Ordinary People

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Ordinary People

Judith Guest
1976
Introduction
Author Biography
Plot Summary
Characters
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
For Further Study

In 1976, Judith Guest's Ordinary People became the first unsolicited manuscript published by Viking Press in twenty-six years. Since then the popularity of the novel has remained undiminished. It is read by adults and teenagers alike for its sensitive characterizations of the troubled teenager Conrad Jarrett and his confused father, Calvin. The story of a teenaged boy's journey back from a suicide attempt after his older brother's death in a boating accident, and the grief and guilt that tear the Jarretts apart, Ordinary People was an instant best-seller. It was also made into an award-winning film. Guest's themes of alienation, the search for identity, and coming of age were timely ones, as the 1970s saw a trend toward self-discovery. Thus, psychology plays a key role in the novel, as young Conrad learns to express rather than repress his emotions with the help of a psychiatrist, while his mother's inability to confront her feelings leads her to leave her husband and son. Judith Guest has been especially praised for her insight into the feelings and experiences of her adolescent male protagonist, Conrad Jarrett, as well as for her ear for dialogue. Some critics have found Guest's emphasis on surrendering control ironic, as the style of the novel is tightly controlled, though unconventional, with its shifts between the perspectives of Calvin and Conrad Jarrett. Critics have also found that Guest's ending is too contrived; the troubled relationship between Conrad and his mother is resolved through the healing power of love, even though the two are not in contact with each other. Nevertheless, OrdinaryPeople, with its universal insights into the grief process and the relationships between family members and its sensitive and realistic portrayals of its characters, will probably continue to be read for years to come.

Author Biography

Judith Guest does not stray too far from her own personal experiences and background in creating her fictional works. Like the characters in novels such as Ordinary People, she is from a white, well-to-do family and lives in the suburbs. Born March 29, 1936, in Detroit, Michigan, she is the daughter of a businessman and a housewife. Her insight into her male adolescent characters may stem from her experience raising three sons with her husband, or from her employment as a teacher in public schools.

Guest began writing at the young age of twelve, but she never showed her family her work. Later, in college, she was intimidated by the thought of taking creative writing classes at the University of Michigan. Instead, she majored in education, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1958. The summer after she graduated, she married Larry Lavercombe, a business executive. While teaching at elementary schools in Michigan, Guest began raising her children: Larry, John, and Richard. Teaching and raising her sons took up most of her time, so she did not begin writing seriously until after they had started school. When the family moved to Illinois, she tried her hand at journalism, but she did not like the constraints this kind of writing involved. She did, however, learn about meeting deadlines and editing articles to fit limited amounts of space. After taking a writing seminar, she was inspired to start writing fiction again, and she has been writing full-time since 1975.

Despite delaying a writing career while raising a family, Guest feels that this period in her life has been valuable to her fiction. While going to PTA meetings and chauffeuring her children to school and events, she was often thinking about her novels, developing plots and characters in her mind until she was ready to write them down. The content of her stories, however, was inspired by her childhood. Guest has said that her interest in cold and emotionally distant characters originates in experiences with family members. Her father did not share his feelings openly, never telling his daughter, for example, about the pain he must have felt when he was ten years old and his father died.

This sort of stifled emotional anguish fills the pages of Guest's first published work. Ordinary People was the first unsolicited manuscript accepted by Viking Press in twenty-six years. This story of a family torn apart by the untimely death of a child was an instant success. The novel was selected by four book clubs, serialized in Redbook, and had paperback rights sold to Ballantine for $635,000. In 1980, Robert Redford made his directorial debut and won an Oscar when he adapted Ordinary People for the screen. Guest herself approved of the ending, which was more inconclusive than the ending of the book, and the acting, particularly Mary Tyler Moore's portrayal of Beth. The film adaptation created an even bigger audience for Guest's work.

Guest has written other novels, including Second Heaven, which appeared in 1982, Killing Time in St. Cloud, a 1988 work written with Rebecca Hill, and 1997's Errands. Like her first novel, these works present ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances, struggling to maintain connections with others in the midst of loss and grief. Although Guest draws on her personal life for much of the material she puts into her novels, her characters and their experiences come from her own imagination. She has said, however, that what is most real about her characters is the feelings they experience and the emotional struggles they endure.

Plot Summary

Autumn

Ordinary People consists of two interwoven stories told from the points of view of Conrad "Con" Jarrett and his father, Calvin "Cal" Jarrett. Set in the suburbs of Chicago in the 1970s, the novel begins in the aftermath of the accidental death of Jordan "Buck" Jarrett and his brother Conrad's subsequent suicide attempt. Conrad, Calvin, and Beth Jarrett struggle throughout the novel to cope with these tragedies. The story begins with Con making an appointment with his new outpatient psychiatrist, Dr. Berger, after having been released from a mental hospital. It is evident in the first chapter that Con is still struggling with anxiety and depression.

In Chapter Two, the narrator switches to Cal's perspective. It is clear that Con and Beth's relationship is a strained one, while Cal is torn between both of them. Like Con, Cal finds Beth unknowable and distant, but he romanticizes this quality in her, even when they disagree over whether or not to go away for Christmas, as they do in Chapter Four. Cal's insistence that the family not travel during Christmas because of Con's mental and emotional state is a decision which will cause tension in the family in later chapters. Cal and Beth's mutual grief over Buck's death is not mentioned, as they both struggle to control, rather than express, their grief. This desire for control is echoed by Con in Chapter Five, when he tells Berger that he wants to feel more in control. Berger's attempts to get Con to understand that it is better to express emotions than to control them continues as a theme throughout the novel.

When Con meets a friend from the hospital, Karen, in Chapter Seven, he realizes that their relationship has changed and that he can no longer depend on his friendship with her. When he returns home from his trip to see Karen, in Chapter Eight, he is visibly tense when Cal mentions the possibility of traveling to London for Christmas. When, on the way to a party, Beth tells Cal that Con would have made the trip, Cal replies that Con did not want to go, and he feels both relief and guilt when Beth drops the subject. After the party, Beth and Cal fight over his discussion of Con's problems with friends of theirs.

In Chapter Nine, Con realizes with Berger's help that he wants to quit the swim team, and after he does so in Chapter Ten, he neglects to tell his parents because he does not want to worry them. When, in Chapter Eleven, Con brings home an "A" on a trigonometry quiz, Cal wants to believe that the work of grieving is done and that they are ordinary people again.

Winter

Chapter Twelve begins around Christmastime. With Berger's help, Con is beginning to feel better and be more at peace with himself, especially after he walks Jeannine Pratt home. But this sense of peace is short-lived as, in Chapter Thirteen, the Jarrett family explodes. Beth finds out from Carole Lazenby that Con has quit the swim team. Con becomes angry, telling her that he would have told her if he thought she cared and adding that she did not come to the hospital to visit him because she was traveling, revealing the source of his anxiety about the possible Christmas trip to London. After Con runs upstairs, Cal attempts to mediate the argument, but he gets nowhere because Con and Beth both think that he does not see their points of view. Beth and Con do not mention the fight again, but Con is able to talk about it with Berger, who tells Con to recognize Beth's limitations and to maintain a sense of perspective.

