“A little life” only made sense to me when I saw it as the open admission of the ineptitude of a system (spoilers ahead).
Jude, the main character, starts up his life suffering continuously and immensely to then reach a point where he surrenders to his death, a death that becomes a near-death and gifts him a new life.
His suffering is not soap-operistic, it is proper abuse; emotional, physical, and sexual.
Despite the abhorrent nature of what he endured, he manages to move forward retaining great intellectual capacity. Such privilege allows him to leave his past behind and embark on an academic journey that eventually bears fruits: loving friends and family as well as a well-paid job; all despite a physical disability and a penchant for self-harming, the only obvious remaining evidence of his ordeal.
The ‘American dream’, fellas!
Yet, in the end, he kills himself.
I read somewhere that the author didn’t want a character that got healed in the end and I feel that avenue is honest, given the circumstances in which she presents him.
His improbable journey includes him having an all-male close group of friends in which all of them end up being top-listers in their fields (à la ‘This is Us’), a married couple of eminent professors adopting him, a physician who is completely devoted to healing his ailing body, and a romantic partner who even gives up sex so their union can be closer.
Life, at least in terms endorsed by the Behemoth, eventually gives everything to Jude. That means that he, like many others, ends up having no skills whatsoever to deal with his past, to negotiate his present and to dream his future.
That’s why this lands as an admission of ineptitude by this system.
This fiasco highlights there isn’t enough money, relations or therapy in this system that can truly assist someone like him, and, more importantly, there isn’t enough in this system to help similar people way down in the food chain, people like you or me.
His giving up is not a personal failure, it’s a failure of a system, this system, the Behemoth.
PS. Little apology over here for not delivering a piece in October (though I double-delivered in April and May). I presented a talk in an International Traditional Music Forum at the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology and I have been unable to fully recover. I am now steady enough to deliver this piece, so here you have it. If you want, you can check the video (in Spanish) of my talk.