The Happy Years Vs Dear Comrade

“do you think he was happy with me?”

the happy years, pg. 493

lispenard street, pg. 713

lispenard street, pg. 719

i just made this i’m sorry😭😭

jude wanted to be ordinary more than anything but was not

jb wanted to be special like jude more than anything, this made him ordinary

willem did not care about being either, and ended up very famous

malcolm didn’t care about being either, and settled for a quiet life

the parallels in this book make me insane but yk when Harold was talking w Liesl for the first time in sixteen years and discovered she had been doing the same thing he had, which was seeing Jacob’s essence in the faces of students or just passerbys in the street.

“Only to realize later that she had imagined they might be our son, alive and well and away from us, no longer ours, but walking freely through the world, unaware that we might have been searching for him all this time”

And then later on, after Jude’s death, Harold finds that in everything he sees, he sees him. He seeks his son’s face once again, finding comfort in the idea that he might be somewhere off in the world, walking free, without pain and without grief, but he is no longer his and Julia’s.

Was that the price that Harold and Julia paid to let Jude be freed? That he might be off somewhere else, no longer really Jude but something or someone else that does not carry the pain or grief that Jude carried with him? But in return, he would no longer be Harold and Julia’s? They would never be able to reach him again, but he is free now.

“And if a child can no longer be comforted, is it my job to give him permission to leave?”

jude:

cooper koch would be SO GOOD as willem that being said i actually hope the book is never adapted for the screen

“Cooper Koch omg he would be perfect!!!!!”

Surely they mean for Willem, right?

a little life fashion takeover ohh i’m not ok

“a little life is ableist”

SHUT UP SHUT IP

as a disabled person when i read “people who had been made disabled felt they had been robbed of something” i had to put the fucking book down and recollect BECAUSE HANYA GOT IT SO CORRECT SO SHUT THE FUCK UP

everyday i get more and more like jude (pls help)

tiktok ALL readers when the main character with deeply complex trauma gets triggered by things 😮😮😮

thank u @orpheuslament for showing this shit to us so i could feel smarter .