Chapter Fifteen takes place on Christmas Day. Beth and Cal fight over Con's lack of enthusiasm for his new car. When Beth tells Cal that things would have been different if they had gone away for Christmas, Cal realizes that their sense of grief underlies their argument. As Cal and Beth's relationship continues to deteriorate, Con's relationship with Berger is helping him to climb out of his depression. Cal asks Con if it's all right for him to go see Berger, and with Con's permission, he does so in Chapter Seventeen, realizing in Berger's office that he sees himself as a "fence-sitter," and that Beth and Con are possibly on opposite sides of that fence.

Chapter Eighteen takes place during Con's exam week. After one exam, he runs into Jeannine. Though he worries that she will reject him because she knows about his breakdown, he calls and asks her out on a date. Meanwhile, Cal is realizing how troubled his relationship with Beth is when his business partner tells him that the normally private Beth has told Ray's wife, Nancy, that Cal is obsessed with Con's problems.

Conrad and Jeannine's first date is the subject of Chapter Twenty. The date goes well, signaling the start of their relationship. When the story switches back to Cal, he and Beth are making plans to go to a golf tournament in Dallas, but Beth is noticeably unenthusiastic, even though Cal hopes that getting away will enable them to forget their problems.

Con then attends a swim meet, where he gets into a fight with a swimmer named Kevin Stillman, who has made a crude remark about Jeannine. Con is torn by guilt over his loss of control, but he feels reassured when Cal tells him it is okay to get into an occasional fight. Cal wonders, though, why Beth did not wake Con up when she saw him sleeping on the couch.

In Chapter Twenty-four, Beth and Cal leave for Dallas. Con feels strong when he is able to comfort Jeannine, who is upset when her mother's lover unexpectedly comes to town. Con's strength is tested, however, when he finds out that Karen has committed suicide. His guilt and grief over the deaths of Karen and Buck threaten to overwhelm him. Berger gets Con to see that Buck's death is not his fault, and Con is able to finally express the pain he feels rather than trying to control it. Con feels a sense of release, just had Berger had been predicting throughout their relationship. As he tells Con, "people with stiff upper lips find it hard to smile."

As Con's story climaxes with his expression of pain and anger, Beth and Cal's story also reaches its climax, in Chapter Twenty-eight, as they fight over Con's problems. Beth says that she will never forgive Con for his suicide attempt, and admits that she can only see Con's suicide attempt in terms of how it affects her, saying that she cannot love him the way he wants her to. Cal realizes Con's breakdown has done something terrible to Beth. Though Cal knows that some action must be taken, he is afraid to face the reality of the marriage's impending breakup.

Chapter Thirty begins with Con and Jeannine making love, after which they share intimate confidences about their emotional problems. As Con achieves a new level of closeness with Jeannine, his parents' marriage is coming apart. They argue nightly, and their love is not enough to rescue the relationship. Beth leaves for a trip to Europe without saying good-bye to Conrad, and when he expresses bitterness, Cal gets angry with him, no longer metaphorically sitting on the fence. Cal realizes that Beth wants things to be like they were before Buck's death and Con's breakdown, and her inability to come to terms with these losses has destroyed the marriage. When Con tells Cal he is not at all disappointed with Cal's love for him, father and son embrace.

Summer

The epilogue begins after Con has said goodbye to Berger. He stops by his friend Lazenby's house in an attempt to repair their friendship, which has been torn apart by their mutual grief for Buck. Con remembers having found all his old school drawings when he and Cal moved, and he realizes that his mother would not have kept them so carefully if they did not mean anything to her. As Con and Lazenby go off to play golf, the novel ends on a note of optimism for Con and his relationships with others.

Characters

Karen Aldrich

Karen Aldrich is Conrad Jarrett's friend from the mental hospital. When they meet after they are released, Con feels ashamed that he's seeing a therapist while she is not. Karen tells him that she doesn't really know him, suggesting that their closeness has evaporated as Karen struggles to repress the difficulties that landed her in the hospital. Her subsequent successful suicide attempt pushes Con to the breaking point, as waves of grief and guilt wash over him. When he finally sees Dr. Berger, Con is able to use the intense grief he feels over Karen's and Buck's deaths in order to begin to heal.

Arnold Bacon

Though he does not actually appear in Ordinary People, Arnold Bacon is an important figure in Cal Jarrett's past. Bacon mentored Cal through college and law school, but he withdrew his support when Cal married Beth. Bacon is Cal's first true experience with loss, and Cal's inability to balance his relationships with Bacon and Beth is duplicated when he tries to mediate between Beth and Con.

Dr. Berger

Dr. Berger is the psychiatrist who is Conrad Jarrett's therapist Gentle and eccentric, he lies on the floor with his patients during therapy sessions because he does not have a couch. His language is typically teasing and humorous, and his attitude stands in sharp contrast to the controlled and tortured Con. Berger gets Con to realize that the expression—rather than the control—of feelings is important to good mental health. Berger also helps Con to see that he is not responsible for his brother Buck's death and that he can be himself without trying to live up to Buck's legacy. Berger offers Con a safe space in which to talk and to express his anger, frustration, shame, and pain. Berger is able to handle Con's emotions without being oversolicitous, unlike Con's parents, Beth and Cal. Thus, Berger helps Con retreat from the family surroundings in which he is enmeshed and gain a sense of perspective about his father, his mother, and himself.

Audrey Butler

Audrey is Ward's wife. She tries to intercede in Beth and Cal's argument and is stricken when Beth tells her that she can only talk about how to be happy if she can ensure that her kids are always going to be safe.

Ellen Butler

Ellen is Beth Jarrett's mother. Her incessant nagging causes Con and Beth to retreat emotionally and illustrates the generation gap between family members.

Howard Butler

Howard is Beth Jarrett's father. His excitement about giving Con a car for Christmas, a car that Con doesn't need or want, underscores his inability to understand Con's problems.

Ward Butler

Ward is Beth Jarrett's brother. Beth and Cal visit him in Texas in the hope of escaping their problems, but they are unable to do so and fight bitterly over Beth's inability to forgive Con. Ward and his wife, Audrey, try to mediate but are unable to help.

Media Adaptations

Ordinary People was adapted in 1980 as an Academy-Award winning film by Robert Redford in his directorial debut, and starred Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, Timothy Hutton, and Judd Hirsch; the screenplay was written by Alvin Sargent, and the musical score was composed by Marvin Hamlisch. The film is available from Paramount Home Video.

Marty Genthe

In Ordinary People Marty Genthe's questions about Con at the Murrays' party leads Beth to accuse Cal of violating the family's privacy.

Ray Hanley

Ray is Cal's law partner of many years. Ray attempts to counsel Cal after Beth tells Ray's wife that Cal is obsessed with Con's problems, just as Cal tried to mediate between Ray and his wife when Ray had an affair. Cal feels that Ray does not understand the grief he feels over his son's death and Con's hospitalization, but he feels sorry that Ray is being forced to serve as a mediator between he and Beth.

Beth Jarrett

Though one of the principal characters in Ordinary People, Beth remains a somewhat shadowy character throughout the novel. The reader is only given impressions of her through the perceptions of Calvin and Conrad Jarrett. Beth is described as a perfectionist, and this perfectionism does not allow for forgiveness. She sees Con's suicide attempt as a punishment directed at her, and she cannot recognize or understand Con's emotional problems. Her mysteriousness and inconsistency draw Cal to her, but it also makes it impossible for them to work out the problems in their relationship because Beth will not communicate her feelings. Cal realizes by the end of the story that she cannot accept Buck's death and wants their lives to be like they were before the accident and Con's hospitalization. Because this is impossible, she distances herself from Cal, blaming him for becoming depressed about what has happened to their family and changing into a different person. Cal sees that Beth's perfectionism and practicality function to cover up her fears about losing control. Con realizes that Beth's overbearing mother, Ellen, has probably caused her to become a private person, but Beth herself is unwilling or unable to understand herself or express her emotions. Cal and Con must therefore reconcile themselves to her loss when she leaves after Cal suggests a marriage counselor. Both Cal and Con still love Beth, but they are forced to recognize her limitations.

