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Chapter 3
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
Dr. Tuttle had warned the narrator that a small percentage of Infermiterol users experience hallucinations. Now, aboard the LIRR, she wonders if she is lucid dreaming. She makes sure she isn’t bleeding and decides that everything seems “real enough.” She notices a Bloomingdale’s bag at her feet. Inside the bag is a black skirt suit and a Calvin Klein bra and panty set. There’s also a jewelry box containing an ugly topaz necklace and a large bouquet of flowers. Attached to the bouquet is a note, written in her own handwriting, that reads “For Reva.” She asks the man next to her where they are. He eyes her ticket and tells her that her stop is two stops away. The narrator realizes the Infermiterol has caused her to block out multiple days. In this way, it is almost “the perfect drug,” she thinks.
That the narrator wakes up to find herself on the LIRR, presumably heading toward Reva’s mother’s funeral, suggests that, deep down, she knows that she values Reva’s friendship and that going to the funeral is the right thing to do. The narrator describes Infermiterol as “the perfect drug” because its blackout-inducing qualities align with her wellness goals—she wants to forget her life and her pain. Her description reinforces the misguided, self-destructive nature of her wellness journey: she continues to believe that repressing her struggles will alleviate her pain and improve her life, but that doesn’t change the fact that her problems will invariably rise to the surface the moment the drug wears off. And the fact that she apparently decided to go to Reva’s mother’s funeral while under the influence of Infermiterol suggests that the narrator’s problems and responsibilities continue to affect her actions even in a blackout state.
Themes
The narrator gets off the train at Farmingdale, which is ugly and boring. Reva pulls up in a Lincoln Continental, and the narrator hops inside. Reva is crying. She mentions something about a phone conversation they had last night (which the narrator doesn’t remember making) and thanks the narrator for making it. Reva tells the narrator she can borrow whatever she needs for the funeral. Reva cries and complains about her dad’s choice to cremate her mother and the greed of the funeral industry. The narrator insists that Reva stop at McDonald’s for a coffee, despite Reva’s insistence that there’s coffee at the house. “I came all this way,” she insists, and Reva finally relents.
It’s notable that the narrator has made it to Long Island for the funeral at all, given that she rarely leaves her apartment. But she’s not putting in much effort to actively console Reva, and she undermines the selflessness of her good deed by reminding Reva that she ought to be grateful to the narrator for her enormous sacrifice (“I came all this way.”) The narrator’s inability to summon any compassion for Reva points to her own cynical, nihilistic attitude toward life: even the death of her only friend’s mother doesn’t strike her as all that serious or important, or at least not important enough to redirect her focus away from herself and her own troubles.
Themes
After McDonald’s, Reva drives on, eventually pulling into the driveway of a tan brick house. She tells the narrator she can sleep in her old bedroom—they don’t need to be at the funeral home until 2:00. First, though, Reva introduces the narrator to her relatives. As Reva walks into the kitchen and rummages through the food laid out, it strikes the narrator that Reva, for once, has “dispensed with her usual uppity pretentions”—it’s as though she has “completely shut down.”
It’s ironic that the narrator describes Reva’s having “dispensed with her usual uppity pretensions” as her having “completely shut down”—with no pretensions to hide behind, Reva arguably is functioning as her most authentic self. The narrator constantly criticizes others for their phoniness and inauthenticity, but she can’t seem to accept that an alternate way of being exists—that it is possible to authentically participate in the world.
Themes
The narrator insists she doesn’t feel well and needs to lie down. Reva leads her to the basement. The narrator asks if she can borrow shoes and tights for the funeral. Reva says there’s probably something in her mother’s closet the narrator can borrow, then she leaves to let the narrator rest. Alone, the narrator reminisces about her own mother, who hardly ate any food. She liked nice clothing and liquor, and she’d lie in bed and smoke cigarettes all day.
Being around Reva as she grieves for her mother’s death causes the narrator’s memory of her own mother to resurface. This reinforces how ineffective the narrator’s hibernation project has been at restoring the narrator: it hasn’t erased all the unresolved grief and other painful emotions that have caused her to suffer. Now, the narrator finds herself facing a major problem: she has to be able to function at the funeral, so she can’t (or shouldn’t) take any drugs now to push the memories away.
Themes
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The narrator also remembers returning home from college to be with her father in his last days. He was pumped full of painkillers. The narrator pleaded with him to send her a sign, after he died, if there turned out to be an afterlife. He ignored this and asked the nurse to get “[his] wife.” The narrator cried until, at last, her father died. “That’s it, right?” was her mother’s only response. In the present, the narrator considers how remembering this should bring her grief, but instead, she feels nothing.
