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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Self-Care, Self-Destruction, and Self-Indulgence
Isolation
Meaninglessness
Repression
Summary
Analysis
After leaving Ducat, the narrator lies to Dr. Tuttle about “freelancing in Chicago” to decrease their weekly visits to monthly visits. Dr. Tuttle agrees and never bothers to ask how the narrator’s work is going. She also doesn’t know about the narrator’s hibernation project. The narrator doesn’t leave her apartment at all the first week of her hibernation. She doesn’t talk to anyone, though Reva is the only person who calls her anyway.
It’s not legal for a mental health professional to treat a patient who resides in a state in which the doctor is not licensed to practice, so it’s ethically dubious of Dr. Tuttle to agree to conduct checkups with the narrator over the phone, further indicating that the narrator’s health is not in good hands.
Themes
One day, Reva drops by unannounced, claiming she’s worried about the narrator. The narrator lies and says she quit her job. She claims her plan is to sleep for a full year and gestures toward her many medications to show Reva how she will accomplish this goal. Reva is wary but praises the narrator for “hav[ing] a life plan.” She also criticizes her for being “distant” and “getting thinner and thinner.” (The narrator thinks Reva is just jealous.) Reva says the narrator just needs someone to talk to—that this would be more effective than sleep or drugs. The narrator criticizes Reva’s incessant gum-chewing in response, but Reva acclaims that everyone has their own methods for coping with stress. They argue back and forth, with the narrator insisting hibernation is natural and Reva trying (unsuccessfully) to convince her to deal with her issues in a healthier way. Eventually Reva leaves.
The narrator has shown that she believes the worst in people and has a cynical perspective on life in general. Fittingly, she conveys Reva’s concern as insincere, patronizing, or hypocritical—she refuses to entertain the possibility that Reva may be genuinely concerned for her and that Reva’s warning her not to isolate may in fact be the only bit of good advice anyone has given her. But the narrator instead chooses to bask in her loneliness and misery, rejecting Reva’s attempts to connect with her. Her attitude is self-defeating and contributes to her general unhappiness and dissatisfaction with the world. People try to reach out and help her, yet she is too wrapped up in her own cynical attitude to acknowledge or appreciate their efforts.
Themes
The narrator dreams a lot, and she discusses her dreams with Dr. Tuttle, who suggests she make a “night vision log.” The narrator jots down her dreams on post-it notes, adding fake, extra details designed to convince Dr. Tuttle to increase her dosages. She does not mention that she dreams about her dead parents. In one of those dreams, she picks up the phone and is unable to discern what her parents are saying through the phone’s static. In another dream, she is getting breast implants, and her father is the anesthesiologist. That one makes her awake in a panic, but she takes more Rozerem and falls back asleep.
Dr. Tuttle’s insistence on calling what is effectively a dream journal a “night vision log” further portrays her as an eccentric character and perhaps also a disreputable psychiatrist. Meanwhile, the narrator isn’t being a model patient, either: she’s keeping important details from Dr. Tuttle, such as the frequency with which she dreams about her dead parents. The fact that they continue to appear in her dreams—manifestations of her unconscious desires and anxieties, in a conventional psychoanalytic understanding of dreams—suggests that she is repressing grief or other unresolved feelings about their deaths.
Themes
The narrator recalls her adolescence. Her mother oscillated between acting tenderly toward her and ignoring or berating her. She recalls overhearing her mother criticize some unsightly pink pimples the narrator had developed on her chin. A few days later, the family housekeeper gave the narrator some Clearasil.
The narrator is clearly struggling in adulthood with unresolved issues originating in childhood. She should be hashing things out with Dr. Tuttle (or better yet, with a therapist better equipped to help her), but she keeps her real struggles inside, withholding how she really feels about them from herself and from others.
Themes
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In school, the narrator’s thin frame and beauty earned her “adorers” but no real friends. She didn’t go out with boys until college—until she met Trevor. Her application essay for college was about Anton Kirschler, an artist she made up herself, and his similarly made-up artworks, like Dog Urinating on Computer, or Stock Market Hamburger Lunch. It earned her a spot at Columbia. Before she left for college, her parents gave her the sex talk; her mother advised her that the higher levels of oxytocin in women leave them feeling sad when, after sex, they’re “thrown out with yesterday’s trash.” Her father added that men are “more rational” and advised her to look after herself. They give her a pack of birth control pills, and then her mother informed her that her father had cancer.
The narrator’s college application essay reveals that she actively contributes to the phony, superficiality of the art world, even as she claims to hate that superficiality. The sex talk that the narrator recalls her parents giving her, meanwhile, is devoid of any parental concern or warmth—to the contrary, it is cold or even cruel. The mother’s remark about women being “thrown out with yesterday’s trash” suggests that it’s inevitable that such cruelty will befall the narrator. It seems clear that the narrator’s parents have contributed to her cynical perspective on life and human relationships.
Themes
Later, when the narrator is crying as she packs her bags to leave for college, her mother mocks and berates her for being so emotional. She tells her she used to crush Valium into her bottle when she was a baby—she was always “inconsolable and for no good reason.”
The narrator didn’t always have such a cold, emotionless demeanor: it seems that her parents (or at least her mother) conditioned her to be ashamed of her emotions and, subsequently, to repress them.