Buck Jarrett

See Jordan Jarrett

Cal Jarrett

See Calvin Jarrett

Calvin Jarrett

Calvin Jarrett is the father in the Jarrett family in Ordinary People, and like the rest of the surviving family members, he is also struggling with grief over his son Buck's death. For Cal, this struggle is particularly hard because he felt isolated during his childhood, growing up in an orphanage and only becoming a successful tax attorney through the support of his mentor, Arnold Bacon. Cal's relationship with Bacon ended after he met his wife, Beth, because he could not balance his needs between the two people he loved. Cal experiences a similar situation when he attempts to mediate between Beth and their son, Con. Cal sees himself as a "fence-sitter" and is afraid to recognize that Beth and Con are on opposite sides of the fence. Cal's concern for Con is intensified after Con tries to commit suicide, while Beth sees Con's attempt as a punishment directed at her. The difference in their approaches to Con's emotional problems ultimately leads to Cal and Beth's separation, but this is also caused by Cal's recognition of his own needs, which are not being met by his wife. Cal's desire to have a family of his own after a childhood spent in relative isolation has caused him to ignore his own needs in order to keep peace in the family. After Buck dies and Con is hospitalized, the hidden conflicts in the family become impossible to ignore, and Cal finds that he cannot turn to Beth for comfort, that the family members have become isolated in their grief. Cal's efforts to hold the family together are futile, but the novel ends on a note of reconciliation between Cal and Con. Cal finds his own voice and expresses his feelings for the first time, rather than being oversolicitous toward Con, as he has done throughout the novel.

Con Jarrett

See Conrad Jarrett

Conrad Jarrett

Conrad Jarrett is at the center of Ordinary People, which begins on the day he makes an appointment with his therapist. Con's suicide attempt in the wake of his brother Buck's death after a boating accident lands him in a mental hospital, where he is given electric shock treatment for severe depression. When he is finally released from the hospital, he feels alienated from family, friends, and teachers, as well as from his former self. He resents his obligations to the swim team and to his former friendships, and he feels at peace only when singing with the choir. Con's journey back to health is one of the main themes of OrdinaryPeople. Through his relationships with Dr. Berger and Jeannine Pratt, Conrad begins to express his repressed emotions, to find reconciliation with his parents, and to recover from the survivor's guilt he feels over his brother's death. He learns to accept his failures, his anxieties, and his fears and to act positively in spite of them. He also learns to accept others' limitations. The turning point for Con is when his friend Karen kills herself, unleashing a flood of guilt in him. In his meeting with Dr. Berger, he realizes that he is not responsible for the deaths of either Buck or Karen, and that it is okay to be himself. His relationship with his mother is less easily resolved. When his parents separate, she leaves without saying good-bye. Con feels intense anger and disappointment about this, but with Berger's help, he tries to accept that she loves him as much as she is able to. The Epilogue shows that Con's final lesson is learning that his mother does indeed love him, and that he loves her. His alienation is assuaged, and his relationships with family and friends are renewed by the end of the novel.

Jordan Jarrett

Buck Jarrett's death propels the action in Ordinary People. His brother, Conrad, is unable to deal with the guilt he feels at surviving the boating accident that killed Buck, while his parents' grief over losing their child haunts them throughout the novel. Buck's easygoing manner and carefree charm are contrasted with Con's guilt and feelings of responsibility, and Cal realizes that he should have worried more about Con even though he is not as apt to make trouble as Buck was. Buck's loss affects all the characters in the story and causes them to isolate themselves from each other.

Carole Lazenby

Carole Lazenby is Joe Lazenby's mother and Beth and Cal's friend. When she remarks to Beth that she didn't know Con had quit the swim team, it causes a family fight as Beth confronts Con about his dishonesty. When Cal finds out that Carole is taking a class called "Search for Identity," he realizes that even the people who seem most well-adjusted have problems.

Joe Lazenby

Joe is a friend of Conrad's from the swim team. Because of his grief over his brother's death, a grief which Lazenby shares, Con finds it painful to be around him. Con isolates himself from Lazenby until his friend gives up on him. It is not until the end of the novel that Con is able to renew their friendship and appreciate Lazenby's decency and good spirits.

Mrs. Pratt

Mrs. Pratt is Jeannine's mother. Her divorce from Jeannine's father and her subsequent affair with a friend of Jeannine's father propels Jeannine into depression and drug abuse.

Jeannine Pratt

Jeannine Pratt is Con's first serious girlfriend. At first, they share a relatively casual dating relationship, but they quickly become intimate friends. Jeannine and Con are drawn together by their shared struggles with depression and difficulties with family relationships. When Jeannine begins to cry over her parents' divorce, Con is there to comfort her, and he realizes that he can help others. Con and Jeannine's physical relationship brings them closer together, as Con realizes the truth of Dr. Berger's maxim that the body never lies. When Kevin Stillman makes a remark about Jeannine which cheapens Con's sense of their relationship, Con gets into a fight with him. Con feels protective of Jeannine, and his relationship with her is one of the factors which enables him to assuage his alienation from others. Jeannine is understanding and gentle with Con, as she can relate to what he has gone through.

Mike Pratt

In Ordinary People Mike Pratt is Jeannine's brother, whom Con and Jeannine are forced to baby-sit when Jeannine's mother's lover comes to town. Jeannine's sadness over her parents' divorce emerges as a result of encountering the man again.

Coach Salan

In Ordinary People Coach Salan, who coaches the swim team, causes Con to feel guilt and shame when he asks questions about Con's hospitalization, and he makes Con feel guilty about being in therapy and quitting the swim team.

Kevin Stillman

Kevin Stillman is an insensitive diver on Conrad Jarrett's swim team. His lewd remark about Con's relationship with Jeannine leads Con to get into the first fight of his life.

Themes

Grief and Sorrow

One principal theme of Ordinary People is grief over a loved one's death. As Beth, Cal, and Con struggle to cope with Buck's fatal accident, they turn inward, causing conflicts within the family. It is only after Con comes to terms with his guilt that he is able to grieve for Buck and to realize that he is not responsible. Con's journey toward good mental health is contrasted with Beth, who never manages to deal with her sorrow. Beth is unable to accept what has happened and accuses others of changing rather than understanding that their lives have irrevocably changed. Cal's grief for Buck underlies his growing questions about his identity and his relationships with Beth and Con, as his tightly organized life has been ripped apart by the tragedy. Buck's carefree charm makes his loss that much harder for the family to accept, as his belief that he would live forever and his physical vitality convinced everyone that he would indeed live a long time. It is only when the other family members realize that there is no good explanation for Buck's loss, and no lesson to be learned from his death, that they can begin to mourn.

