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Andy Contractor
Hemming was Willem’s older brother who he died before the novel’s present day, when Willem was still in college. Hemming was born with a severe form of cerebral palsy; he was nonverbal, and his limited mobility required him to use a wheelchair. Willem cared for Hemming while Willem’s mother and Willem’s father worked and loved him deeply; in addition to performing basic duties of feeding, bathing, and clothing Hemming, Willem would push Hemming around the ranch in his wheelchair and read to him. Willem hated that his parents treated Hemming like an obligation rather than a child they loved. When Willem was in college, Hemming became sick (likely with cancer), and Willem flew home to sit beside Hemming’s hospital bed, though at this point Hemming likely couldn’t have registered Willem’s presence. Willem eventually had to go back east, and Hemming died not long after. It haunts Willem that he couldn’t do more to help Hemming and alleviate his suffering. In many ways—even if Willem doesn’t realize it consciously—Willem’s commitment to Jude is his way of atoning for his inability to save Hemming. Abandoning Hemming is Willem’s great failure in life. As he struggles to make a career and life for himself in New York, Willem sometimes longs to return to the simplicity of life on his family’s ranch in rural Wyoming, a place he recalls with a painful sense of nostalgia and regret. Hemming’s face is the last thing Willem sees before he dies in a car crash, and this reaffirms how centrally Hemming (and Willem’s failure to “fix” him) figured in Willem’s life.
Hemming Quotes in A Little Life
The A Little Life quotes below are all either spoken by Hemming or refer to Hemming . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 1: Lispenard Street: Chapter 2
Quotes
Perhaps because of this, he felt he always knew who and what he was, which is why, as he moved farther and then further away from the ranch and his childhood, he felt very little pressure to change or reinvent himself. He was a guest at his college, a guest in graduate school, and now he was a guest in New York, a guest in the lives of the beautiful and the rich. He would never try to pretend he was born to such things, because he knew he wasn’t; he was a ranch hand’s son from western Wyoming, and his leaving didn’t mean that everything he had once been was erased, written over by time and experiences and the proximity to money.
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Part 5: The Happy Years: Chapter 2
Quotes
“I’m not Hemming, Willem,” Jude hisses at him. “I’m not going to be the cripple you get to save for the one you couldn’t.”
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Part 5: The Happy Years: Chapter 3
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On these days, he succumbed to a sort of enchantment, a state in which his life seemed both unimprovable and, paradoxically, perfectly fixable: Of course Jude wouldn’t get worse. Of course he could be repaired. Of course Willem would be the person to repair him. Of course this was possible; of course this was probable. Days like this seemed to have no nights, and if there were no nights, there was no cutting, there was no sadness, there was nothing to dismay.
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Hemming Quotes in A Little Life
The A Little Life quotes below are all either spoken by Hemming or refer to Hemming . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 1: Lispenard Street: Chapter 2
Quotes
Perhaps because of this, he felt he always knew who and what he was, which is why, as he moved farther and then further away from the ranch and his childhood, he felt very little pressure to change or reinvent himself. He was a guest at his college, a guest in graduate school, and now he was a guest in New York, a guest in the lives of the beautiful and the rich. He would never try to pretend he was born to such things, because he knew he wasn’t; he was a ranch hand’s son from western Wyoming, and his leaving didn’t mean that everything he had once been was erased, written over by time and experiences and the proximity to money.
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Part 5: The Happy Years: Chapter 2
Quotes
“I’m not Hemming, Willem,” Jude hisses at him. “I’m not going to be the cripple you get to save for the one you couldn’t.”
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Part 5: The Happy Years: Chapter 3
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On these days, he succumbed to a sort of enchantment, a state in which his life seemed both unimprovable and, paradoxically, perfectly fixable: Of course Jude wouldn’t get worse. Of course he could be repaired. Of course Willem would be the person to repair him. Of course this was possible; of course this was probable. Days like this seemed to have no nights, and if there were no nights, there was no cutting, there was no sadness, there was nothing to dismay.
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