by Karin Hrošová

The postmodern world, especially the Western world, is in a state of fusibility. Beholden to the past and obliged to atone for its mistakes and foresee the errors of the future, it is overcompensating for the loss of cultural and personal identity. As defined in this essay, to fuse society means to globalise it on an individual level. That is, not only on the level of economic integration, language, and cultural commixture, but also on the basis of self-perception and role assignment. The fusible world unifies its prospects with ever-present blame. Comparable to metals melting under the pressure of high heat, a hopeless society melts under the pressure of collective blame. This renders all people equally guilty. In such a state, it becomes ever more complicated to distinguish between one’s true self and the mirroring of the dogmas, opinions and actions of others.

With this logic in mind, this essay centres on the controversial novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara as an ideal contemporary representation of the fusible society’s repercussions. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s concepts of the abject and the I/Other, as developed in her Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, it highlights the inconsistency of societal taboos and suppressed traumas. These surface when, as a consequence of various forms of abjection, such as abuse, self-harm, and substance use, the protagonist Jude St. Francis progressively loses his identity and rejects his body. Conversely, he feels increasingly compelled to become his own self. Moreover, some critics believe that certain scenes in A Little Life are exaggerated and unnecessary. By analysing selected motifs of violence and trauma and reinterpreting them according to Kristeva’s ideas, this essay strives to revolutionise their perception, demonstrating that this book’s existence must instead be acknowledged as a reflection of the fusible world’s crude reality. 

Considering the amount of work produced, it should be noted that this essay does not and cannot account for every work depicting one’s psychological transcendence upon witnessing brutality. Therefore, as mentioned above, it focuses on a single work of fiction and specifically assorted critiques. To support the main argument, the following analysis presents two key instances of the novel that represent the abject. These are followed by negatively formulated comments on the novel and eventually a positive response, in the herein stated order. The method of interpretation proceeds on the basis of concepts introduced in Kristeva’s treatise, highlighting the presence of the abject in the novel.

The first premise tackles the predicament of Jude finding comfort in self-harm. By cutting and skinning his limbs, he purifies himself of his unwilling participation in the prostitution business. With this atrocious act, he endeavours to uphold his bodily autonomy. Hanya Yanagihara opens the novel with an introduction to the lives of its four main characters, with the narrative being haunted specifically by Jude St. Francis’s disability, which is regarded by others as a taboo. Yanagihara underscores this through the thoughts of the protagonist’s best friend: “Jude’s eyes were closed, and Willem knew … he did what they had all learned over the years to do when Jude’s legs were hurting him … get up and leave the room so Jude could lie perfectly still and wait for the pain to pass.”¹ Additionally, Part Five of the novel, entitled “The Happy Years,” reveals a deeper understanding of Jude’s disposition. After escaping the paedophilic priest, Brother Luke, who uses his young body for prostitution, Jude is placed into an orphanage. There, the hardships persist, and Jude is forced to endure cruel sexual abuse. In a final attempt to save his life, a treacherous psychiatrist—who abducts the protagonist instead of aiding him—runs him over with a car, leaving him with permanent damage.² The complete details of these drastic circumstances are revealed gradually throughout the book. They serve as a developing catalyst for the story, since Yanagihara inflicts suppressed traumatic memories upon the protagonist as his life seemingly normalises. The intensification of the need to self-harm, resulting from his conviction of unworthiness, grants Jude control, at least over his own body. 

It is notable how the stigmatic wounds transform Jude’s self-perception, worsening his mental state. Such delusion leads to abjection, as defined by Julia Kristeva, of the same self-mutilating act. In this way, the author prevents the character from reconciling with society. Firstly, as Kristeva, in the opening section of her first essay “Approaching Abjection” philosophises: “A wound with blood and pus … does not signify death. … There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being. … It is no longer I who expel, ‘I’ is expelled. The border has become an object.”³ By asking how she can exist without this border, she finds herself elsewhere. It is there she feels present, and so it is abjected into her world.⁴ As indicated in the argument of this paragraph, this principle can be applied to the story of Yanagihara’s protagonist. Jude progressively considers the detrimental act of self-harm to be a pivotal determiner of his existence as an abject figure. Additionally, Yanagihara accentuates this through the words of Harold, Jude’s professor and future foster father: “He hated doing it, I could tell, but he also couldn’t conceive of a life without it.”⁵ Arguably, if Jude did not engage in self-harm, he would not be able to understand his dislodging reality. By concealing itself behind comfort, the abject dictates the life trajectory of Yanagihara’s protagonist from bad to even worse. Simultaneously, it metaphorically transfers Jude’s presence beyond life, the primal motif of the narrative. To further support the claim of this novel being necessary to reflect today’s age of fusibility, this essay continues with another representation of abjection.