Atonement and Forgiveness

Closely linked to the theme of grief is the theme of atonement and forgiveness. Con is consumed by survivor's guilt over Buck's death; he feels that he should have been the one to die so that Buck could live. Though Con apologizes repeatedly for the boating accident that killed Buck, he never apologizes for his suicide attempt, and his parents must also struggle to forgive Con. Con realizes that although his mother has not forgiven him, his anger towards her indicates his lack of forgiveness for her and his refusal to accept her limitations. Cal's recognition of Beth's limitations is a milestone for him, but Beth cannot do the same. When she and Cal fight in Texas, she tells Cal that she will never forgive Con for the "bloody, vicious thing" he has done, which she feels was Con's way of punishing her. Beth does not have a capacity to forgive, and this makes a reconciliation with Con impossible. Unlike Beth, Cal only realizes the extent of his anger at Con at the end of the novel, when he remembers that Con has never apologized for his suicide attempt. Cal recognizes that Con's attempt has done something terrible to Beth, and he allows himself to get angry at Con, who reacts positively, happy that his father is no longer being oversolicitous of him. This in turn allows for a resolution of the relationship between father and son.

Alienation and Loneliness

Con's alienation and loneliness following his release from the mental hospital is obvious from the beginning of the story. He is barely able to speak with friends, teachers, or family members, and he feels depressed and anxious. Cal's alienation is less immediately apparent, but it becomes more obvious as the story progresses. Cal feels disconnected from those who share his grief and from those who do not. The person who is most likely to understand his pain, Beth, cannot listen to his feelings or express her own. Cal is struck throughout the story by the ability of language to express feelings and by the contamination that is caused by contact with others. He gets through most social encounters by drinking too much, and his attempts to connect with Beth are rebuffed. Con fares better: his relationships with Dr. Berger and Jeannine help him to open up, to trust others, and to establish communication. Through their understanding, Con becomes much more connected to others and is able to ease his feelings of isolation.

Topics for Further Study

Investigate the effects of divorce on families and speculate on how life will change for the Jarrett family if Beth and Cal' s separation becomes permanent.
Investigate the lives of patients in mental hospitals today and compare with Conrad Jarrett's experiences as a psychiatric patient.
Research the idea of "the generation gap." Discuss its historical origins and compare with the relationships among generations in Ordinary People.

Identity

Linked to issues of alienation and loneliness is the search for identity. Buck's death has forced Cal and Con to examine their own lives. Each feels as if he has lived in the shadow of others—Con in Buck's shadow, Cal in everyone's shadow. Con looked up to Buck and tried to be like him, and he is forced to create his own identity after Buck dies. Berger identifies Con's inability to live up to Buck's legacy as the reason for his suicide attempt, and Con spends much of his time with Berger trying to figure out what kind of person he is. Berger tells Con repeatedly that he knows who he is, but he is trying so hard to hide his feelings that he represses his identity, too. It is only after Con expresses his feelings that he begins to understand who he really is. Cal is also prevented from expressing his feelings; his inability to connect with Beth forces him to discover what his needs are, and thus what his identity is. Each man is forced by circumstance to modify his identity, as the familiar roles they had played in the family vanished when Buck died. Beth's refusal to understand that life has changed for the family leads her to flee instead of transforming herself, suggesting the importance of adapting one's view of one's self in the face of difficult circumstances.

Style

Point of View

One of the concerns in Ordinary People is how the characters perceive their situations, and so point of view is an important part of Guest's writing technique. The point of view shifts between Conrad Jarrett and his father, Calvin, and thus the reader gets two different perspectives on the events in the story. This is most apparent with regard to their impressions of Beth. Both see her as distant, but Cal romanticizes this quality in her, while Con feels anger at her apparent lack of love for him. Con's perceptions of his mother are influenced by his sense that she loved his brother more than she loved him. This sense of being slighted as a child was caused, perhaps, by his identity as the younger, less carefree, more serious and needy child. Cal's romanticization of Beth is influenced by his isolation from his mother as a child; Beth is distant as well, but she is present in a way that Cal's mother was not. As a result, Cal feels grateful to Beth for staying with him. As each man gains perspective on the outside world, they both realize that Beth is more fragile than they had thought, but the reader's impressions of her, and of all the characters and events in the story, continues to be filtered through the points of view of Con and Cal. Their childhood experiences affect the way that they see others and their motivations, and their subjective perceptions often prevent them from seeing events from a more objective standpoint.

Narration

The narrative technique used by Guest to present the points of view of Conrad and Calvin is that of a third-person narrator, who is omniscient only with regard to Cal and Con. Because the narrative focus shifts back and forth between Cal and Con, the narrator can only relate the thoughts of one of them at a time. Thus, during the family fight at Christmas, the reader's perceptions are filtered through Cal's subjectivity; the reader has access to Con's thoughts only through his dialogue and Cal's sense of what is going on. The narrator does not intrude or editorialize in the narrative, but rather functions as an implied narrator, presenting events as Cal and Con see them in a third-person, rather than a first-person ("I"), format.

Plot Structure

The overall structure of Ordinary People consists of thirty-one chapters and an epilogue. With two exceptions, the chapters alternate between the points of view of Calvin and Conrad. The story begins in the fall and extends into the spring, with an epilogue that takes place in the summer, closing the story thematically almost a year after it has begun. The story begins in medias res (that is, in midaction), as Buck's death and Conrad's suicide attempt have already taken place when the story begins.

Tragic Flaw

Though the obviously tragic events of Ordinary People, Buck's death and Con's suicide, have already taken place when the story begins, the real tragedy of the novel lies in the inability of the characters to cope with these uncontrollable events. As Cal reflects on Beth's character, he wonders if she possesses a tragic imperfection, a personality flaw with which she was born. He speculates that she might somehow lack the capacity to forgive. Beth's congenital inability to forgive prevents her from understanding her son, thus causing problems between herself and her husband.

Conflict

Conflict is ever-present in Ordinary People. Because of the differing perspectives of the characters, they remain in conflict throughout the story. The conflict between Con and Beth mostly remains under the surface, only exploding at Christmas, though it has long been evident in their strained and distant relationship with each other. Cal internalizes the conflict between Con and Beth, becoming inwardly conflicted, which in turn leads to his increasing clashes with Beth. Their fights grow in intensity during the course of the novel, as Beth accuses Cal of coddling Con and becoming depressed, while Cal feels that she is cold and unforgiving towards Con. It is only in the Epilogue that Con begins to feel that love can close the rift between himself and his mother, but the different needs and viewpoints of the characters have already changed the family, perhaps forever.

Historical Context

Cultural Revolutions of the 1970s

After the political movements of the 1960s, revolutions in the 1970s took a decidedly personal turn. The concerns of Ordinary People reflect that shift. Decidedly apolitical and small in its scope, Ordinary People is not concerned with grand, sweeping political events, but rather with the shifts that accompany personal development.

The 1970s are commonly stereotyped as the "Me Decade," but this designation does reflect a shift in concerns from the political to the personal. The feminist movement, with its insistence that "the personal is political," influenced this trend as it gained force in the decade. Though the female characters of Ordinary People do not express a feminist consciousness, the influence of 1970s feminism is evident in their lives. Jeannine's mother is divorced, and Beth leaves her husband and son. These actions were just becoming acceptable in society at that time. Carole Lazenby, a housewife, is taking a college course, just as thousands of real housewives were beginning to educate themselves and go to work at that time. The efforts of women to erase the stereotypes of femininity also influenced the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s, in which traditional sexual morals were reexamined. The sexual encounter between Jeannine and Conrad is presented by Guest without any moral judgment.

