from their childhood trauma and lack of love. Unlike the other stories where the fate of an orphan or abandoned child is "made prettier" by showing them leading a happy life, Yanagihara's novel takes a harsh and unflinching perspective about the reality that it may never be possible to recover from early trauma.
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.
This quotation occurs in a scene where Harold comforts Jude after Jude accidentally breaks a cup that once belonged to Harold's deceased son, Jacob. Jude is devastated and afraid that Harold will be angry with him, but Harold is calm about the incident. His reaction shows that while he will always miss his son, he has processed his grief in a healthy way. Harold does not attach much significance to the physical object, and he values his relationship with Jude far more deeply. Harold describes his experience with trauma and loss: no matter how much pain he has suffered, he continues to be optimistic about life and look for opportunities to open himself up to love again. After divorcing his first wife, Harold finds a loving marriage with Julia, and when Harold adopts Jude, he starts to rebuild the family he lost when his son died. Harold's response to pain and trauma contrasts with Jude's inability to look forward with hope and believe that he might eventually be happy.
But what Andy never understood about him was this: he was an optimist. Every month, every week, he chose to open his eyes, to live another day in the world.
This quotation comes from a scene where Andy has been examining the wound on Jude's leg and agrees to play along with Jude's hopeful insistence that his condition might be approving. The narrator indicates that Jude's hope about his condition is misguided, but this is also an important moment for understanding Jude's character and personality. Jude often seems like he fixates on the negative aspects of his life, and he certainly has a harsh self-perception. However, in this quotation, the narrator makes it clear that Jude is actually pushing himself to be hopeful given the amount of pain he is in. Knowing that one's physical condition was never going to improve and that one would always be tormented by unhappy memories, many people would have succumbed to despair. All of the success that Jude is able to achieve comes at a high cost to him personally, yet he perseveres nonetheless. This quotation is particularly important given that the novel ends with Jude committing suicide. This action only comes after he spends decades fighting to be hopeful and focus on what is good in his life.
But what is he willing to do to feel less alone? Could he destroy everything he's built and protected so diligently for intimacy? How much humiliation is he willing to endure? He doesn't know; he is afraid of discovering the answer.
This quotation occurs when Jude is around 40, perpetually single, and contemplating the reality that he is lonely. Significantly, the quotation occurs immediately before Jude meets Caleb for the first time and begins their abusive and destructive relationship. By this point in his life, many people around him are commenting on the fact that Jude has never been in a romantic relationship. Because they care about him, they worry that Jude is missing out on an experience that could bring him a lot of joy. On the surface, Jude is resistant, but deep down, he admits that he does wonder what being in a relationship is like. At this quotation reveals, Jude is very hesitant and ambivalent. He fears what might be required of him if he decided to pursue a romantic relationship; by now, as a result of his relationship with Harold and his friends, he knows that he would be expected to share his emotions and his past. In fact, a romantic partner would demand even more intimacy of him because he would most likely have to reveal his body. The fact that Jude even considers opening himself up to a relationship hints at how much he actually would like to experience love.
He saw people's relationships as reflections of their keenest yet most inarticulate desires, their hopes and insecurities taking shape physically, in the form of another person. Now he looked at couples... and wondered: Why are you together? What did you identify as essential to you? What's missing in you that you want someone else to provide?
This quotation shows Willem's reflections as he thinks about how he views relationships from a vantage point in his late 40s. At this point, Jude and Willem are living together as romantic partners, but they have ceased having sex after Jude explained that he did not like it. Willem knows that their relationship is unconventional, but he also finds it deeply fulfilling. With this perspective in mind, Willem looks at relationships from a rational and relatively dispassionate perspective. He does not think that sexual chemistry or longing are actually the most important factors in a successful relationship. He sees romantic relationships as being rooted in complementary behaviors, a mutual sense of stability, and a shared history. Willem and Jude's relationship is significant because it evolves from a youthful friendship into the intimacy of family as they see each other through good and bad times and then, later into sex and romantic feelings. Because their love for one another cuts across all of these categories, it implies that these categories of relationships may not be as distinct as they seem. By the time they are in their late 40s, it matters less how they would classify their relationship than that it has endured and given both of them long-term happiness. This reflection is particularly poignant because it comes only a few years before Willem's sudden and premature death.
"And who are you?" he asks, looking at the man who is holding him, who is describing someone he doesn't recognize, someone who seems to have so much, someone who seems like such an enviable, beloved person.
This quotation reveals Jude's discombobulated and confused state when he wakens in the night from traumatic dreams. At this point, Jude is suffering from health problems that lead to him having flashbacks and nightmares, but fortunately, Willem is always there to comfort him when he wakes up in the middle of the night. Willem reminds Jude of everything he has accomplished and all the people who love him, but Jude is sometimes so deep in his memories that he cannot even place Willem, asking him who he is. This quotation shows the depth of Jude's trauma and just how deeply immersed he can become in the past. When Jude is trapped in his own memories, he loses all associations with his previous life and all the wonderful things he achieved there. For Jude, it is as if these things have not even happened.
It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.
This quotation takes place at the very end of the novel, as Harold engages in an imaginary conversation with Willem and reflects on what he has learned from Jude's death. Harold mourns for Jude's untimely death; he has now outlived two children, which is a tragic and cruel fate. He is also deeply saddened that after so many people invested so much time in trying to help Jude, Jude still came to feel that suicide was his only option. However, after Jude's death, his note to Harold revealed that Jude died believing he was a bad and shameful person who did not deserve to be loved. For Harold, this belief is what makes Jude's death so tragic. In Harold's eyes, it is totally clear that Jude was a brilliant, kind, and special person who made the world a better place. Unfortunately, Harold could never convince Jude that this was true. Now, all Harold can do is try to pour as much compassion into the world as he can. He hopes that by doing so, he can honor Jude's memory.
