A Little Life: Paradox 3 key examples

Presented with the possibility of an abortion, the couple can hardly make up their mind. Liesl is at best ambivalent about pregnancy, and Harold too indecisive to choose. They keep Jacob by the end, if only because they missed the four-week window. Harold his wife decide, in part by failing to decide. Caught in the passage of time, every action is a decision—even if it is the very refusal to make one.

Harold notes this paradox in the context of pregnancy. That doesn’t make it any less relevant to Jude’s own circumstances, where he presents his loved ones much of the same difficulty. As friends and family mull whether to intervene in his acts of self-destruction, they often end up defaulting to stubborn inertia instead. Willem knows about Jude’s cutting as early as the New Year’s party at the Lispenard apartment. Confronted by the prospect of discomforting Jude, though, he opts to do nothing instead.

As Willem seeks blissful ignorance, the “days unfurled before him as clean as paper, and with each day he said nothing, and nothing, and nothing.” The same goes for Jude himself, who refuses to open up about his past until it calcifies beyond the ability to share. “Don’t let this silence become a habit,” Ana warns him. But as Jude continues to stick with inaction, he—like Harold—ends up making a choice for himself.

The “wretched little koan” comes bearing two alternate truths. Willem recognizes that Jude “[doesn’t] want to be helped”—keeping mum is implicit in any dealing with this “post-man” roommate. But friendship, by definition, also requires him to step in. Willem simply cannot allow Jude to destroy himself. Paradoxically, sustaining his relationship with Jude involves doing exactly the opposite of what friendship itself requires.

In what becomes a running theme, Jude presents a riddle with no answer. Over and over, those around him struggle to balance the demands of personal autonomy and the moral obligation that comes with friendship. They helplessly look the other way as he stockpiles razors under the sink, lies to them, and resists getting help. They repeatedly try—and fail—to prevent him from self-harm and suicide. Jude leaves even his father stumped; by the end of his son’s life, Harold himself has exhausted every argument in favor of staying alive. Friends, family, and acquaintances experience the powerlessness of supporting someone who resists them.

Jude is understandably torn. His traumatic history of forced sex work has bred a knee-jerk aversion to physical contact—he flinches at Harold’s hugs and shies away from JB. But he retains the very human yearning for physical intimacy at the same time. The thought of someone else’s hands “terrifies” him, but it is an elemental part of love all the same. At once attracted to sensual touch and averse to it, Jude seeks connection as much as any human would.

The paradox leads to difficult, often tragic results. Jude’s desire to find love chafes against the pain of his past. And it goes horribly awry during his affair with Caleb, who is “slightly strange” and “carries a faint threat of danger.” Their love turns into an a verbally and physically abusive relationship that adds still more scars to a character who has already hurt too much. After years of irreparable hurt, Jude takes a gamble at love only to lose terribly again.