62 pages • 2 hours read
Judith GuestA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
One of the prevailing themes of Ordinary People is the danger and impossibility of perfectionism. All three members of the Jarrett family do everything they can to maintain the image of the ideal family, which is increasingly difficult to do in the wake of multiple tragedies. Especially for Conrad, the pursuit of perfection ends up being detrimental, as he views anything short of perfection as a complete and utter failure. They all live under the illusion that the standards they set for themselves are achievable, only to inevitably let each other and themselves down.
As the main character, this theme is most evident in Conrad, and his character arc takes him furthest from this flawless ideal. Conrad does his best to be the perfect son, but his constant striving and self-punishment slowly destroy him, culminating in his suicide attempt. While the narrative dances around the reasons for his attempt, it is revealed in the climax that Conrad was trying to embody Buck—the perfect son—and succumbed to the pressure of this impossible task. His visits with Dr. Berger help him realize that control is often an illusion, and it’s healthier to take things as they come and accept that perfection is impossible. Conrad still strives to be his best, but he comes to interact with the world with more realistic expectations. As he lets go of his pursuit of perfection, he stops aspiring to be Buck and finds his own interests and strengths. Above all, he stops pretending to be perfectly happy all the time and starts feeling his real emotions, which also allows him to open up to his family, friends, and girlfriend.
Cal, who wants nothing more than to be a perfect father, feels that he missed the signs that something was wrong with Conrad. In his quest to correct his “failures” as a father, he becomes worried nearly to the point of obsession. What starts as concern from a place of love soon becomes his identity, and he roots his sense of self in feeling needed as a father. When Conrad starts to gain independence and grow up during the year, Cal feels that he has lost himself along the way. He is also unable to connect with Beth because her desire for a perfect family precludes discussing difficult emotions. He becomes untethered and is only able to reconstruct his sense of self once he lets go of perfection and finds his true core values: stability, order, and caring for his loved ones.
As his marriage deteriorates, Cal begins to notice the artificial nature of perfectionism and how it lacks true human feeling. Guest makes this comparison through Cal’s observations about the beautiful destinations to which he and Beth escape. Cal thinks that “[t]oo many places he has been seem tainted with that anxious atmosphere of unreality; a one-sidedness of conception. Too perfect to be believed. Aspen. Indian-wood. Florida. Exotic and comfortless, like movie sets” (107). Beth is happy to retreat away from reality and toward beautiful adventures away from home, and her pursuit of perfection becomes increasingly strained throughout the novel. Where Cal and Conrad grow more confident as they open up, Beth clings more fervently to a calm, stable family image, and she lashes out when cracks appear in the façade. This is exemplified in Beth refusing to talk to Conrad about his feelings but punishing him for quitting the swim team and embarrassing her. Ultimately, Beth is unable to give up her desire for perfection, and this pursuit claims its final victim in their marriage.
Conrad, Cal, and Beth all experienced the same trauma over the last two years, but they all grieve differently. These differences and the family’s lack of communication end up pulling the family apart during their time of grief instead of uniting them. Guest examines various forms of grief through each of these characters, neither vilifying nor glorifying any of them but exposing each character as a flawed human being.
Beth’s way of grieving is escaping her feelings, whether through travel or pretending they don’t exist. While Cal needs to outwardly process and communicate his feelings to others, Beth is more internal and private about her grief. She is frustrated with what she sees as Cal coddling Conrad, but when Cal turns his attention away toward her, she snaps at him: “That’s not it!’ she said. ‘If we could all just relax a little! If things could just be normal again. I don’t want you to start asking me the questions, I want you just to stop!” (47). She feels smothered by the talk and needs to get away from it all. This pattern can be seen earlier when she doesn’t visit Conrad during his hospital stay. Instead, she travels to Spain and Portugal while her son is being treated. As Audrey tells Cal, “emotion is her enemy” (203), and she doesn’t respond well when things don’t go according to plan. In the end, she can’t bring herself to stay, and she takes the ultimate path of avoidance: She leaves her family indefinitely to travel abroad. While Beth’s actions often seem cold, the Epilogue indicates that Beth’s starting to process her feelings and open back up to her son. With this, Guest cautions against judging too harshly, as people process grief on different timelines.
