A Little Life

by

Hanya Yanagihara

Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion Character Analysis

JB is one of Jude’s best friends from college. A painter, JB initially struggles to achieve the recognition he thinks he deserves. JB, like the rest of the four central characters, is highly ambitious. But unlike the others, his ambition makes him selfish, and he isn’t afraid to use and alienate his friends to advance his career; in fact, JB’s most successful paintings depict his friends. JB’s happy childhood and supportive family also set him apart from his friends. His parents are Haitian immigrants, and though JB’s father died when he was young, JB’s mother ensured that her son received an education and opportunities. JB’s good fortune has made him insensitive to his friends’ hardships: he ignorantly wishes that he could’ve had a bad childhood like Jude, believing that such trauma would give his art depth. JB also alienates Jude when, at his first show, he displays a painting of Jude without Jude’s consent. Years later, JB develops a drug addiction that further alienates his friends. He befriends Jackson, a sculptor who enables JB’s drug habit and ridicules JB’s friends. Things come to a head one night when JB, high on drugs, mock-imitates Jude’s limp. JB eventually becomes sober and pleads for Jude’s forgiveness. Though their relationship improves over time, Jude and Willem never fully forgive JB. JB tries to reach out to Jude after Willem and Malcolm’s deaths, but he ends up pushing Jude further away when he tries to kiss Jude. In the end, JB is the only one of his friends to live to old age, but his longevity comes at a cost: though he has his health and his career, he has lost all the people who knew him best.

Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion Quotes in A Little Life

The A Little Life quotes below are all either spoken by Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion or refer to Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion. 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:
Trauma Theme Icon
).
Part 1: Lispenard Street: Chapter 2 Quotes

It was a great painting, and he knew it, knew it absolutely the way you sometimes did, and he had no intention of ever showing it to Jude until it was hanging on a gallery wall somewhere and Jude would be powerless to do anything about it.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:

When did pursuing your ambitions cross the line from brave into foolhardy? How did you know when to stop?

Related Characters: Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 1 Quotes

But the odd thing was this: by his story morphing into one about a car accident, he was being given an opportunity for reinvention; all he had to do was claim it. But he never could. He could never call it an accident, because it wasn’t. And so was it pride or stupidity to not take the escape route he’d been offered? He didn’t know.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Malcolm Irvine, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Dr. Traylor
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 2 Quotes

Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion
Page Number: 190
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: The Axiom of Equality: Chapter 2 Quotes

I had meant what I told him that weekend: whatever he had done didn’t matter to me. I knew him. Who he had become was the person who mattered to me. I told him that who he was before made no difference to me. But of course, this was naïve: I adopted the person he was, but along with that came the person he had been, and I didn’t know who that person was. Later, I would regret that I hadn’t made it clearer to him that that person, whoever he was, was someone I wanted as well. Later, I would wonder, incessantly, what it would have been like for him if I had found him twenty years before I did, when he was a baby. Or if not twenty, then ten, or even five. Who would he have been, and who would I have been?

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Julia
Page Number: 397-398
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6: Dear Comrade: Chapter 2 Quotes

He stopped. What he wanted to say—but what he didn’t think he could get through—was what he had overheard Malcolm say as Willem was complaining about hefting the bookcase back into place and he was in the bathroom gathering the brushes and paint from beneath the sink.

“If I had left it like it was, he could’ve tripped against it and fallen, Willem,” Malcolm had whispered. “Would you want that?”

“No,” Willem had said, after a pause, sounding ashamed. “No, of course not. You’re right, Mal.”

Malcolm, he realized, had been the first among them to recognize that he was disabled; Malcolm had known this even before he did. He had always been conscious of it, but he had never made him feel self-conscious. Malcolm had sought, only, to make his life easier, and he had once resented him for this.

