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Dramatic Irony
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—The Learys:
Jude looks toward both the future and the past in Part 2, Chapter 3. At once angst-filled and exhilarated, he frets in anticipation of the adoption ceremony but also revisits old memories. In the weeks leading up to the adoption, a flashback returns him to a distant heartbreak:
He had been close before. The year after he arrived in Montana, when he was thirteen, the home had participated in a tristate adoption fair.
The moment is notable for the dexterity with which the novel turns itself toward the past. This memory glides in about as suddenly and swiftly as they come. At the prompting of a single sentence, Jude returns to the memory of his failed visit with the Learys. The narrative pivots to his weekend with the couple, where he repairs gas lamps, cooks breakfast, and cleans the dishes—only to be passed up by the family weeks after his stay.
In this month before Jude enters a new life, this brutal memory casts a long shadow over the joy of his adoption. Harold’s promise at this moment seems as uncertain as the Learys’. Through its speed and immediacy, this segue showcases the ease with which Jude’s history circles back to haunt him. It is proof of how the past trails the present, no matter how desperately he may try to shrug it off.
Related Themes:
Part 4: The Axiom of Equality: Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Always a Greedy Kid:
A Little Life weaves flashback into its narrative architecture—the novel comes saddled with memories, which stubbornly link Jude’s present life to the ghastly episodes of his past. Almost always, they rush in unbidden, trailing random thoughts. In Part 4, Chapter 3, however, he shares his past to Willem aloud:
Finally, he was ready. "I was always a greedy kid," he began, and across the table, he watched Willem lean forward on his elbows, as for the first time in their friendship, he was the listener, and he was being told a story.
This rare moment of voluntary disclosure creates a flashback and an apparent frame story. With all the suspense of a seasoned storyteller, Jude seemingly readies himself to plunge Willem and the reader straight into the past. What follows immediately after the paragraph break are recollections of his depressive episodes near his final days with Brother Luke. Graphic episodes recount his efforts to toss himself against the stairwell, his initiation into self-cutting, and Brother Luke’s own suicide. By the time the police break into their motel room, his abuser has already hung himself and turned “as gray as his beard.”
Jude’s flashback—like so many others—adds to his vast collection of sorrows. Life has changed but memory has not, and these recollections reveal a protagonist still deeply ensnared in the past. Remembering itself becomes pathological as Jude struggles to fend off his bad memories. “He has been lucky beyond measure; he has an adulthood that people dream about: Why, then, does he insist on revisiting and replaying events that happened so long ago?” he thinks to himself chapters later. “Why can he not simply take pleasure in his present?” Through flashback, A Little Life replicates the experience of trauma and its recursive patterns.
What makes this moment especially notable is its deceptiveness. The paragraph break and flashback that follow Jude’s dramatic first sentence create a false impression—almost as though he is relating his memories of Brother Luke directly to Willem, with the reader listening in secondhand. But this isn’t the case. Chapters later in Part 5, Jude admits that “he had never told Willem about what had happened to him with Brother Luke.” The chain of memories—his cutting, Brother Luke’s suicide—was never actually shared. Jude is still caught in the grips of his memories, alone as ever.
Related Themes:
