A Little Life

Jude’s status as a static protagonist makes his characterization both frustrating and sympathetic. His extraordinarily low self-worth, informed by a childhood rife with abuse, never budges throughout the novel, despite extensive efforts to help him from a loving community of friends. Named for a martyr of the early Christian church, Jude often appears saint-like both in his level of suffering and in his gentleness, but his saintly kindness comes from a conviction that he could lose his friends’ love at any moment rather than a genuine absence of any anger.

Jude’s childhood consists of an endless string of sexual abuse, from his years as a foundling in a monastery to his time on the road with predatory ex-monk Brother Luke to his years in a home for children without parents to his months held in captivity by the sadistic Dr. Traylor. Without being told, he realizes that there is something wrong with what he is being forced to do, but he wrongly assumes that the fault is his rather than his despicable caretakers’. Because Dr. Traylor runs over Jude with a car, Jude’s psychological trauma is paired with lasting physical damage to his back and legs that plagues him for the rest of his life.