The narrator’s father’s failure to be affectionate with his daughter reinforces how little emotional nourishment she received growing up. This memory helps explain the cynical, asocial attitude the narrator has adopted toward human connection and the world in general as an adult. The absence of grief the narrator feels as she remembers her father’s death doesn’t necessarily mean she isn’t grieving him—it might instead indicate that she has gotten used to repressing her emotions over the course of her ongoing hibernation project. The fact that Reva’s mother’s death triggers memories of the narrator’s father’s death certainly suggests that the narrator hasn’t worked through her grief in a healthy way.
Themes
Next, the narrator remembers her father’s funeral. She remembers boldly taking her mother’s hand at the service; it was “cold and bony,” and her mother let go of her grip soon after. After everyone stopped by to say nice things about the narrator’s father, her mother scoffed, insisting that all the guests simply liked feeling “special now because they know someone who died.”
The narrator’s mother’s remark about funeralgoers feeling “special now because they know someone who died” is cold and cynical. It further indicates how the narrator’s parents have shaped her pessimistic view of humankind and led her to believe that human connection is superficial at best and meaningless or harmful at worst.
Themes
Back in the present, unable to sleep, the narrator gets up and goes to take a shower. She tries to think of historical events and movies that might make her feel sad, but she can’t register any emotion. She thinks back to her father’s death and recalls how one of his colleagues, Professor Plushenko, visited her and her mother at home. He’d hit on the narrator after her mother left them alone together, and the narrator let him kiss her and fondle her nipple, perhaps just to upset her mother. She returned to college after that. Her mother overdosed a week later. She went to visit her mother at the hospital, but by then her mother was unresponsive. In the present, the narrator notes that there’s no point in revisiting these memories, anyway—it’s not as though she can resurrect and punish her dead mother.
The narrator’s inability to register any emotion doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any emotions—it simply means that her ongoing hibernation project (and the constant drug use it requires) has gotten her out of touch with her emotions. But, as this flashback to her troubling experience with Professor Plushenko suggests, the memories that are the root cause of those painful, suppressed emotions still exist, unexamined. Her stubborn refusal to believe that there’s any point to revisiting and working through these memories is holding her back in her healing journey.
Themes
Back at school, the narrator’s sorority sisters didn’t ask if she was doing alright, and nobody offered to talk. A few slipped sympathetic notes under her door, but that was it. Reva, with whom the narrator had been in French class that year, took notes for the narrator while she was away. She also asked how the narrator was doing and was frank in her questions. The narrator despised Reva’s optimism, but she was also grateful that she cared. She and Reva moved into an off-campus dorm together their senior year. There, they developed their friendship: the narrator was the depressive, reclusive friend, and Reva was the chatty, anxious one.
Even if the narrator found Reva’s optimism naïve or annoying, she readily admits here that she was grateful for Reva’s support. This is a rare moment in which the narrator lets her hardened exterior break away to reveal that she is just as vulnerable as anyone else and that she also needs human connection. It remains to be seen whether this revelation, however fleeting, might prompt the narrator to rethink her hibernation project and realize that isolation will harm more than help her.
Themes
Back in the present, Reva interrupts the narrator’s thoughts to bring the narrator some quiche. Reva observes her mother’s watercolor paintings on the walls and laments never appreciating her talent when she was alive. The narrator remarks, “They’re decent amateur watercolors, yeah,” in response. When she again asks Reva to borrow some shoes, Reva tells her to go upstairs herself—it will upset Reva to go through her mother’s things so soon. The narrator refuses, and Reva eventually relents. She returns later with some shoes, stockings, and a black shirt. When Reva returns, the narrator gives her the ugly topaz necklace she found in the Bloomingdale’s bag.
The narrator’s description of Reva’s mother’s paintings as “decent amateur watercolors” is cold and lacking in empathy. Even if the paintings are only mediocre, it wouldn’t require much of the narrator to swallow her pride and aesthetic sensibilities and praise the paintings, as Reva clearly wants—needs—her to do. Yet she offers this mean, backhanded compliment instead. Even worse, she demands that Reva go upstairs to find something of her mother’s for the narrator to wear, even though Reva has made it clear that her grief is too fresh to do this. Despite the narrator’s earlier expression of gratitude to Reva for her support back in college, she doesn’t seem willing to reciprocate that support meaningfully. In this way, she continues to allow her depressed, nihilistic attitude dictate her actions and degrade what few human connections she has left.
