Previous
Chapter 2
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
Things change for the narrator in November. Before, she’d been able to sleep without interruption. But now, she starts to do things in her sleep, like rearrange her furniture. She also apparently makes trips to the bodega, which she remembers only when she wakes up and finds a bag of chips beside her, or empty cartons of chocolate milk on the table.
The narrator’s new inability to “trust her[self]” stresses her out to the point that she considers installing video cameras to record herself. But seeing footage of her unconscious actions “would only prove to be a document of [her] resistance,” she knows, and so she doesn’t go through with this plan. Instead, she ups her dosage of Xanax. This causes her to lose track of days, and she ends up missing her scheduled appointment with Dr. Tuttle. Dr. Tuttle leaves her an angry voicemail, but she seems back to normal when the narrator calls back to apologize and reschedule.
It's rather ironic that the narrator feels she can’t “trust her[self].” Shouldn’t she regard her unconscious state as the truest, least repressed version of herself? Her unconscious actions suggest that, deep down, she knows that sleeping won’t resolve her issues. Yet she responds by doubling down on her avoidant behavior, upping her drug usage to drown out her body’s desire to be awake and part of the world.
Themes
The narrator also starts to chat with strangers on AOL that month, usually blacking out and sending them sexual messages and nude photos. She takes to turning off her phone, sealing it Tupperware, and hiding it in the back of a high-up kitchen cabinet, but she always finds the powered-on phone beside her upon waking. When the narrator tells Reva what she’s been up to, Reva changes the narrator’s AOL password. This stalls things for a while, but in the meantime, the narrator takes to writing humiliating letters to Trevor in her unconscious state.
The narrator’s sexual communications with strangers on AOL, however emotionally detached they may seem, suggest her repressed desire for human connection. Though she tries to convince her waking self that she desires isolation, her unconscious actions indicate that she does in fact want—and perhaps even needs—human interaction. Once more, however, she goes to outrageous lengths to suppress those subconscious urges.
Themes
Reva starts visiting less and less. Now, instead of acting dramatic and concerned, she simply gives the narrator a summary of what she did that week and an overview of current events. The narrator tells Reva she appreciates Reva’s efforts “to be more sensitive to [her] needs.” The narrator, meanwhile, doesn’t tell Dr. Tuttle about her blackouts, fearing Dr. Tuttle would stop prescribing her medications if she knew. Instead, she tells Dr. Tuttle that she’s having more trouble sleeping. Dr. Tuttle takes this to mean the narrator has built up a tolerance to the drugs, and she ups the narrator’s dosage in response. She also gives her a sample bottle of a new drug, Infermiterol.
Dr. Tuttle should stop prescribing the narrator medications—and the narrator knows this, and that’s why she avoids telling the psychiatrist about her blackouts. The narrator’s gratitude to Reva for “be[ing] more sensitive to [her] needs” is similarly ill-advised. Reva’s acceptance of the narrator’s hibernation isn’t supporting the narrator in her recovery—she’s enabling the narrator’s self-destructive behavior. If the narrator can’t forgo Reva’s company altogether, she can at least keep Reva’s attempts to engage with her to a minimum.
Themes
Get the entire My Year of Rest and Relaxation LitChart as a printable PDF.
At the Rite Aid, while waiting for the pharmacist to fill her prescription, the narrator browses the shelf of used DVDS for sale and spots 9 1/2 Weeks, which is one of Trevor’s favorite movies. He claimed it made him want to experiment sexually. She recalls a humiliating experience in which he inserted an unpeeled banana in her mouth and forced her to stay there, with her eyes shut, or else “he’d punish [her] emotionally,” in the narrator’s words. He came back a while later and removed the banana from her mouth and replaced it with his flaccid penis. In retrospect, the narrator realizes she’d misunderstood “Trevor’s sadism as a satire of actual sadism.” Another day, after a subsequent humiliating sexual experience, Trevor left the narrator for (in his words) someone who wouldn’t “pull pranks for attention.”
This memory paints Trevor in a negative light. He doesn’t try to conceal his cruel, manipulative personality, but the narrator nevertheless mistakes his genuine cruelty for playful “satire.” Trevor’s claim that the narrator “pull[s] pranks for attention,” could reveal either his lacking self-awareness or his manipulative personality. Either way, this memory gives further insight into the cynical attitude toward human connection the narrator assumes in the novel’s present. She has learned to expect the worst in people, perhaps because she has repeatedly experienced manipulation at the hands of people who ought to love her (first from her parents, and later from her boyfriend).
Themes
Back in the present, the narrator returns to her apartment with her newly filled medication prescriptions. She thinks about Trevor incessantly for the next few days and uses all the self-control she has to avoid calling him. She thinks she might feel better if he were dead, since alive, she still entertains the dim hope of reconciliation. Sleep, she realizes in these moments, has not made her less nervous or anxious—underneath it all, everything comes back to “getting back what [she’d] lost.”
This is one of several moments throughout the book in which the narrator consciously acknowledges the ineffectiveness and self-destructiveness of her hibernation project, yet such moments are fleeting. Too disillusioned, perhaps, by the world of people as she’s experienced it thus far, she immediately suppresses this revelation and returns to her hibernation project.
