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How does Jude get his injuries?
During his attempt to hitchhike to the east coast, Jude is abducted and imprisoned by Dr. Traylor. Jude suffers from a venereal disease and is taken by Dr. Traylor during the height of his illness, when he is unable to defend himself. Dr. Traylor, who is an actual doctor, treats Jude’s venereal disease and later rapes him once the disease is cured. Dr. Traylor keeps Jude in a locked basement and lives in an isolated rural area, which Jude discovers when he attempts to escape. Eventually, Dr. Traylor grows tired of Jude and removes him from the house. He forces Jude to run down the road and follows close behind him with the car. When Jude stumbles, Dr. Traylor narrowly avoids hitting him with the car, and threatens that he’ll run Jude over if Jude doesn’t continue. Eventually, weak due to lack of sustenance, Jude falls and is unable to get up. Jude sees the headlights of the car growing closer, and the scene ends. However, it is clear that Dr. Traylor ran over Jude with his car. Jude wakes up in the hospital sometime later, with severe spinal damage that will plague his legs and body for the rest of his life.
How do Jude and Harold meet?
After finishing undergraduate college, Jude goes on to attend a prestigious law school. There, he meets Harold Stein, a professor of constitutional law. Harold reveals later in the novel that he quickly realized Jude was an abnormally impressive student. Jude’s combination of quiet brilliance and reserve prompts Harold to take Jude under his wing. He chooses Jude for a competitive internship and even purchases Jude an expensive professional wardrobe so that he’s prepared for an interview with a reputed law firm in New York City. Jude and Harold’s friendship continues to strengthen as Jude grows his career in the field of law, and eventually, Harold and his wife Julia adopt Jude as their legal son. This adoption is a monumental moment for Jude, as he is finally presented with the family he has yearned for since early childhood, but it is also profoundly important for Harold, who lost his son Jacob to disease in early childhood. While Jude is not a replacement for Jacob, he is able to fulfill the sonship role in Harold’s life, just as Harold is able to fulfill the fatherhood role in Jude’s.
What is Jude’s sexuality?
Sadly, Jude is never comfortable in his sexuality due to childhood sexual abuse and further instances of rape in his adult life. Because of these traumas, Jude’s relationship to his sexuality is forever impaired. While Jude seems to gravitate toward romantic relationships with men in his adulthood, it’s difficult to parse whether this is his natural instinct or simply the repetition of learned behavior, since he was molested only by men during his childhood and is seemingly unfamiliar with sex or relationships that involve women. Additionally, while Jude does not enjoy sex and is happiest in celibate relationships, it would again be misguided to label him as asexual, because his aversion to sex is most likely trauma-related. Ultimately, it is impossible and unnecessary to define Jude’s sexuality. The only person he ever loves romantically is Willem, although the two men are more soulmates than they are simply lovers. Both Jude and Willem wonder what Jude’s romantic and sexual life might have included had Jude not suffered such extensive abuse, but these questions are ultimately useless to dwell on. Despite Jude’s traumas and hard boundaries on sex, they are able to build a healthy, loving, and trusting partnership.
Why does Jude decide to end his life?
Jude suffers from self-harm and suicidal ideation throughout his life. He begins self-harming during his childhood when he lives at the monastery and is later taught by Brother Luke how to cut himself. He first considers suicide when Ana, the only trustworthy figure in his life thus far, dies of cancer. Jude struggles with the urge to cut throughout his young adulthood. His first attempt at suicide comes soon after the end of his abusive relationship with Caleb, who not only re-traumatizes Jude but triggers dormant memories of his childhood sexual abuse. By pure luck, Richard finds Jude post-attempt and he is hospitalized. After recovering, Jude continues to refuse therapy and maintains a routine of self-harm. However, he is no longer suicidal.
Jude’s healthiest era coincides with his relationship with Willem. During this period, his self-harm is limited but not eradicated. However, Willem’s death is a blow that Jude is unable to recover from emotionally. Although Jude loves Harold and his friends, and has found purpose in his work, Willem was the most important and beloved person in his life. Without him, he finds it difficult to remain tethered to the world. Additionally, while Jude does attend therapy late in life, and it helps him to finally write a letter to his parents describing his childhood abuse, it is too late for Jude to heal the root causes of his unhappiness. Ultimately, Jude dies still believing that he is in some way unworthy of love and forever damaged due to the sexual abuse he endured as a child. He continuously saw himself as a burden to others and assumed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they would no longer love him if they discovered the truth about his past. In his suicide letter to Harold and Julia, which detailed the story of his youth, he asks for their forgiveness, showing that he still believed, despite how much they loved him, that they would be ashamed of him.
What is the significance of the title?
The title A Little Life is meaningful on multiple levels. The novel is quite literally “a little life”—it is the complete story of one man’s entire life, reporting the first moments of his childhood consciousness all the way to his eventual suicide. It is an entire world—a complex web of friendships, loves, miseries, and sorrows—distilled and captured inside the pages of a book. Additionally, the title A Little Life refers to the ways our lives are fragile and small in the grand scheme of things. Jude’s life is, in many ways, transcendent and special. He’s both brilliant and tortured at levels that are unfathomable to the average person. And yet, like the rest of us, his life begins and ends quietly. Like the rest of us, his friends and family make up the bulk of the meaning in his existence. Like the rest of us, he is just one human, one story, in a world full of humans and their stories. The title A Little Life captures the inherent juxtaposition of the human condition: on the one hand, our lives are small and brief, and often go mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world. But on the other hand, our lives are of monumental value, are endlessly complex, and are deeply important and influential to the people who love us. There is also a humorous irony to the title, considering that the word “little” is used in the title of an 800+ page novel.