Themes
Once, before the narrator’s father died, her mother visited her in New York. They met at the Guggenheim (her mother was an hour late), and the narrator could smell alcohol on her mother’s breath. Not long after, the narrator’s mother left the museum abruptly, claiming to have lost track of time. Later, she called the narrator up to arrange to meet for dinner, acting as though nothing odd had happened at the museum earlier that day. The narrator was used to this behavior from her mother—she never took responsibility for her actions when she was drunk.
The narrator’s mother exhibits concerning behavior (her late arrival, her apparent drinking, her abrupt departure from the museum) and then pretends that everything is normal. The narrator will adopt similar patterns as an adult, as when she insists to Reva that her hibernation project is totally normal and perhaps even healthy and restorative. It should be obvious to the reader that the narrator has internalized and inherited her mother’s harmful patterns of behavior, yet it remains unclear how consciously the narrator herself is aware of these similarities.
Themes
Back in the present, the narrator reflects on how unevenly time passes depending on how deeply asleep she is. Her favorite days are the ones that pass with hardly any notice. She aspires to improve her sleeping abilities to the point that she can drift off effortlessly. When she can’t sleep, she watches Whoopi Goldberg movies. When she must, she ventures out to the Rite Aid to replenish her pill supply and buy prepackaged food.
The narrator indirectly admits here that she would rather ignore the pain that consumes her waking hours than address the underlying issues that are causing that pain: despite her claims to the contrary, it’s clear to the reader that the narrator is using sleep to avoid her pain, not to restore her strength so that she might begin to heal from that pain.
Themes
When the narrator visits Dr. Tuttle in August for their monthly appointment, the narrator claims her nightmares have gotten worse. She lies about other worsening symptoms while Dr. Tuttle murmurs her concern. The narrator asks if Dr. Tuttle can prescribe her anything stronger, and Dr. Tuttle agrees without much consideration.
One would think that a patient’s consistent requests for stronger medications would raise a red flag for a mental health professional, but Dr. Tuttle doesn’t seem to notice or care. The narrator is aware that Dr. Tuttle isn’t a great psychiatrist, but that’s most of Dr. Tuttle’s appeal—if the narrator wanted to see a reputable psychiatrist, she most likely would have gone a different route in her search for help. To some degree, then, the narrator consciously embarks on a journey toward self-destruction.
Themes
The next day, Reva comes over with a bottle of tequila, which she drinks with a can of Diet Mountain Dew. She offers the narrator some, but the narrator declines. Reva accuses the narrator of being lovesick over Trevor, which the narrator neither confirms nor denies. She accuses the narrator of being “passive”—of waiting for things to change instead of seeking out her goals. She has recently read this in a book about how to attract men via self-hypnosis. Before leaving, Reva begs the narrator to come out on Saturday to get drinks with her for her birthday, but the narrator refuses. The narrator herself turns 27 only a week after Reva. She spends the day alone, in her apartment, medicated and smoking mentholated cigarettes.
Reva’s cocktail of Diet Mountain Dew and tequila prioritizes efficiency and discreetness over taste—she wants to maximize how drunk she can get with the fewest calories and without drawing much attention to herself. Her desire for discretion and minimal calories suggests that, at least on some level, she is aware that her drinking is excessive and problematic, yet she continues to drink anyway and doesn’t outwardly admit that she has any kind of substance abuse issue. The narrator resents the phoniness of this: Reva reads self-help books and tries to appear functional and happy to the outside world, yet in reality she’s struggling as much as the narrator.
Themes
The narrator’s September visit to Dr. Tuttle is mostly unremarkable. She claims that her symptoms have worsened, and Dr. Tuttle prescribes her more pills. Dr. Tuttle asks, again, after the narrator’s parents, though the narrator has repeatedly told her that her parents are dead. She truthfully admits to Dr. Tuttle that her mother died by mixing alcohol with sedatives, a revelation Dr. Tuttle hardly responds to.
The detail of Dr. Tuttle repeatedly forgetting that the narrator’s parents have died shows just how little she cares about the narrator’s wellbeing. The narrator makes a rare attempt at vulnerability, honestly explaining that her mother died by mixing alcohol with sedatives, but Tuttle mostly disregards the revelation. This letdown validates the narrator’s cynical attitude about human relationships—people pretend to care and listen, but it’s just an act.
Themes
In October, Reva drops by unannounced. She brags about “fasting for Yom Kippur.” She often brags about fasting. During the narrator’s October visit to Dr. Tuttle, she once more reminds the psychiatrist that her parents are dead. She continues to insist that she is having trouble sleeping. The days continue to pass by, and as they do, the narrator feels “less and less attached to life.” She imagines she might one day “disappear completely, then reappear in some new form.” At least, she hopes this will happen.
Reva’s pattern of bragging about fasting suggests her insecurities about her weight and appearance: she seems to want the narrator to praise and validate her efforts, or (perhaps preferably) to insist that she is already thin and doesn’t need to diet. It’s a foreboding sign, meanwhile, that the narrator feels “less and less attached to life” the longer she hibernates. It suggests she has no interest in repairing her old life and the issues that made it so unbearable to her—instead, she entertains the wishful thinking that she can sleep and repress these issues until she can “disappear completely, then reappear in some new form.”
Themes