If Guest is presenting any kind of moral vision, it is one that is heavily influenced by psychological principles. When the characters suffer, they do so because they are repressing their feelings and trying too hard to control themselves. This emphasis on the importance of expressing emotions represents a historical shift. Maintaining control over oneself had been considered much more important in previous decades, especially to the generation represented by Howard and Ellen in the novel. The 1970s saw an explosion of interest in psychology and personal development, with people becoming interested in traditional psychology and in newer forms such as primal scream therapy in which people would release their pent up emotions by screaming. This widespread interest in psychology during the 1970s explains both Guest's preoccupation with it in the novel and the popularity of the novel with readers.

There are three distinct generations in Ordinary People: Howard and Ellen's generation, Beth and Cal's generation, and Con and Jeannine's generation. The notion of a generation gap, a term which was coined in the 1960s, becomes important in Con's relationship with his grandparents. The differences in experiences among the generations separates them from each other; when Con is having difficulties during a stay at their house, he feels that they would not understand him. The 1970s saw a widening of the generation gap, particularly between teenagers and their elders. The quality of adolescent life went down during this period, as drug use, teenage pregnancy, and juvenile delinquency increased, partly as a result of pressures on the family structure. The increased difficulty of life for adolpscents is evident in the character of Jeannine, who gets involved in drugs and shoplifting aftet her parents' divorce.

Thus , though Guest does not deal explicitly with historical, political, or cultural events, they are evident in the choices the characters are able to make, and the experiences they have in the novel. The feminist movement, the interest in psychology, and the generation gap underlie the context of the novel, which was both written and set in the 1970s.

Critical Overview

Critical response to Ordinary People has been mixed. Reviewers have found much to praise and much to criticize in Guest's novel. Many have found her characterization of Conrad Jarrett, the alienated teenager just released from a mental hospital, the most impressive aspect of the novel. Lore Dickstein writes in the New York Times Book Review that "Guest portrays Conrad not only as if she has lived with him on a daily basis—which I sense may be true—but as if she has gotten into his head. The dialogue Conrad has with himself, his psychiatrist,

his friends, his family, all rings true with adolescent anxiety. This is the small hard kernel of brilliance in the novel." Guest has acknowledged her fascination with adolescence; in an interview with former Detroit Free Press book editor Barbara Holliday, Guest says of adolescence, "It's a period of time … where people are very vulnerable and often don't have the experience to draw on as far as human relationships go. At the same time they are making some pretty heavy decisions, not necessarily physical but psychological decisions about how they're going to relate to people and how they're going to shape their lives. It seems to me that if you don't have sane sensible people around you to help, there's great potential for making irrevocable mistakes."

Though Guest has been praised for her characterization of Conrad, some critics have found fault with the way Guest portrayed Beth, the distant, perfectionist mother in the story. Dorothea D. Braginsky writes in Psychology Today that "the mother's point of view, even though she is foremost in the men's lives, is barely articulated. We come to know her only in dialogue with her husband and her son, and through their portrayals of her. For some reason Guest has given her no voice, no platform for expression. We never discover what conflicts, fears and aspirations exist behind her cool, controlled facade." As critics have noted, Guest's narrative style, with its shifts between the perceptions of Calvin and Conrad Jarrett, leaves the reader with an incomplete perception of Beth. A further comment about Guest's style comes from Paddy Kitchen, writing in The Listener: "Judith Guest takes an 'ordinary' … family in which the son, 17-year-old Conrad Jarrett, has just returned home from a mental hospital, eight months after a suicide attempt. Her technique is to reveal information about Conrad and his parents, Calvin and Beth, in a colloquial, present-tense, piecemeal way—a method more often found in thrillers or adventure stories. She uses the technique extremely skillfully, with twist and turns that come like the proverbial unexpected cold buckets of water." Guest's "colloquial" technique has been praised by many critics for its realism. A Kirkus Reviews contributor writes, "where it does succeed, and succeed it does, is in communicating a sense of life both felt and experienced without ever trespassing beyond actuality. Ordinary People is an exceptionally real book."

Though many have praised her realism in portraying other characters, a number of critics have found Guest's portrayal of Dr. Berger, Conrad's psychologist, overly sentimental and unrealistic. They also fault her unwillingness to relinquish control

over the way she tells the story, even though thematically she seems to argue against the desire to have too much control of anything. Several critics have also considered the ending to be much too neat. For example, Michael Wood writes in the New York Review of Books that Conrad "comes to accept his mother's apparent failure to forgive him for slashing his wrists, and his own failure to forgive her for not loving him more. It is true that she has now left his father, because he seemed to be cracking up under the strain of his concern for his son, but Conrad has learned 'that it is love, imperfect and unordered, that keeps them apart, even as it holds them somehow together."' The critic explains: "It's an implausible conclusion, one of those secret happy ends that Hollywood weepies used to do so well: everyone dies, but they do it in the arms of the people they love, all error forgiven. Here the family is broken up, but everyone is on their way to emotional health, because they have understood their weaknesses. But then the whole novel is subtly implausible in this sense, not because one doesn't believe in the characters or in Conrad's recovery, but because problems just pop up, get neatly formulated, and vanish, as if they were performing a psychoanalytic morality play." While Melvin Maddocks praises Guest's realism, he too finds fault with the easy resolution of the novel: "the Furies in [Guest's] suburb are real, even if she seems to banish them with a spray of Airwick."

Despite the mixed critical reaction to Ordinary People, reviewers have found much to admire in the novel, and they have said that Second Heaven and Errands, two of Guest's succeeding books, prove that the success of Ordinary People was not a fluke. Moreover, Ordinary People was a resounding popular success, and critics have agreed that it is an excellent piece of popular fiction. It continues to be read and taught at both the high school and college level.

Criticism

Jean Dougherty

In the following essay, Dougherty, a doctoral candidate at Tufts University, explores how Guest uses perspective—both in terms of the narration and characterization—to address several themes in her novel.

In both the style and the content of Ordinary People, Judith Guest is concerned with issues of perspective. Perspective refers here to both point of view and the capacity to view things as they truly are. Throughout the story, these two definitions of perspective are in conflict, and the characters are struggling to discover their own points of view as well as seeing the outside world, and their relation to it, more clearly.

The style of Ordinary People, appropriately enough, is one in which perspectives shift. We are given the perspectives of Conrad Jarrett, a troubled adolescent, and Calvin Jarrett, his father, in more-or-less alternating chapters. Guest uses a third-person narrator, rather than a character in the story, to relate both Con and Cal's thoughts and actions. The narrator never presents us with the thoughts of Beth Jarrett, the third major character in the story, and so the reader sees her only through the different perspectives of Cal, who doesn't know her but romanticizes her mystery and beauty, and Con, who is as private as his mother but feels both anger and longing for her. As some critics have noted, Beth's motivations remain shadowy to the reader, and so the reader is never sure what she really feels or thinks, except through the perceptions of her husband and her son, or through Beth's dialogue in the story.

Because the focus of the novel shifts back and forth between Con and Cal, it becomes clear that each man's difficulties with gaining a sense of identity are different. Con is struggling throughout to see things in their true relations rather than simply from his own point of view, and Cal is struggling to understand what his own point of view is. Though each man is trying to come to terms with the grief and guilt that he feels over Buck Jarrett's death and Con's subsequent suicide attempt, as well as trying to establish a positive identity, these private struggles are inevitably complicated by their relationships with others, particularly with Beth. Thus both Con and Cal are trying to balance their own needs with those of other people.