Themes
The narrator recalls her last interaction with Trevor, which happened on New Year’s Eve, 2000. She’d invited him to a party. He reluctantly agreed to attend but assured her that he had other plans and would only stay an hour. They meet at his Tribeca apartment and then head to the party, hosted by a video artist Ducat was representing at the time. The artist projected live births taking place in a Bolivian hospital. Trevor dislikes the exhibit, though not because he finds it “exploitative.” In a cab afterward, the narrator asks Trevor if he even likes her. Out of anger, she says, “I love you.” He exits the cab, hardly acknowledging what she said.
With his insinuation that he has more important events to attend later that night , Trevor’s emotionally manipulative behavior is on full display. Of course, it should be clear to the narrator that Trevor does not like or love her. And she doesn’t even seem to love him, either. Thus, the exchange in the cab seems like another exercise in self-destruction on the narrator’s part.
Themes
Back in the present, Christmas Day arrives. Reva leaves the narrator a voicemail wishing her a Merry Christmas. The narrator stumbles downstairs in her slippers to pick up some coffee at the bodega. She picks out a Klondike bar and M&M’s and promises to pay the Egyptian man back. He reminds her she still owes him from last week but lets her take the items. Upon returning to her apartment, she wonders whether she wishes she could open the door and walk into a new apartment—into a new, bright life. But she can’t imagine what that life would look like.
The narrator portrays Reva as a nuisance and a phony, but there’s something to be said for Reva’s consistent efforts to reach out to the narrator, even if she’s only doing so to adhere to the social norm of wishing others a happy holiday. Though the narrator claims not to need others, there’s no telling how positively Reva’s regular communications have affected her. The narrator’s inability to imagine what her new life might look like hints at the impossibility of reinventing oneself entirely. Contrary the narrator’s hopes, she can’t simply repress her ongoing struggles and start anew: her problems will follow her wherever she goes, and she’ll have to confront them eventually if she wants to heal and improve her quality of life.
Themes
Back at her apartment, the narrator turns on a movie. Reva drops by midway through to find the narrator on the floor. She helps her up, and the narrator notes that Reva’s face is swollen and caked with makeup. During a commercial break, she announces that her mother died. “Shit,” is all the narrator can say in response. Reva thanks her and cries to herself. The narrator pops one Infermiterol to tune out Reva’s sadness.
The narrator doesn’t come off well in this scene. Her failure to do more to comfort Reva at such a painful moment in Reva’s life highlights her lack of compassion and regard for others. On the other hand, it’s obvious by this point that the narrator is either unable or unwilling to sit with her own painful emotions. Perhaps seeing Reva in such a vulnerable, emotive state reminds her of her own grief, which at this point she can’t even bring herself to acknowledge, much less begin to work through.
Themes
The narrator awakens later to find Reva gone and her coffee table covered with unopened boxes of Chinese takeout. To her surprise, Dr. Tuttle is calling her—apparently to return a call the narrator has no recollection of making. During that call, the narrator apparently had been “questioning [her] own existence,” which concerns Dr. Tuttle. The narrator insists she was just “philosophizing.” She claims she just hasn’t been sleeping enough. Dr. Tuttle accepts this explanation and suggests the narrator continue to take the Infermiterol.
The narrator’s reactions to the medications appear to be getting worse: it’s concerning that she can’t remember full conversations. The content of her conversation with Dr. Tuttle is perhaps more troubling, revealing the degree to which the narrator’s underlying struggles continue to cause her great pain and suffering. It’s clear that neither the pills nor the excessive sleeping are addressing the root cause of her unhappiness. Dr. Tuttle’s easy acceptance of the narrator’s explanation that she was merely “philosophizing” would be funny if it weren’t such a gross display of negligence.
Themes
After hanging up with Dr. Tuttle, the narrator listens to a voicemail Reva left her in which she gave her details about plans for her mother’s funeral. It will be held on New Year’s Eve. Reva gives the narrator directions for how to get there. The narrator ignores the voicemail and heads to the bodega, where one of the Egyptian workers explains that she owes him money for the seven pints of ice cream she bought last night. The narrator has no memory of making this purchase.
The narrator’s choice to ignore Reva’s voicemail suggests that she’s not planning to attend the funeral. This is especially cruel, given the narrator’s earlier admission that Reva was the only person willing to talk with the narrator about her parents’ deaths years before. Once more, the narrator adopts a cynical, asocial attitude while failing to recognize how her relationships with others have benefited her throughout her life.
Themes
The narrator returns to her apartment, pops another Infermiterol, and takes inventory. She sees the uneaten pints of ice cream and observes that her bedroom furniture has been rearranged. She realizes she has done a lot of “sleepshopping” and “sleepsmok[ing],” too. She draws a bath but doesn’t remember getting into it. Later, she wakes up on the LIRR (a train that runs from Manhattan to Long Island) wearing jeans, old running shoes, and a white fur coat she doesn’t recognize.
The comically odd pieces of evidence for the narrator’s unconscious, unremembered activities—the unfamiliar, uneaten pints of ice cream and rearranged furniture—indicates that her blackouts are getting worse. None of the drugs she’s been taking have done her much good, but the Infermiterol seems to cause her to experience particularly dangerous side effects.
Themes
