Summary
The narrative resumes in February, 6 months after Willem's death. Jude is overwhelmed by intense grief. He mostly tries to simply pretend that Willem is away filming, avoiding the fact that he will never see him again. Willem, Malcolm, and Sophie were all killed in the crash when their car was struck by a drunk driver. Jude returned to work and launched a series of lawsuits against everyone involved in the crash. By December, he has accepted that Willem is never coming back. To cope with his grief, Jude works constantly and keeps himself sedated with sleeping pills whenever he is not at work. JB frequently tries to reach out to Jude, but Jude can't bear to be around him. Jude forgets his own birthday, but Richard ensures it is acknowledged. As much as it hurts, Jude realizes that he needs to turn back towards the people who love him.
The narrative resumes in the autumn, more than a year after the anniversary of the accident. Jude is still trying to cope with his grief. He regularly visits Malcolm's parents, as well as Lucien, who is now incapacitated after a stroke. Jude tries to find meaning and purpose, but he thinks constantly about committing suicide. He hesitates because years earlier, he had promised Harold he would never attempt suicide again. Ironically, Jude is in relatively good health, even though he sees Andy weekly so that he can be monitored. Andy confides that he is planning to retire soon, and he wants to transfer Jude's care to another doctor. Jude tries to be supportive, but he can't help feeling bitter and abandoned. He is also upset when Harold mentions that he and Julia are considering moving to New York; he suspects their lives are being organized around a desire to take care of Jude now that Willem is gone.
By November, Jude is eating so little that he frequently faints, and he sometimes hallucinates. He avoids seeing his friends and family. Jude doesn't want to break his promise to Harold, nor to betray what he knows Willem would have wanted, but he hopes that if he weakens himself enough, he'll eventually die in an accident or succumb to an infection or illness. In January, Andy and the rest of Jude's close circle insist on him being hospitalized, where he is fed using a feeding tube, and watched constantly after he is released. At first, Jude lashes out, but he is eventually moved by Harold's entreaties. He begins to take his therapy sessions seriously and actually talk about his past traumas.
The narrative returns to Harold's voice, addressing Willem. For the second anniversary of Willem's death, when Jude was fifty-two, he, Harold, and Julia went to Rome together. They stay in Italy while Jude returns home, and Harold watches him leave with trepidation because Jude's condition still seems precarious. Jude has gained weight, but he is withdrawn and moody, and he seems to be suffering from mysterious injuries. Harold tries to keep Jude occupied and give him a sense of purpose. In February, Jude mentions being offered a promotion that he plans to turn down. Harold is alarmed and encourages him to take it, but Jude mentions vague plans to travel. Harold's misgivings prove correct: on June 12, when Jude is 53, he commits suicide by injecting an artery with air.
As he looks back and tells this story retrospectively, Harold is now eighty-four; Jude has been dead for six years. Many of Jude's friends have also died relatively young; JB is the only one left alive. After Jude's death, Harold read the letter he left him, which finally described all of the abuse Jude suffered from Brother Luke and Dr. Traylor. Harold mourns for the fact that in the end, no one was ever able to convince Jude that he was a good person and worthy of love. Harold ends the novel remembering how, a few months before his death, Jude took him to visit the old apartment on Lispenard Street, and told him the story of the long-ago New Year's Eve party.
Analysis
The loss of Willem sends Jude spiraling, and from that point onward, his death by suicide seems inevitable. Throughout the novel, readers have likely clung onto hope that Jude's life would eventually turn around and he would experience some sort of healing and closure. Instead, Yanigahara pushes readers to the brink of at least contemplating that Jude's suffering merits the escape of death. As Sharae Deckard explains, "The novel’s conclusion aims to provoke radical empathy in the reader, simultaneously dreading but wishing for Jude’s end" (pg. 209). Jude does, interestingly, make some attempts to stabilize himself in the aftermath of losing Willem. He recalls his promise to Harold not to attempt suicide again, and he tries to honor that. He even attempts therapy in a serious way for the first time in the novel. The narrative does not provide any details about what transpires in these conversations, nor whether Jude finds any relief by working with a mental health professional.
In fact, the structure of the final section taunts the reader with the hope of Jude achieving some sense of closure. In the last section in which Jude features directly, he decides to actively engage in therapy and tells his therapist, "I've decided to stay." This seems like a moment where Jude might be committing to living in the world and trying to endure the pain. The last direct image of Jude that is represented without being filtered through Harold's point of view is of a moment of agency and empowerment. However, when the narrative switches over to Harold's voice, speaking again to Willem's memory, it becomes clear that this device has involved Harold looking back all along. In a cruel irony, Harold outlives almost all of the young men who seemed to have such bright futures. He also outlives Andy and other characters who played important roles in Jude's life. Harold's role in the narrative is to keep these memories alive by telling Jude's story from the point of view of someone who loved him.
Because of this narrative structure, readers learn about Jude's suicide secondhand, with relatively few details and no information about Jude's emotional state leading up to this action. Earlier in the novel, readers had an intimate, omniscient perspective into how Jude felt as he was self-harming, as well as when he tried to commit suicide the first time. His actual death is veiled from the reader. Readers are put in a position similar to how Harold, Andy, and Willem have often felt: they can only look in from the outside and wonder why they can't reach Jude. His suffering is so extreme that it locks him out of human experience. As Angela M. Carter writes, "while the novel appears to center Jude’s trauma narrative, what it actually centers is the meaning that his loved ones—and the reader—make of Jude’s disabling and traumatizing life experiences" (pg. 158).
Harold has to grapple not only with Jude's death, but also with the sudden knowledge of what Jude lived through. Harold meditates on his own sense of failure because he was never able to give Jude the one thing he wanted: belief that he was a good person who was worthy of love. In some ways, the tragedy is less Jude's suicide than Harold having to live with this knowledge. However, at the end of the novel, Harold displays the resilience he has carried with him throughout the novel. The loss of Jacob motivated him to reach out to others, and the loss of Jude motivates him to live with as much compassion and kindness as he can. Because he has known Jude for so long, Harold can also choose the memories he wants to hold onto: he can have Jude live on as the vibrant and special individual he was. Harold's memories take the novel back to where it began: the apartment on Lispenard Street when Jude and his friends were hopeful young men in their twenties. Harold's version of the New Year's Eve party likely leaves out the context that Jude had severely self-harmed the night before. Looking back on the past, he can rewrite the narrative and try to focus on small moments of beauty and love amidst all the horror and tragedy of Jude's life.