Con's initial perspective, then, is one of extreme isolation. He has just been released from a mental hospital, and the day on which the story opens is a "Target Day" in his recovery: he is to meet with an outpatient psychiatrist for the first time. Con's relationship with Dr. Berger is one in which he is struggles to learn how to safely express his feeling and to gain a sense of perspective by understanding the perspectives of others and their relationship to him. The following passage illustrates how Berger tries to get Con to see things from a different, or broader, perspective by getting him to see the motivations of others. The scene occurs after Con has had a fight with Beth, then realized in therapy the extent of his anger, and his lack of forgiveness for her inability to take care of him.

Reclining on an elbow on the floor, Berger doodles on a scratch pad with his silver pen. Conrad sits beside him, his back against the wall, knees up, holding a cup of coffee in his hands. "Jesus, am I tired," he says.
"Yeah, well, that's a helluva big secret you've been keeping on yourself," Berger says.
"So what do I do now?"
"Well, you've done it, haven't you? Revelation. She's not perfect. Recognize her limitations."
"You mean, like she can't love me."
"Like she can't love you enough. Like she loves you as much as she's able. Perspective, kiddo, remember? Maybe she's afraid, maybe it's hard for her to give love."

Here Con is beginning to be able to see other people as they really are, rather seeing them only from his point of view. A similar scene of recognition occurs when Con suddenly realizes that the reason his mother is quiet in airports and other public places is because she is afraid of strangers; he is beginning to understand that her actions originate from her emotions, that she, like him, has an internal life that drives her external behavior.

Con's difficulty with perspective is most apparent in the guilt he feels over his brother's death. He cannot see Buck's drowning from Buck's perspective, only from his own. It is only when his friend Karen kills herself that he is able to come to terms with Buck's death and the fact that Buck's inability to hold on and wait for help to arrive was not Con's fault. When, in Chapter Seven, Con met with Karen, he was unable to see things from her perspective, or understand that she, too, was suffering from depression or anxiety, which she tried to hide. Instead, he felt ashamed when she told him she had stopped seeing a counselor, because only she could help herself and solve her problems. Through his relationship with his counselor, Con is able to find a sense of perspective; Karen, on the other hand, later commits suicide. When she dies, Con is stricken with guilt and grief, which brings back his memories and feelings about his brother's death. It is only after Berger makes him see that Buck drowned because of his own physical or mental limitations and not because it was Con's fault, that Con can begin to heal.

If Con's quest throughout the novel is to find a clearer sense of the true relations of things, to recognize the perspectives of others, Cal's quest is the opposite: he is trying to locate his own point of view, his own perspective. When he goes to talk to Dr. Berger, he describes himself as a fence sitter, and he makes a tentative realization that Con and Beth are on opposite sides of the fence on which he sees himself sitting; after saying this, he immediately takes it back because he is afraid to acknowledge the conflict between Beth and Con. Later, after his visit with Berger stirs up old memories, Cal remembers another situation in which he felt conflicted: the time when he was forced to choose between his mentor and Beth.

What Do I Read Next?

Second Heaven, Judith Guest's second novel, was published in 1982 and deals with some of the same themes as Ordinary People. At the heart of the book is a troubled teenager who is struggling to escape his abusive father with the help of his lawyer and a recently divorced woman who takes him in.
Errands, Judith Guest's 1997 novel, continues her themes of suburbanites struggling to connect and heal in a story dealing with the death of a father and husband.
Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen's 1993 memoir, discusses the author's hospitalization for depression at age eighteen and her transition from mental patient to productive adult.
A Separate Peace (1959), by John Knowles, sensitively sketches the friendship of two adolescent boys (one of whom dies in an accident) at a prep school in New England during World War II.
A Map of the World (1994), by Jane Hamilton, traces the effect of a child's death on two families and an entire community.
The Autobiography of My Mother is Jamaica Kincaid's 1995 novel of an adult woman trying to understand and love her mother long after she has died, and to deal with the disappointment she felt in her relationship with her mother.

Throughout the novel, Cal attempts to mediate between Con and Beth, and his own point of view is lost. When he and Beth go to Dallas, and they fight bitterly, Cal repeats to her something that Con has also said to her. When she tells him not to quote Con, he realizes that he is not quoting Con, that he is quoting himself, that he too has been angry with Beth for her inability to communicate her emotions with him. He realizes that he has needed her to get through his own grief, and she has not been there for him, because she is unwilling to come to terms with Buck's death. Her addiction to her own sense of privacy makes it impossible for them to relate as a couple; she remains a stranger to him. Beth herself recognizes that she is only able to see things from her own point of view. She finally tells Cal later how she feels about Con's suicide attempt:

"Don't you understand what he was saying?" she asks. "He was saying 'Look! Look what you made me do!"'
"Why?" he asks. "Why was he saying that?"
"I don't know! I wish I knew!" She sobs, and then her voice is calm, more subdued, and she speaks slowly. "I just know how people try to manipulate other people."
"Oh God, Beth, I don't believe that! I don't believe that he went all that way to try to manipulate us! What happened—what he did—he did it to himself! Can't you see anything except in terms of how it affects you?"
"No! Neither can you! Neither does anybody else! Only, maybe I'm more honest than the rest of you, maybe I'm more willing to recognize that I do it."

Here, Beth can recognize that she is trapped in her own point of view, but she cannot recognize Con's point of view or what has motivated him other than a desire to hurt her. Con has tried to get a better sense of other perspectives through his relationships with others, but Beth cannot do this. As for Cal, he can only find his own perspective when he stops mediating between the perspectives of Con and Beth, and allows himself to speak to them from his own perspective. He is able to tell Beth that he is angry with her for not worrying enough about Conrad and to tell Con that neither he nor Con is an authority on Beth's thoughts, feelings, or actions. Because Cal is able to gain a sense of his own identity, he is able to communicate with Con in a more honest way, and Con is able to relate to Cal better because he is not so trapped in his own perspective. In the epilogue, Con even makes a gesture toward forgiving and accepting Beth's limitations, knowing that there is love between them even if it is only as much as they are both capable of expressing.

With its emphasis on relationships, personal identity, and the ways in which emotions and experience shape our perceptions, Ordinary People is clearly a psychological novel. Guest uses the psychological principles of emotional expression, honest communication, identity formation and professional counseling in order to drive the development of the characters, which in turn provides a framework for the plot, as the characters cope with memories and current crises. The narrator's access into the thoughts and feelings of two of the characters means that much of the plot is internal, occurring within the characters' minds. Through her use of psychological principles as the characters struggle with them, Guest provides a kind of blueprint to readers for relating, grieving, and healing. Through Guest's use of shifting perspectives, and the conflict between self and others implicit in the double meaning of "perspective," the author shows her readers how hard these processes can be, even though her conclusion is hopeful.

Source: Jean Dougherty, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 1997.

Ron Neuhaus

In the following excerpt, Neuhaus gives an overview of the censorship challenges presented against Ordinary People, and offers responses to the objections commonly raised.

