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Chapter 6
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
Reva asks if the narrator is sure she really wants to get rid of all her designer clothes. The narrator, who called Reva earlier to say she was cleaning out her closets and that Reva was welcome to take anything she’d like, says she’s sure. The narrator observes that Reva is “like a kid in a candy store,” unable to restrain her greed as she eagerly pores over all the narrator’s designer clothing and accessories. As Reva carries her haul outside, the narrator tells her that she’s going on a trip and will be back June 1. When Reva asks if the narrator is going to Rehab, the narrator replies, “Something like that.” Reva tells the narrator she’s proud of her, then she drives off.
This chapter opens with more hints about the plans the narrator began to formulate at the end of Chapter Six. It’s worth noting that giving away one’s personal possessions can be a symptom of suicidality, and so Reva’s lack of concern at the narrator’s vague explanation highlights the degree to which their friendship has deteriorated over the past several months. The narrator’s comparison of Reva to “a kid in a candy store” points to Reva’s greed as well as her pattern of using material goods to distract her from her inner struggles. The narrator had thought that Reva’s mother’s death might prompt Reva to be more introspective and honest with herself, but this doesn’t quite seem to be the case.
Themes
With Reva gone, the narrator returns to her apartment and systematically gets rid of all her furniture other than her mattress, her dining table, and a single folding chair. She also keeps a couple towels, two sets of sheets, her duvet, a few pairs of pajamas, underwear, and basic hygiene supplies. She has instructed Ping Xi to bring her one large pizza every Sunday afternoon. Whenever she regains consciousness, she will drink water, eat a slice of pizza, and do some basic exercises. She’ll also wash her clothes. Then she’ll take another Infermiterol, lose consciousness once more, and start the whole cycle all over again. In this way, she will finish her year of hibernation.
The narrator’s plans come more into focus in this passage: it appears that she plans to carry out her hibernation to the extreme in the remaining several months of her project. It’s unclear how or why she feels this will help her, given the negative toll her quasi-hibernation seems to have had on her mental health thus far. The narrator has had numerous moments of clarity throughout the novel where she acknowledges, directly or indirectly, that repressing her pain is only hurting her. Yet she repeatedly brushes these thoughts aside, falling deeper into her isolation, repression, and patterns of self-destructive behavior.
Themes
The locksmith arrives later, and the narrator instructs him to install a lock outside the door—that way, anyone inside will need a key to exit the apartment. This will ensure that she cannot exit the apartment in an Infermiterol-induced blackout. If she dies by jumping out the window, so be it.
The fact that the narrator needs to lock herself inside her apartment to prevent herself from leaving it makes clear that she does not want to stay isolated and craves human connection. Her casual acceptance of the possibility that she may, in an Infermiterol-induced blackout, jump out the window and die reflects her ambivalent attitude toward her life: it matters equally little to her whether she lives or dies. Her ambivalence makes it difficult to identify the ultimate purpose of her hibernation project: it’s not as though she has a fierce desire to enjoy and find meaning in her life, after all.
Themes
On January 31, the narrator takes one last walk outside. During her walk, a couple asks her to take their picture. She does so, with shaky hands. After that, she throws her cellphone in the river. She returns to her apartment building and instructs the doorman to grant entry to Ping Xi, whenever he arrives. Then she goes to her apartment and waits.
The narrator’s agreement to take the couple’s picture suggests that she’s not completely ambivalent about whether she lives or dies: on some level, she seems to want to be part of society and the larger human project, even if she can’t bring herself to admit it.
Themes
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Ping Xi arrives a while later with a contract for the narrator to sign, should she change her mind at any point during their project, but she refuses to sign: she will not change her mind. Inwardly, she considers how Ping Xi thinks of her like his stuffed dogs: he is “an opportunist and a stylist, a producer of entertainment more than an artist.” He has no interest in knowing himself or changing: “He just want[s] to shock people.” Though he’s a “hack,” he knows how to work the system and is successful. She spots something on Ping Xi’s chin and realizes it’s a tattoo of red pimples.
The narrator’s negative observations about Ping Xi are either ironic or reflect her lacking self-awareness. She accuses Ping Xi of not wanting to know or improve himself, and yet she herself is exactly the same way. She fetishizes the idea of personal transformation—of staying inside her apartment, as though inside a cocoon, and metamorphosizing into a new person with a new outlook on life. Yet she has no interest in identifying what is making her so dissatisfied with life, or why. In this way, she is just as superficial—and her hibernation project, just as ultimately meaningless—as Ping Xi or any of the art he has produced.
Themes
Ping Xi outlines his plans for the project—he’ll take lots of footage with a handheld camera. The narrator doesn’t care what he does, so long as he keeps her locked up and does not leave any trace behind after he leaves the apartment. Ping Xi is fine with this: it will benefit his project for her to be “naïve.”
The overlap between Ping Xi’s art project and the narrator’s hibernation project lends a superficial, performative characteristic to the latter. This calls into question the legitimacy of the personal transformation the narrator hopes to gain from the experience: does she really want to meaningfully improve her quality of life, or does she simply want for it to appear that way?
Themes
The narrator explains to Ping Xi that she’s doing “work” of her own. Ping Xi asks why the narrator doesn’t just burn her ID and passport if she wants to reinvent herself. The narrator says she’ll need those things when she wakes up, to access her bank accounts, for instance. Even though she plans to emerge as a new person, she’ll still look like herself on the outside. Ping Xi claims that this isn’t an “authentic rebirth,” but the narrator ignores him. She tells him that she’ll leave a Post-it note on the table to let him know about anything she needs. Then Ping Xi tells her, “Sweet dreams,” and he leaves. Alone, the narrator takes the first of her remaining 40 Infermiterol tablets and lies down.
Ping Xi’s suggestion that the narrator just burn her ID and passport to expedite her so-called reinvention isn’t so different from the narrator’s plans for reinvention: both plans are more symbolic than genuine in that they don’t require the narrator to undertake any active self-reflection. The narrator’s belief that she can passively sleep off her old self and emerge anew is just as ludicrous as Ping Xi’s suggestion that she become a new person by destroying her legal forms of identification.
Themes
The narrator awakes three nights later. She expects to see scratches at her door—evidence of her unconscious desire to escape—but finds none. She walks to the kitchen and finds evidence of Ping Xi’s presence—beer cans and tin foil smeared with remnants of a burrito, she guesses. She writes a note reminding him to remove all trash and cross out the dates on the calendar. She takes a slice of pizza from the refrigerator and eats it cold. For a moment, she considers that she could die here, should something happen to Ping Xi. But her fear dissipates the moment she turns off the lights. She thinks about Trevor proposing to his new girlfriend and thinks about how stupid it is to want anything to last “forever.” Then she drifts back to sleep.
At the narrator’s first emergence from her Infermiterol-induced slumber, she doesn’t show many signs of change: she still represses uncomfortable feelings (as when she turns off the lights in order to stop worrying about dying in her apartment) and she still has a cynical attitude toward human relationships (as evidenced by the pity she feels for Trevor and his new girlfriend).
Themes
The narrator’s “second awakening” happens in the afternoon, three days later. She awakes with her thumb in her mouth. This time, there’s no trash left behind. She drinks a can of the ginger ale she asked Ping Xi to bring and thinks only briefly of Reva and her cans of diet soda.
The narrator’s thumb-sucking could symbolize some regression into childhood, suggesting that her self-reinvention is kicking off. But the suddenness and randomness of this symbolic regression suggests that it’s not meant to be taken seriously—instead, the novel is criticizing or satirizing the idea of turning to arbitrary rituals of self-care to achieve reinvention of inner growth.
Themes
The narrator’s third awakening marks nine days locked inside her apartment. She feels her muscles atrophying. Things continue in this way, with the narrator waking every third day, and Ping Xi marking days off on the calendar and removing the garbage. He comes and goes without her knowing (or remembering). She continues to leave notes for him with things to bring on his next trip over.
The narrator continues to do nothing but sleep and eat. Other than her atrophying muscles, she exhibits no discernable changes. Ironically, although the point of the narrator’s hibernation is supposedly self-isolation, she would not be able to carry it out without the help of Ping-Xi—that is, without human connection. This underscores humankind’s need for human connection, even the shallow and largely performative sort of connection the narrator has with Ping Xi.
Themes
When the narrator wakes on February 25, things are different. For one, she’s curled up under a towel on the floor instead of on her mattress in her bedroom. She walks there and finds the door locked. She can smell the familiar scent of turpentine. Images of the “sleeping nudes” Ping Xi has been painting of her flash through her head. She remembers them as being mediocre. Anyway, it doesn’t matter: he can still sell them for lots of money, claiming that they’re “self-conscious critiques of the institutionalization of painting,” or some nonsense like that. The narrator takes another Infermiterol and falls back asleep.