Themes
Later, after they’ve both dressed, Reva and the narrator put their coats on and head to the funeral. Reva apologizes in advance, explaining that she’s probably going to cry incessantly. The narrator only replies that it would be stranger for Reva not to cry at her mother’s funeral. Reva is anxious about her face getting puffy, though, since Ken will be there. Inwardly, the narrator notes how “intensely bored of Reva” she is.
Reva’s advance apology about all the crying she expects to do at her mother’s funeral—a completely natural and understandable response to the death of one’s mother—highlights her commitment to appearances. She believes that projecting an image of composure and optimism matters, even if that’s not how she feels on the inside. This sets her apart from the narrator, who finds life—and, therefore, how one’s appearance strikes others—meaningless.
Themes
The narrator stands beside Reva for the proceedings at Solomon Schultz Funeral Home “but watche[s] her as though from a distance.” She starts to feel bad, as though she is “somehow responsible for [Reva’s] suffering.” Later, Reva points out Ken—who has come with his wife. Reva wonders why she even invited him. She points out other people to the narrator. Later, when it’s Reva’s turn to address the crowd, she prattles off a corny speech before trailing off and dissolving into tears.
That the narrator observes the funeral proceedings “as though from a distance” suggests her inability or unwillingness to witness all the grief and pain of the funeral directly. Perhaps allowing herself to be in the moment at the funeral would prompt the narrator’s own repressed grief to resurface, and she desperately doesn’t want this to happen. As usual, the narrator turns to superficial concerns like taste (as when she inwardly criticizes Reva’s corny speech) to distract herself from more serious, potentially painful matters.
Themes
The reception is held at Reva’s house. It’s full of Reva’s middled-aged relatives and her mother’s friends. Later, after most of the guests have left, Reva drives the narrator back to the city. One of the remaining guests asks if it’s safe in the snow, but Reva promises to drive slowly. She packs a bag of clothing to spend the night at the narrator’s. One of the guests speaks vulnerably about her close friendship with Reva’s mother, but all the narrator can do in response is yawn and mumble, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The narrator’s actions in this scene further display her lack of compassion for others. She has physically attended the funeral and reception, but she’s been emotionally detached from it the entire time, continuing her hibernation in spirit even if she must endure several hours outside of her apartment.
Themes
Reva, dressed in a beaver-fur coat—likely her mother’s, guesses the narrator—appears with her packed bag. She says it’s time to go. They don’t talk much on the drive. Reva asks about the narrator’s resolutions for the new year. Reva doesn’t have any in mind; the narrator limply adds that she might try to stop smoking. It’s snowing, and the visibility is bad. Reva tries to talk about death, but the narrator just turns up the volume on the radio. They stop in the bodega before heading to the narrator’s apartment. One of the Egyptian workers comments that the narrator and Reva could be sisters; Reva thanks him.
The narrator tries (albeit minimally) to humor Reva on the drive home, offering a noncommittal response to Reva’s question about new year’s resolutions. It’s not much, but it does show that the narrator is capable of recognizing Reva’s emotional needs and making some effort to meet them. Though the narrator is mostly dismissive of her friendship with Reva and quite convinced that she is above needing relationships with others, this scene suggests that she may be capable of healing and learning to engage with others in the future.
Themes
Back at the narrator’s apartment, the TV is still on, and a porn movie is playing. The narrator takes an Infermiterol as another porn movie starts. Reva talks about her relationship with Ken and her mother’s thoughts about it, but the narrator hardly listens. She makes vague comments about the porn movie, instead. As though from a great distance, she hears herself tell Reva she loves her and that she’s sorry about her mom. Then she drifts off.
This cringeworthy scene undercuts the narrator’s earlier attempts to console or provide emotional support for Reva. She is too wrapped up in her own misery or apathy to even turn off the porn movie playing on the TV—worse yet, she makes inane comments about the movie’s story instead of engaging with Reva. It has become a pattern for the narrator to express tidbits of truth or allow herself to feel genuine feelings in the moments before she loses consciousness, as happens here when the narrator tells Reva she loves her. This pattern of behavior shows that the narrator doesn’t find life as meaningless or people as useless as she claims—in fact, she wants to live a purposeful life full of meaningful friendships, she just doesn’t know how to work through the pain to get herself to a place where she can have those things.
Themes