[When] a book like Ordinary People creates a fuss [because of censorship attempts], we need to make a case for it, to show that it will enrich its readers and enhance the educational environment instead of detracting from it. Can such a case be made? Of course, and a strong one. Once made, will it prevail? Well—it might or it might not. One would like to assume that the right to discretionary access carries with it the responsibility to make judgments based on a reasonably thorough consideration of a book's merits, not simply whimsy or bias. However, no one seems to relish being reminded of responsibilities, although humanists do what they can to restore that equilibrium between right and responsibility. The efforts may be fruitless, but we might remember the story of a sage who saved a scorpion from drowning in a stream. The scorpion instinctively stung the hand that had helped it and scurried back into the stream. The sage saved him again and again, and was stung each time for his efforts. A passerby, his curiosity piqued, asked the sage why he persisted in saving the scorpion. Didn't he realize the insect would keep stinging him? Replied the sage, "The scorpion stings because it is his nature." "But then why do you help him?" asked the observer. "I help him because that is my nature," answered the sage.

First, instead of praising this book, let's look at the worst in it. Let's lean on it hard and inventory its controversial points in a ruthless biased summary.

Ordinary People, Judith Guest. The trauma as a suicidal teenager struggles for normalcy, while his parents move toward divorce. Uses obscene language, sexual scenes, nudity and violence. Includes grim representations of adolescent depression, suicide and psychosis. Contains unresolved pessimism and disillusionment.

Obviously this book would serve no purpose in the primary classrooms. But where do we go from here? What would particular groups object to? A short taxonomy of objectors may outline the problems the book presents. The five groups here identified do not encompass all objections. They represent the most salient:

Fetishists

Monkey Sees

Ostriches

Dominoes

Catchers-of-the-Raw

The first three groups tend to be the most whimsical and adamant: they need to be outvoted. The last two groups are receptive to argument and will enter into dialogue. But the substantial rationale behind their convictions makes them formidable discussants.

First of all, the Fetishists, the "boogerhunters." They will object categorically to one thing or another and let that objection harpoon the whole book. They will not compromise; all they need to know is that the word, situation, action, or relationship occurs, and the book is out—unless the objectionable parts are excised. From a censorship perspective, they're easily pleased: omit this word or that scene, bowdlerize the script, and all is well.

Ordinary People, it must be admitted, does provide grist for the fetishists. It does use a few four-letter words. Although it lacks the blase tourde-force a la Henry Miller, it does not have the antiseptic diction of a Tom Swift novel. Nor would it suffer greatly if the objectionable language were removed. The question is, why do so? What harm could be done? The language would be titillating only to a grade school child delighted to see the forbidden words in print. Older readers would respond to the language in terms of its intention: to highlight the emotional state of the person using them. A similar rationale could be made for the scenes, but fetishists don't respond to rationales, so the effort is purely for the eavesdropping allies on both sides, the principle involved, and to evoke a sense of righteousness that humanists delight in as much as Fetishists.

Next, the Monkey Sees. These assume that children will imitate selectively what they read and invariably model undesirable over virtuous behavior. There may be a germ of truth here. Huck Finn's penchant for corncob pipes inspired my own experience with smoking. But Ordinary People offers very little to imitate. Suicide? 24-hour-a-day depression? Guest presents these with no glamour, no allure, no factor of temptation. The harshness with which she presents her study argues for the book as a warning against the moods it explores.

The Ostriches. An endangered species who exclude certain moods and themes from any kind of consideration. These might well react to the depression and stress throughout the book by wishing their portrayal to disappear. This helps them ignore what they do not want to admit exists. They haven't experienced similar situations, nor do they see any point in contemplating them. To their extent of receptivity, this group can be answered in the same way as the next.

In these next two groups, the nature of the objections shifts. The arguments are more articulated and broader in perspective. The logic is often sound, but the assumptions create the controversy.

The Dominoes. They will admit all the merits of the book, they have no objection to it, and may even agree that it should be in the library or school. However, they fear tie precedent the presence of the book will establish. They assume, and with some cause, that when a door opens for one, it's difficult to close it fqr others. The difficulty in responding to this is that a historical continuum exists from Ulysses to Hustler, from Lolita to child pornography. Here is where the negotiation and discussion play their strongest role. Apologists for a given book should make clear that acceptance of one book does not guarantee admission of another. A separate rationale must be put forward on the merits of each documnent; we need to be ready with an apologia when the need arises.

Last of all, the Catchers-of-the-Raw, or Holden Caulfields. These people understand and acknowledge the reality of the sensitive material portrayed in a given work but wish to guard their children from such matters as depressing experiences and sordid reality. It's a losing battle, of course, but theirs is a delaying action, not a decisive one. Yet given the inevitability of actual encounters with the sharp edges of experience, a work like Ordinary People can serve as a buffer that informs and actually protects—a quality of threshold literature, which prepares the sensibility through imagination for what it will soon encounter in experience.

And granted that the book does deal with depression and the more visceral moments in life, it redeems itself from being a depressing book in several ways. It makes severe depression less intimidating by examining it and revealing it as a normal reaction to abnormally stressful situations. There is even a triumph over depression, an affirmation of the reservoir of human strength. During an unexpected acceleration of his despondency, Conrad makes contact with this sense of affirmation after his analyst clarifies emotional impotence with this observation.

Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.

Simple, straightforward advice—enough to turn the tide in Conrad's favor.

In this book people survive, endure, and mature—despite the death of the elder son, the attempted suicide of Conrad, the atrophy of Calvin and Beth's marriage. Its theme conveys the positive implication that we can survive problems, even though we may not be able to solve them. There is even a qualified "happy" ending in this endurance, an ending which ironically constitutes the major fault of the novel in that the depression gets resolved too easily. The guilt that has prompted Conrad's suicide attempt and plagued him through the novel gets neutralized in that fairly easy scene with the analyst. The answer is a bit too pat, and although the alchemical transformation of Conrad's attitude doesn't quite approach Dumbo's realization that he can fly without the feather, it's from the same school of thought—one the "catchers" always commend.

It's always gratifying to respond to objectors such as those above. There is the sense of battle for a virtuous cause against a dangerous and substantial opposition. But one cannot rely on the defensive strategy of an apologia to make the best case: better to affirm the strong points first. And Ordinary People has plenty, but one stands out as particularly relevant.

Some works function as thresholds. They can lead a reader into an awareness and understanding of wider dimension of the human spirit, either by expressing a situation shared by the reader or by allowing insight into the kaleidoscopic variations of the human condition. There has been little threshold literature for young adults, even though the increasing stress and diversity of living almost demands it. We can see documentaries on such problems as teenage alcoholism and pregnancy and gain only surface knowledge of the problem. Where technology provides us with a window to the externals of the world, art must keep pace by its investigation of the inner domain. Books such as the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew novels illustrate what threshold literature is not—adventures of young adults, yet with no significant attention to how sensibilities change or mature with experience. Such stories could easily feature talking horses or bipedal Great Danes; cartoons can easily be made of them.

On the other hand, books such as those contributed by Judy Blume address the inner world, the world of emotions instead of events. Her work illustrates what threshold literature can do: create a controlled situation where the readers can encounter in fiction what they may soon experience in real situations, either as observers or participants.

Ordinary People also belongs in this category. It divides its focus between the subjective experiences of the son, Conrad, and the father, Calvin, and initiates the reader into the complementary perspectives of adolescence and maturity. Both perspectives give insight into the deserts that open up between people when they most need contact.