Related Characters: Willem Ragnarsson (speaker), Malcolm Irvine (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Richard
Page Number: 748-749
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 7: Lispenard Street Quotes

When Jacob was a baby, I would find myself feeling more assured with each month he lived, as if the longer he stayed in this world, the more deeply he would become anchored to it[…]. It was a preposterous notion, of course, and it was proven wrong in the most horrible way. But I couldn’t stop thinking this: that life tethered life. And yet at some point in his life—after Caleb, if I had to date it—I had the sense that he was in a hot-air balloon, one that was staked to the earth with a long twisted rope, but each year the balloon strained and strained against its cords, […]. And down below, there was a knot of us trying to pull the balloon back to the ground, back to safety. And so I was always frightened for him, and I was always frightened of him, as well.

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Caleb Porter, Jacob
Page Number: 800
Explanation and Analysis:
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Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion Quotes in A Little Life

The A Little Life quotes below are all either spoken by Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion or refer to Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion. 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:
Trauma Theme Icon
).
Part 1: Lispenard Street: Chapter 2 Quotes

It was a great painting, and he knew it, knew it absolutely the way you sometimes did, and he had no intention of ever showing it to Jude until it was hanging on a gallery wall somewhere and Jude would be powerless to do anything about it.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:

When did pursuing your ambitions cross the line from brave into foolhardy? How did you know when to stop?

Related Characters: Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 1 Quotes

But the odd thing was this: by his story morphing into one about a car accident, he was being given an opportunity for reinvention; all he had to do was claim it. But he never could. He could never call it an accident, because it wasn’t. And so was it pride or stupidity to not take the escape route he’d been offered? He didn’t know.

Related Characters: Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Malcolm Irvine, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Dr. Traylor
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 2 Quotes

Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion
Page Number: 190
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: The Axiom of Equality: Chapter 2 Quotes

I had meant what I told him that weekend: whatever he had done didn’t matter to me. I knew him. Who he had become was the person who mattered to me. I told him that who he was before made no difference to me. But of course, this was naïve: I adopted the person he was, but along with that came the person he had been, and I didn’t know who that person was. Later, I would regret that I hadn’t made it clearer to him that that person, whoever he was, was someone I wanted as well. Later, I would wonder, incessantly, what it would have been like for him if I had found him twenty years before I did, when he was a baby. Or if not twenty, then ten, or even five. Who would he have been, and who would I have been?

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Julia
Page Number: 397-398
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6: Dear Comrade: Chapter 2 Quotes

He stopped. What he wanted to say—but what he didn’t think he could get through—was what he had overheard Malcolm say as Willem was complaining about hefting the bookcase back into place and he was in the bathroom gathering the brushes and paint from beneath the sink.

“If I had left it like it was, he could’ve tripped against it and fallen, Willem,” Malcolm had whispered. “Would you want that?”

“No,” Willem had said, after a pause, sounding ashamed. “No, of course not. You’re right, Mal.”

Malcolm, he realized, had been the first among them to recognize that he was disabled; Malcolm had known this even before he did. He had always been conscious of it, but he had never made him feel self-conscious. Malcolm had sought, only, to make his life easier, and he had once resented him for this.

Related Characters: Willem Ragnarsson (speaker), Malcolm Irvine (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Richard
Page Number: 748-749
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 7: Lispenard Street Quotes

When Jacob was a baby, I would find myself feeling more assured with each month he lived, as if the longer he stayed in this world, the more deeply he would become anchored to it[…]. It was a preposterous notion, of course, and it was proven wrong in the most horrible way. But I couldn’t stop thinking this: that life tethered life. And yet at some point in his life—after Caleb, if I had to date it—I had the sense that he was in a hot-air balloon, one that was staked to the earth with a long twisted rope, but each year the balloon strained and strained against its cords, […]. And down below, there was a knot of us trying to pull the balloon back to the ground, back to safety. And so I was always frightened for him, and I was always frightened of him, as well.

Related Characters: Harold Stein (speaker), Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean Baptiste “JB” Marion, Caleb Porter, Jacob
Page Number: 800
Explanation and Analysis: