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A native of Detroit, Michigan, Judith Guest graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in education. After teaching school for a few years, she worked briefly for a newspaper. Although she never had any formal training in writing, she gained fame in 1976 when her book Ordinary People became a best seller. Ordinary People was the first unsolicited manuscript which Viking Press accepted in twenty-seven years. Critics praised Guest's realistic portrayal of Conrad, but thought her portrayal of the parents was less impressive. The book was adapted into an award-winning film (Braginsky 171).
Like Ordinary People Guest's second book, Second Heaven, was set in middle-class suburbia. Likewise, both books portrayed a troubled adolescent male as the central figure. In Second Heaven, Cat and Mike, both divorced, offer sixteen-year old Gale, the emotional and legal help he needed to escape an abusive father. The book was a success and proved that Ordinary People was not a fluke (Larsen 173).
Ten years later, in 1997, Guest finished her third book call Errands. While her other two books were purely fiction, this book was inspired by the marriage of her paternal grandparents. Since she used this bit of personal family history, she felt an obligation to tell the story correctly. Her grandfather died when he was very young, and her grandmother was suddenly on her own with five children.
As a result, the book took her ten years to finish. The book has received widespread praise. Guest lives in Edina, Minnesota with her husband, but still maintains a home in Michigan where all of her books were set (Basbanes 23). Ordinary People by Judith Guest is the story of a dysfunctional family. The main characters are seventeen year-old Conrad, and his upper middle-class parents, Beth and Calvin Jarrett. Conrad is a seventeen year old boy, about six feet tall with light brown hair and around twenty five pounds underweight from his eight months in a mental hospital for slashing his wrist.
He tries to return to a normal life at home and at school, but it seems to be too much for him at first. Conrad eventually meets with a psychiatrist, Dr. Berger, who helps him to express his feelings. According to Dr. Berger, it's Conrad's nature to take life very seriously and to be too hard on himself.
Conrad admits that when he lets himself express his feelings, he feels lousy. The psychiatrist responds that someone feels that way when they bury things inside and don't express them. There are two problems that no one will admit in his family. One problem is the accidental drowning of Conrad's older brother, Buck and the other problem is Conrad's attempted suicide. Conrad feels responsible for his brother Jordan dying even though it wasn't his fault.
A storm came up while they were sailing and overturned the boat. Both brothers hang on for hours waiting for help, but Jordan falls asleep and drowns. His memory of his brother is of someone who is everything you could be academically and athletically. It is ironic then, that Jordan is the one who couldn't hang on until help came and drowns. Although the doctor has told his parents not to expect him to be the same boy as before, it seems his parents still expect him to be. His father leans over backward to analyze everything he says and does, fearing he will have a breakdown again.
His mother, however, is cold and distant, secretly feeling that he attempted suicide to punish her. Each of them is suffering emotionally from the accidental death of Conrad's older brother Jordan, otherwise known as Buck. All this combines to create a constant sense of tension when the three of them are together. Conrad solves his emotional problems by setting goals for himself and by getting his motives straight. Dr.
Berger advises him to figure out what makes him happy and to set his priorities according to these goals. First, he quits the swim team (without telling his parents) because he needs more time to catch up on the courses he missed. Also, there are too many memories of Buck with the team that haunt him. In addition, he begins to exercise, play the guitar, and regain some of the weight he has lost.
Finally, he develops a friendship with a girl named Jennifer that turns into love. At this point, he feels hope in his mind and his body for the future. He even renews a friendship with an old friend from the swim team named Lazenby. While his life seems to be coming together again, his parents marriage is falling apart. They still love each other, but his mother runs off on a trip to avoid facing the changes in their lives.
Beth is like a child who wants things to be they way they were before Buck died. She thinks that Conrad's attempted suicide was meant to hurt her and is furious that he embarrassed her by quitting the swim team without telling them. His father actually seems more concerned about Conrad than appearances. The book ends with Conrad's father selling the house that is too full of memories and costly with college coming. Both of them are still hopeful that his mother will return to them from her trip because the love between them all is really still there. "As the title of 'Ordinary People' clearly suggests, the book involved the experiences and relationships of purportedly 'normal' individuals faced with uncommon familial pressures, and the harm that life-long repression can do to the human spirit" (Basbanes 23). The story that unfolds is of Conrad and his parents' efforts to become ordinary people again after the tragedy of his brother's drowning and Conrad's attempted suicide.
The Jarrett's' attempts to communicate and their reactions to grief, anger, guilt, and hope are detailed in the book (Braginsky 173). Through interaction with Dr. Berger, Conrad learns the idea that people shouldn't expect themselves to be perfect and always do what is the socially acceptable thing. Conrad's upbringing, especially by his mother, has taught him to try to be and do all the right things. Grades, sports, keeping your emotions in even at your brother's funeral, whatever it takes to live up to the right image. The author has Berger help Conrad realize that problems have real solutions, but he can't hide his feelings.
If he is unhappy doing swim team then he should quit and spend his time on what is important to him. Berger helps Conrad realize that he shouldn't be afraid to feel because sometimes a person has to feel lousy before feeling good (Stroud 290 - 295). "Ms. Guest deals with love and hate, forgiveness and the lack of it, madness and death -- the themes appropriate to Greek tragedy. But she must deal with them in the terms of the well-made suburban novel" (Maddocks 173). Guest examines the anatomy of depression in the Jacket family surrounding the accidental drowning of their oldest son, Buck. She explores how Conrad, the brother that survives, and his parents, Beth and Cal, each handle their depression.
How each of them reacts to their grief and each other is the central theme of the book. His mother's emotional distance from him is perceived by him as hate by him because he survived the accident and he attempted suicide. Guest spends the most time exploring Conrad's reaction to the grief. Through Conrad, Guest portrays the theme that bad things happen can happen and be no one's fault. Conrad comes to realize that and gets rid of his guilt over his brother's death. He is ready to live life again.
The story is told through Conrad and his father's eyes. The mother's point of view is hardly told. The reader never learns what conflicts, fears and desires exist behind her cool, controlled exterior (Braginsky 173). In the book, panic equals the rattle of the father's ice cube in one-too-many martinis. Despair equals the hundred small ways a Christmas Day falls apart, even when the keys to a new Le Mans for Conrad lie under the tree. Loneliness is spelled out in the instructions on a frozen TV dinner (Maddocks 173). "Thus the nearest to a savior the novel boasts is a flip-hip psychiatrist.
His message to Conrad comes perilously close to the slogan of the ' 60 's: LET IT ALL HANG OUT" (Maddocks 173). Dr. Berger, the psychiatrist, is portrayed as the one person that Conrad learns to open up to about his feelings. Conrad feels anger with his brother that he did not hang on and survive.
He is torn between the feeling that he abandoned his brother or his brother abandoned him. Survivors of tragedies often feel guilty. Some, like Conrad, feel guilty that they behaved selfishly by hanging on even after his brother let go. Conrad turns his anger on himself with the attempted suicide and with guilt over his brother's death. Dr. Berger he...
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Research essay sample on Comparison Of Ordinary People To Errands By Guest