Nearly a month into the narrator’s hibernation, she finally starts to experience change, albeit very minimally, and certainly not in any way that suggests self-improvement. On the other hand, her snarky thought about the superficiality of whatever paintings Ping Xi has done of her show that she continues to lack self-awareness. After all, is her hibernation project not itself a “self-conscious critique[]” of self-care? In essence, her “hibernation” is merely a superficial performance she is carrying out in place of serious introspection. From this perspective, it is no different—or no less lacking in meaning—than Ping Xi’s vapid art.
Themes
As May nears its end, the narrator thinks she’ll start to feel restless soon. She can sense spring emerging outside. On May 28, she comes to and knows this is the last time she’ll take the Infermiterol. She takes the pill and “pray[s] for mercy.” She drifts in and out of consciousness and imagines that she is being lowered into the ground by the machine that lowered her parents’ caskets into the ground at their funerals. She feels afraid and has the sudden urge to revisit every moment of her life. She reaches out and feels she has latched onto someone but can’t know for sure. She registers that she is crying and tries to focus on that sound. She feels that she is going nowhere and is nothing, then she loses consciousness.
This scene marks a major turning point in the narrator’s hibernation journey: after today, she won’t have any more Infermiterol to take, and so she will, in essence, officially end her hibernation project and reenter the world. The dreams or hallucinations she has in her semiconscious state suggest a genuine urge to feel all the pain and discomfort she’s been repressing for the entirety of the novel. Whether she will carry that subconscious desire into waking life will determine the success of her hibernation.
Themes
The narrator wakes up on June 1, 2001. Sunlight shines in through the blinds. She hears a bird chirp outside and knows that she is “alive.” Just as she’d requested back at the start of their project, Ping Xi has left her clothing, her credit cards, her ID, and some cash. There’s also water, an apple, and a bottle of sunscreen. At first, she thinks the sunscreen is a thoughtful gesture on Ping Xi’s part and feels touched, then she finds the note on which she requested him to bring it. Her white fur coat hangs from a hook. Beside it is a Post-it note from Ping Xi, who apparently bought her the coat. He says he’ll “miss working with [her].”
It seems totally arbitrary that the narrator deems herself healed enough to re-enter the world exactly one year after she began her hibernation project—practically all she has done over the past months is sleep and take prescription medications, and she didn’t undertake any meaningful efforts to work through the unresolved grief and other issues that were causing her so much pain when she first started her project. In short, nothing about the narrator or her world has changed. For this reason, it remains to be seen whether her re-entry into society will be successful—in the long run, or at all.
Themes
The narrator opens the door, which is unlocked, and makes her way down to the lobby. Her muscles are weak, and the light coming from outside is disarmingly bright. The doorman and a woman in the lobby ask her if she’s okay. “People are so nice,” she thinks. It’s another week before she’s strong enough to walk around the block. She walks farther and farther each day. By August, she has bought a battery-operated radio and carries it to the park each day, listening to jazz stations. She feeds Corn Flakes to pigeons.
The narrator’s new perspective on people and on life is almost a comic reversal of the attitude she held at the start of the novel and throughout much of her hibernation (“People are so nice,” she thinks now, when just months before she claimed to hate everyone). It’s totally unclear what has prompted this changed perspective, since the narrator hasn’t engaged in any sincere, sustained introspection over the past year. In a way, the novel seems to use the narrator’s miraculous, extreme, and sudden recovery to critique the whole idea of self-care in the first place: is it really logical to believe that somebody can totally change their personality and sense of the world simply by sleeping more or keeping a regular diet?
Themes
The narrator doesn’t think about Ping Xi until she calls Reva on August 19—Reva’s birthday. Reva comes over the next week. She’s wearing a new perfume, the narrator notes. Reva doesn’t say anything about the random, unmatching furniture the narrator has since bought from various thrift stores. She says nothing of the narrator’s six-month absence, or her missing cell phone. She complains about her new boss, talks about her new job.
Reva’s new perfume signifies change, though it’s unclear whether that change is genuine or superficial—that is, whether Reva has simply found a new material distraction from her genuine internal struggles. Her mindless chatter about work suggests that she’s more or less the same person she was when the narrator last saw her in January, though her lacking interest in the narrator’s supposed stay in rehab does suggest that the distance that had begun to build between the “friends” over the past year has remained or (more likely) grown over the past several months.
Themes
Reva removes a New Yorker magazine from her purse and tells the narrator about a sad story she just read in it about a Chinese American student who got a bad PSAT score and threw himself from the roof of his junior high school. It’s only after he has survived this that his parents tell him they love him, and the student thinks “it pained them more than the cracking of [his] shins and femurs” as he hit the pavement. The narrator thinks the story isn’t all that great but tells Reva to continue. As Reva reads, the narrator pictures Ping Xi in her head. In that moment, he strikes her as a “reptilian, small-hearted being,” one of many who obsess over money and socializing to avoid confronting reality.