Teachers could well focus on Conrad as an entry-level persona. Although we would hope no reader shares his particular situation, his emotions are typical ones with which a reader could easily identify, and the motifs of his encounters are those that begin intruding into the hyperborean climate of most adolescent minds. We see the drawbacks to emotional independence—how it can lead to isolation and separation from the very forces that can heal its injuries. We also see how his awakened sense of history grows from guilt over the past to confidence in the future. The problems and tangles of evolving maturity receive insightful attention here, as do several others quite recognizable to the teenage reader: peer-pressure, school harassment, the struggle with emotions that emerge with ferocious intensity.

Although Conrad's material may be initially appealing to younger readers, Calvin's perspective may prove most enlightening. It allows them to experience the vulnerability of the adult mind, to enter a world they usually know only through a taciturn exterior. The veil of parental inaccessibility is lifted, and they can observe a correlation between the frustration and anxiety they experience and that which occurs in matured minds. While Conrad has his nest of hooks to sort out, Calvin has a similar batch. Their emotional odysseys follow roughly parallel courses. Conrad is involved with sports; Cal has his career.

Both feel the powerful influence of the past on present events.

Conrad must come to terms with the death of his brother; Calvin must deal with the breakup of his marriage. Calvin shows the adult mind charted: the relationship with a youth that Conrad has yet to encounter, the constant worry about family and career, the tragic sense of restriction in reaching out toward loved ones. The portrayal of these complementary sensibilities could well yield compassion for the younger, sympathy for the older.

The book abounds with similar entrances, and several general themes come to mind: that ordinary people often find themselves in unusually taxing situations which distort and amplify their emotions; that people in such struggles must not be seen as deviant types but representative types reacting to abnormal situations; that there is a certain haphazard nature in the universe of the human spirit, matters beyond the pat rational assumptions of post-Freudian analysis.

This all may be quite commendable stuff, but what about the questionable material exposed in the synopsis? At the risk of making an apologia for the book too simple, let me say that books of a certain style contain a built-in safety factor: they turn away any reader not mature enough to handle them. Ordinary People has this quality. There is nothing in it to gratify the thrill seeker. For one thing, the heavy emphasis on introspection and interior monologue generates a fairly static physical environment in order to highlight emotional dialectics. Conversation and reflection slow things down more. Most of the attention falls on the "housekeeping" aspects of life: the stress of school on Conrad, the complications of a career for Calvin.

And all of the episodes of sex and violence referred to in my synopsis are presented in a fairly discursive style, with little graphic focus. In fact, for a sexual scene between Calvin and Beth, the author ushers in language so oblique it could double as vocabulary suitable to describe a checkers match. And when Conrad and Jeannine have an intimate scene (very near the end of the book), the dialogue receives the emphasis. The entire scene serves to confirm the emerging optimism in Conrad and to strengthen him even after the news of a friend's suicide. So, if someone is looking for a book to appeal to or encourage prurient interest, Ordinary People holds only disappointment.

Each questionable scene has a similar explanation, and there are few such scenes, at that. In fact, if we cut out all the particular passages dealing with "sensitive" areas, they would lay out to a little over one of the book's 263 pages. So yes, the situations are there, but this book derives from a different genus than The Valley of the Dolls.

However, this statistical approach is not quite fair to those who would object to elements of theme and mood. The book does explore some raw wounds in the human psyche, and some people may object to such a focus in reading material even for a secondary school audience. But objections of this sort often do a great injustice to the potential literature offers. The unacknowledged premise in such a criticism is that literature functions essentially as entertainment or escapism—emotionally safe stuff that can aid reading skills. This ignores literature's potential to create a threshold by which the reader can enter a wider expanse of the human topography and develop a more mature perspective through that vision.

Threshold books reveal one of good literature's finest characteristics. Some such books even attain the status of "classic." But strangely enough, their very utility as tools of insight subjects them to attack, such as has happened with Huckleberry Finn and The Scarlet Letter. On the other hand, some books are never challenged: those that are infused with an irrelevance to a reader's personal situation and relationships. Many of the popular "classics" provide examples of this. They employ baroque, superbowl passions that engage us as awestruck observers, not emotionally involved participants. They're safe. Parents don't get into bitter debate with their children over the issues in Crime and Punishment or Moby Dick. Nor can anyone acquire credible insight into children's ingratitude from King Lear. We can appreciate occasional doses of inflated sentiments, however, because such experiences transport us away from the bothersome concerns of our lives. But we also need art that enters us as we are, that presents us with parameters of feeling we might actually have, with situations that we see as possible around us. As "ordinary people" we need words that can reveal insight into how we are, and where we are.Ordinary People assays out to do that; it lacks the lofty level of intellectual melodrama possessed by the "safe" book, classic or otherwise, and that's the quality that justifies making it accessible to any heart it speaks to.

Source: Ron Neuhaus, "Threshold Literature: A Discussion of Ordinary People," in Censored Books: Critical Viewpoints, Nicholas J. Karolides, Lee Burress, John M. Kean, eds., The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1993, pp. 414–23.

Michael Wood

In the following excerpt, Wood reviews Guest's Ordinary People.

[Text Not Available]

Source: Michael Wood, "Crying for Attention," in The New York Review of Books, June 10, 1976, p. 8.

Sources

Dorothy Braginsky, review in Psychology Today, August, 1976.

Lore Dickstein, review of Ordinary People, in New York Times Book Review, July 18, 1976.

Barbara Holliday, in an interview with Judith Guest, in Detroit Free Press, October 7, 1982.

Paddy Kitchen, "Sentimental Americans," in Listener, Vol. 97, No. 2494, February 3, 1977, p. 158.

Review of Ordinary People, in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. XLIV, No. 5, March 1, 1976, p. 271.

Michael Wood, "Crying for Attention, in New York Review of Books, June 10, 1976, p. 8.

For Further Study

Saul L. Brown, "Adolescents and Family Systems," in Youth Suicide, edited by Michael L. Peck, Norman L. Farberow, and Robert E. Litman, Springer Publishing Co., 1985, pp. 71-79.

Brown discusses family systems and their relationship to the individual dynamics that may lead adolescents to commit suicide.

Fady Hajal, "Family Mythology: Ordinary People," in Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. XI, No. 1, 1983, pp. 3-8.

Hajal applies the concept of Family Mythology to Robert Redford's award-winning film adaptation of Guest's novel.

Caroline Hunt, "Dead Athletes and Other Martyrs," in Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter 1991-1992, pp. 241-45.

An article placing Ordinary People in the context of adolescent literature about death and dying.

Melvin Maddocks, "Suburban Furies," in Time, Vol. 108, No. 3, July 19, 1976, pp. 68, 70.

Maddox describes Ordinary People as a "good but thoroughly conventional novel."

Don O'Briant, "Guest Finds Noble Story in Her Family Tree," in Atlanta Constitution, Feb. 12, 1997, section D, p. 81.

An article about the autobiographical origins of Guest's Errands.

Janet G. Stroud, "Characterization of the Emotionally Disturbed in Current Adolescent Fiction," in Top of the News, Vol. 37, No. 3, Spring, 1981, pp. 290-95.

An article which favorably compares Ordinary People to other books containing emotionally disturbed characters.

Colleen Kelly Warren, "A Novel Worth the Long Wait," in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 19, 1997, Section D, p. 52.

A review praising Errands as worth the wait.

Jonathan Yardley, "Heaven & Earth: Judith Guest's Encore to 'Ordinary People,"' in Washington Post Book World, September 22, 1982, pp. Bl, B15.

A review of Second Heaven which praises it as a worthy successor to Ordinary People.

Novels for Students