A Little Life

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015

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Part 1, Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Lispenard Street”

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

The first section in Chapter 2 focuses on JB as he takes the train to his art studio, as he does frequently. He is a painter, and although he struggled for many years to find his artistic voice, he has recently taken to photographing his friends in candid moments and recreating the paintings in photographs.

The second section focuses on Willem, who works as a waiter but is trying to become an actor. His Swedish mother and Danish father lost two children before they left Europe and moved to Wyoming to become ranch hands. The first died from leukemia, and the second died mysteriously in his sleep. Their third, Hemming, has cerebral palsy. Willem loves his older brother Hemming deeply; he often feels like he alone loves him while his parents consider Hemming merely a responsibility. When Willem goes to college, Hemming’s health deteriorates rapidly; he goes on life support briefly and dies soon after. Both of his parents die the following year, his father of a heart attack and his mother of a stroke. Though Willem never felt close to them, particularly after Hemming’s death, he still mourns their passing and believes they taught him many valuable things.

The third section focuses on Malcolm, who works at an architecture firm in a lowly role with egotistical bosses. His family is the wealthiest in the friend group; his mother is a successful writer, and his father a successful financier. Because he is biracial, JB often challenges his Blackness, as if Malcolm cannot understand Blackness in the same way JB does. Malcolm, meanwhile, thinks that people who consider their race “the core of their identity came across as somehow childish and faintly pathetic” (62). Nevertheless, he internalizes these comments and questions his own identity—not only his racial identity, but also his sexuality, as he continuously tries to figure out if he is straight, gay, or bisexual.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

Jude wakes Willem in the middle of the night asking for a ride to his doctor, Andy, saying he has had an “accident.” In the cab, Willem realizes Jude is holding a towel covered in blood to his arm. After seeing Jude, Andy tells Willem that he suspects Jude has attempted suicide, though Jude denies it. Willem has known that Jude regularly cuts himself since their college years, but when he tries to talk to Jude about it, Jude shuts down, so Willem has come to realize that continued friendship with Jude is conditional upon ignoring this self-harm. He tries to begin a conversation about the possible suicide attempt the next day back at the apartment, but Jude will not discuss it. He will not even agree to cancel the party they have planned to host that evening.

JB and Malcolm arrive before the other party guests, and the four go to the roof so JB can smoke, realizing only belatedly that neither Jude nor Willem has brought the key to the stairwell and they are stuck on the roof. Jude proposes that the other men lower him down to the fire escape so he can break in through his bedroom window. Although Willem strenuously objects, not wanting to risk any further possible injury to Jude, they have no other option because Jude has rigged his window lock in a particular way that only he knows how to handle. The difficult process of breaking in seems to draw Willem and Jude back together, reconciling them after Willem’s uncomfortable attempt at conversation earlier that day.

Part 1, Chapters 2-3 Analysis

Chapters 2 and 3 of Part 1 continue to offer up several thematic red herrings that first-time readers probably assume will be pivotal for the rest of the novel. The tragedies in Willem’s past, for instance, seem significant, as do themes of racial and sexual identity formation as seen through Malcolm’s struggles. Much like the class differences raised in Chapter 1, however, these themes will quickly pale in comparison to the novel’s overwhelming preoccupation with Jude, which Chapter 3 begins to hint at and move toward. Malcolm’s discomfort with his own racial identity and lack of confidence in his own sexuality could easily be the focus of a novel, but this novel introduces them here only to lure the reader into the sense that this story will be much like other coming-of-age New York-based novels before turning the story in a completely different direction beginning in Part 2. Going forward, readers will see that topics like racial and sexual identity are not unimportant to Yanagihara but that this story is primarily concerned with a person who comes from exceptional suffering rather than a person who faces common identity conundrums.

While Chapter 2’s focus on JB’s art provides several more indicators of his privilege, such as his ability to rent out New York City art studio space in addition to his apartment, it also reveals the love for his friends that often goes unspoken. After struggling to find artistic inspiration for years, he finds it in images of his three closest friends. He paints them the way he sees them, each one bathed in an almost magical-looking light. Even as his world expands in the coming chapters as he grows more and more successful, he maintains this artistic focus, making a career out of rendering his friends’ candid moments in loving hues. The paintings reveal his steadfast love for each of them even when his words tell a different story.