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Summary
Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Judith Guest's Ordinary People. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
Ordinary People: Introduction
A concise biography of Judith Guest plus historical and literary context for Ordinary People.
Ordinary People: Plot Summary
A quick-reference summary: Ordinary People on a single page.
Ordinary People: Detailed Summary & Analysis
In-depth summary and analysis of every chapter of Ordinary People. Visual theme-tracking, too.
Ordinary People: Themes
Explanations, analysis, and visualizations of Ordinary People's themes.
Ordinary People: Quotes
Ordinary People's important quotes, sortable by theme, character, or chapter.
Ordinary People: Characters
Description, analysis, and timelines for Ordinary People's characters.
Ordinary People: Symbols
Explanations of Ordinary People's symbols, and tracking of where they appear.
Ordinary People: Theme Wheel
An interactive data visualization of Ordinary People's plot and themes.
Brief Biography of Judith Guest
Guest graduated from the University of Michigan in 1958 and became a grade-school teacher shortly thereafter. Though she has been writing since the age of eleven, Guest claims to have completed very few pieces until she entered a short story-writing contest in 1970. Shortly thereafter she stepped away from teaching to "concentrate on finishing something"; the result was Ordinary People, a short story that eventually grew into her first novel after three years of work. Published in 1976, the novel was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize the same year. Guest has since written five more novels in addition to several short stories and non-fiction pieces. She currently lives in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota.
Get the entire Ordinary People LitChart as a printable PDF.
Other Books Related to Ordinary People
Ordinary People is one of the many psychological novels to emerge from the 60s and 70s. Books like Flowers for Algernon (1966) appeared at a time when psychiatry was gaining interest in mainstream American culture. At about the same time, "realistic fiction" for young adults was coming into its own. While Guest's novel was not explicitly written or marketed as a book for young adults, the presence of complex teen-aged characters put it on par with novels such as Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye.
Key Facts about Ordinary People
- Full Title: Ordinary People
- When Written: 1976
- Where Written: Michigan
- When Published: 1976
- Genre: Psychological realism
- Setting: Evanston, Illinois (a town just outside of Chicago; home to Northwestern University), especially Conrad's school, Lake Forest High; some scenes in Chicago and Dallas, Texas
- Climax: Conrad learns about his friend Karen's suicide.
- Antagonist: While each character may feel at odds with different characters at different times, many of them struggle hardest against their own thoughts and emotions.
- Point of View: Third-person subjective; alternates between an "omniscient" narrator and the (implied) ideas and voices of each character
Extra Credit for Ordinary People
From Page to Screen. Ordinary People was adapted into a film in 1980. Directed by Robert Redford and starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore, the film eventually won four Academy Awards—including the year's title for Best Picture.
Too Hot to Handle? Ordinary People's challenging content is not without its critics. The American Library Association lists the novel as one of the 100 books "most frequently challenged" between 1990 and 1999, making it a mainstay of many Banned Books Week reading lists.