The second instance can be found when Yanagihara culminates Jude’s suffering by killing Willem in a car crash. This character is the only person whom Jude truly loves and, to some extent, can be intimate with. Willem, as the object—an object of Jude’s desire for a different life in which he is worthy of Willem—is taken away from Jude. The abject is represented by the death of Willem, the previous object, when Jude transcendentally leaves his “I” for his “Other”, as Kristeva theorises.⁶ Thus, Willem’s death becomes his new driving force towards self-destruction. Jude falls into a deep depression, denser than ever before. He stops eating because everything “tastes like paste,”⁷ avoiding people as much as possible, contemplating suicide, while projecting Willem’s presence in everything. Yanagihara accentuates this through Jude’s penultimate contemplations: “His thoughts are so occupied with Willem — trying to recreate him … to keep him present … his past is as far away as it has ever been.”⁸ According to Kristeva, this is a significant indicator of abjection. She explains: “‘I’ want none of that element, sign of their desire … ‘I’ expel it.”⁹ After losing Willem, Jude’s mentality irreversibly shatters, and Willem’s death becomes his abject, decomposing his life. This triggers his own subsequent abjection later in the novel. 

At last, the author makes the protagonist abandon the world by taking his life to abjectify himself. Now, the abject is represented by his life, the expelled essence, as confirmed by the pursuit of salvation and self-establishment in terms of abjection theory: “But since the food is not an ‘other’ for ‘me,’ who am only in their desire, I expel myself … I abject myself within the same motion through which ‘I’ claim to establish myself.”¹⁰ Abjection, previously manifested as food loathing and derealisation, is finalised by Jude’s suicide. Yanagihara reveals this at the very end of the narrative in the part entitled “Lispenard Street”—the street where Jude and Willem’s first apartment is located. It shares a title with the first part of the book.¹¹ This paradoxical ending of Yanagihara’s protagonist, like the novel itself, depicts the inescapable tragedy of human life. Jude St. Francis, in his whole life, never once believed himself worthy of happiness, even thinking he owes an apology to others.¹² To summarise, Yanagihara repeatedly suggests that Jude assumes that the only person responsible for his misery is himself, culminating in his suicide. Hence, it serves as a reminder of today’s fusible world, in which the blame for the self-destruction of humanity is placed upon individuals co-creating it. This essay argues that it is due to a false conviction of pure, inherent evil within human existence.

The critics’ commentaries vary, but largely agree on one thing: the analysed novel is overflowing with drastic brutality and trauma. Some researchers are sceptical about its factuality and accuracy in its depiction of real-life scenarios, indicting the narrative for its bizarre exaggeration. Others, meanwhile, assert that the novel dishonours the rights of a particular social group. Despite these issues, this essay formulates an opposition, claiming that excessive narrative trauma or the illustration of disability are negligible compared to obtaining the proof of fusibility. The first critical commentary comes from Dorothee Marx. The researcher states that the misleading description of immobility in the novel ridicules the efforts of disability rights activism.¹³ Marx pinpoints this problem: “A Little Life reproduces ableist stereotypes that interpret wheelchair use as a symbol of immobility … despite the fact that a wheelchair is a mobility aid that can have a decidedly positive impact on the quality of life of its users.”¹⁴ Indeed, Yanagihara writes about Jude’s life worsening after he begins using a wheelchair, rather than the other way around. He even enters another abusive relationship because of it.¹⁵ The following example of critical response comes from Richa Thakar’s study of the novel from the viewpoint of trauma theory. On one hand, the researcher acknowledges the accurate depiction of trauma, even admitting that the excess engages the reader. However, Thakar also argues that the same exaggeration overshadows the beauty of the book “by its commentary on psychology and graphic sensationalism.”¹⁶ Presumably, the author of the critique believes that the book has been weaponised as a quick seller rather than as a portrayal of fragile human nature. Should the discussion concern itself with the narrative itself and its accuracy, or the author’s real motivation, it would be liable to agree with these opinions. However, this is not the aim of this essay. Therefore, it proceeds with a positively infused approach.