That the narrator doesn’t voice her cynical thoughts about the article aloud indicates that she’s more accommodating of Reva’s feelings since exiting hibernation. It’s ironic that the narrator sees Ping Xi as emblematic of the “reptilian, small-hearted being” who obsesses over money and socializing to avoid confronting reality when she herself is just as avoidant, albeit in opposite ways: over the past year, the narrator has obsessively discarded her material possessions and self-isolated in order to avoid confronting reality.
Themes
Reva reads the whole story, and the narrator can sense that she is only doing so to pass the time. She knows Reva doesn’t want to hear about her “rehab” experience: she wants this meeting to end so she can “go and leave [the narrator] forever.” Reva finishes the story and remarks on how sad it is that “certain cultures can be so cold,” and the narrator agrees. The narrator realizes then that she does not want Reva to leave. She thinks about how beautiful Reva is in that moment, “with all her nerves and all her complicated, circuitous feelings and contradictions and fears.” She tells Reva she loves her. Reva says it back.
Though Reva appears superficially unchanged, she is different than she was when the narrator first began her hibernation: her patience with the narrator and the narrator’s cruelty and indifference has worn thin, and she no longer needs the distraction of their friendship to function. Reva may still be full of “complicated, circuitous feelings and contradictions and fears,” but she—unlike the narrator—has chosen to accept and feel them. It’s not clear whether the narrator is sadder about losing Reva or about the fact that Reva has outgrown her.
Themes
Ping Xi’s exhibition, “Large-Headed Pictures of a Beautiful Woman,” goes up at Ducat in late August. Someone sends the narrator a review. She’s surprised to see that Ping Xi rendered her “in the style of Utamaro woodblock prints.” There are also videos of her. In some, she is weeping. Ping Xi has dubbed over the narrator with voicemails from his mother, shouting angrily in Cantonese. One critic describes the narrator as a “bloated nymph with dead eyes.”
The narrator has criticized Ping Xi for creating art that is all shock and no substance. But his latest work, which depicts the narrator herself, finally gets at something true: one might interpret the “Large-Headed” element of his rendering of the narrator to comment on her self-centeredness or self-indulgence. This, though, is lost on the narrator, suggesting that she remains no more capable of self-reflection than she was at the start of the novel. If this is the case, it calls to question the legitimacy of her supposed rebirth.
Themes
In early September, the narrator goes to the Met museum: she wants to see “what other people had done with their lives, people who had made art alone.” She looks at a still life and hopes that the artist didn’t just throw out the fruit when they were done: “that they’d had some respect for the stuff they were immortalizing.” She gets too close to the painting, and a nearby guard yells at her. Suddenly, she has the striking revelation that her future is unknown: “it didn’t exist yet.” She is making it with each action she makes, each thought she has. “Things were just things,” she thinks. She reaches out to touch the painting. The guard lunges toward her and pulls her back. In that moment, she realizes she’s “free.”
This climactic scene marks a major turning point in the narrator—it’s the moment she finally wakes up, symbolically, from her existential hibernation. The narrator has spent much of the book anguishing over the pointlessness of life, which is full of vapid art, superficial relationships and unexplainable tragedy. She finally feels “free” when she recognizes the beauty and potential that can come from meaninglessness and goes to touch the painting. If nothing matters and nothing can be predicted, then it makes no difference whether she touches the painting or not. Whether she chooses to live with the foolish, superficial optimism of someone like Reva or with the cynical nihilism she herself has exhibited from the start of the novel has no effect on life’s fundamental meaning (or lack thereof). There is freedom, the narrator seems to suggest, in realizing that one’s perspective does not change the nature of reality: “Things [are] just things,” including the narrator herself.
Themes
Later, the narrator finds a letter from the real estate agent informing her that someone has made an offer on her parents’ house. She wanders to Central Park and watches as a child asks his mother to identify a bird he has just seen. The narrator wanders on, finds a payphone, and call the real estate agent. She tells him to go ahead with the sale. Then she calls Reva, who is at the gym—can they talk later? They don’t.
With her parents’ house gone, the narrator has cut ties with the last physical link to her late parents. While this might symbolize that she is moving forward in life instead of being caught up in the past, it’s notable that the narrator still has yet to reflect on her grief in any meaningful way. This calls the legitimacy of her transformation into question—is selling the house just another way for the narrator to deny and repress her feelings of unresolved grief?
Themes