For essays to withstand criticism, it is often important to establish a strong analytic base in literary theory. It is plausible to assume that the main argument of this essay is unique in its relation to the inner world. However, there are doubtlessly other researchers who have attempted to balance the novel’s exaggeration with a theory-based approach. For instance, in his publication, Jonas Kellermann mentions Caruth’s “pathos of the literal”—a theory of the contagious transmissivity of emotions through the readers’ empathy, mainly in performative literature.¹⁷ Kellermann asks, “And to what extent can the reader-witness still preserve any degree of affective autonomy if one is automatically ‘infected’ by the contagious experience that is being narrated?”¹⁸ The answer may be that autonomy cannot be fully preserved, just as it is difficult to preserve today. It is the same loss of independence, as stipulated in the introduction, that complicates the delineation between one’s true self and the mirroring of others. Furthermore, Kellermann shares the opinion of this essay that the loss of Willem is mentally more devastating to Yanagihara’s Jude than his previous traumatic experiences.¹⁹ As discussed before, the way Yanagihara depicts Jude’s self-perception can be reinterpreted as a deteriorating abjection of his acts, surroundings, Willem’s death, and, finally, his own life. Kellermann argues that the excesses of the novel in general, both textual and trauma-wise, may prove the necessity of researching these areas further.²⁰ With this, the researcher concludes the thesis with a balanced position, acknowledging all the issues concerning the story. Still, Kellermann advocates its unmistakable leading position in contemporary literary and male trauma studies. It would be reasonable to agree with this research, yet only partly conceivable to share its legacy. Thus, this essay establishes its own base in literary criticism through Kristeva’s theory.

In conclusion, the currently rising globalisation and societal fusibility pose a threat to individuality. It is the same tendency of a melted society to degenerate the perception of good. Whether it was Hanya Yanagihara’s intention or not, A Little Life, a novel associated with endless suffering and destructive coping mechanisms, showcases the aftermath of such a degeneration. The application of Kristeva’s ideas to the plot only corroborates the necessity of portraying crudeness. Similarly, in real life, the denial of taboo topics unhinders negativity. By doing so, it condemns people to suffer alone in a society where it is almost impossible to maintain solitude. The fact, therefore, remains that society melts, and as a result, overly crude books are produced. The ulterior intention of this essay is to raise awareness and to motivate the public to notice this crudeness. Subsequently, it urges readers to utilise this recognition and maintain a critical approach to the atrocities promoted by the media. In principle, only after a realisation that evil is not necessarily inherent in every human being, the journey of restoring individuality and hope can commence.

Bibliography:

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Kellermann, Jonas. “Witnessing Trauma in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 62, no. 3 (2021): 334–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2020.1858750.

Marx, Dorothee. “‘But I’m Not Even in a Wheelchair’: Disability, Im/mobility, and Trauma in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life.” JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies 3, no. 1 (2021): 77–96. https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v3i1.47.

Thakar, Richa. “‘Narrating the Unnarratable’: The Portrayal of Trauma and Its Effects in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life.” Undergraduate thesis, The Ohio State University, May 2025.

Yanagihara, Hanya. A Little Life. New York: Anchor Books, 2016.

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Notes:

1. Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (New York: Anchor Books, 2016), 21. ↩︎
2. Yanagihara, A Little Life, 608–636. ↩︎
3. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 3. ↩︎
4. Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, 3. ↩︎
5. Yanagihara, A Little Life, 409. ↩︎
6. Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, 3. ↩︎
7. Yanagihara, A Little Life, 758. ↩︎
8. Yanagihara, A Little Life, 752. ↩︎
9. Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, 3. ↩︎
10. Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, 3. ↩︎
11. Yanagihara, A Little Life, 811. ↩︎
12. Yanagihara, A Little Life, 408, 813. ↩︎
13. Dorothee Marx, “‘But I’m Not Even in a Wheelchair’: Disability, Im/mobility, and Trauma in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life,” JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies 3, no. 1 (2021): 77, https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v3i1.47. ↩︎
14. Marx, “‘But I’m Not Even in a Wheelchair’: Disability, Im/mobility, and Trauma in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life,” 81. ↩︎
15. Yanagihara, A Little Life, 378–385. ↩︎
16. Richa Thakar, “‘Narrating the Unnarratable’: The Portrayal of Trauma and Its Effects in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life,” undergraduate thesis, The Ohio State University, May 2025, 3. ↩︎
17. Jonas Kellermann, “Witnessing Trauma in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life,” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 62, no. 3 (2021): 341, https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2020.1858750. ↩︎
18. Kellermann, “Witnessing Trauma in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life,” 341. ↩︎
19. Kellermann, “Witnessing Trauma in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life,” 344. ↩︎
20. Kellermann, “Witnessing Trauma in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life,” 335. ↩︎