Cal’s grieving process is very different than Beth’s. He externalizes his grief and craves communication between himself and his family. He wants them to lean on each other, thinking to himself, “We are a family, aren’t we? And a family turns inward toward itself in grief, it does not go in separate directions pulling itself apart” (127). His needs can’t be met by his family members, at least at first. Beth and Conrad are both private about their emotions and aren’t willing to let Cal in on what they are feeling. This leaves Cal desperate for someone to grieve alongside. He is much more willing to be open with his friends and family about Conrad’s stay at the hospital and his subsequent therapy. With Dr. Berger’s help, Cal realizes that grief cannot be fixed just by caring for others, and he must turn some attention inward and heal his own wounds. Once he does so, he is able to connect with his son, and they begin to move forward together.
Conrad has the most dynamic grieving process, transitioning from closed-off and private to a more open person. Like Beth, he initially keeps his feelings to himself instead of sharing them with his loved ones. However, this leads to isolation as he forces himself to reckon not only with his grief but his guilt over not being perfect. He describes himself as “Conrad Jarrett, outcast, quitter, fuck-up, stands outside the circle of safety, separated from everyone by this aching void of loneliness” (116). His loneliness makes his problems worse; there is no one to quiet his thoughts when he isn’t willing to share them with anyone. Even his best friend, Lazenby, begs him to open up. Lazenby reminds him that Buck was his friend, too, and he is also grieving. Conrad has opened up to Dr. Berger by this point, but his grief is nonlinear, and he is frustrated by the idea that he should share his feelings with everyone. He reflects:
What he said is true. The three of them were always together, why does he think of it only as his grief? Because damn it it is. His room no longer shared, his heart torn and slammed against the solid wall of it, this hell of indifference. It is. And there is no way to change it. That is the hell (182).
All of the people in Conrad’s life are reaching out to him, but only Dr. Berger can help him see that at his core, Conrad is punishing himself for Buck’s death. He feels that it has to be somebody’s fault, or else it was meaningless. Dr. Berger assures him that life doesn’t work that way; sometimes bad things merely happen, and seeking control in a tragedy will prevent healing from grief. Conrad eventually learns to let himself feel his emotions, positive and negative, and he starts to grieve more healthily alongside his father.
Both protagonists in Ordinary People are faced with identity crises after Buck’s death. Cal and Conrad both wonder who they are not only in their family but in relation to the world as a whole. For years, their identities have been tied to Buck as a son or brother, and now he is gone from their lives. Both characters must learn to form their own identities rather than having them rely on someone else.
Cal puts immense pressure on himself to be a great father, especially after all he endured as a child raised in an Evangelical orphanage. He had no memories of being any man’s son, and the only father figure in his life was his mentor, Arnold Bacon, who convinced him to become a lawyer. When Cal married Beth, Bacon saw the union as a betrayal and cut off contact with Cal. Bacon’s love and support were conditional, and Cal was cut off when he didn’t “earn” his love by behaving as he wished. Cal is determined to never make Conrad feel this way, but in building his image as a father in contrast to someone else, he feels unsteady in his identity.
This throws him into crisis when he loses one son and nearly loses the other. Outside of the role of father, Cal isn’t sure who he is or what he believes, thinking, “I’m the kind of man who hasn’t the least idea what kind of man I am. There. Some definition” (51). While he did not lose Conrad, his remaining son is coming of age and set to go off to college. Beth tries to help him see a life with her after Conrad leaves the nest by asking for more time with just the two of them, but it feels to Cal like she is discounting how deeply he values fatherhood, leaving him to cling tighter to it. Through therapy, Cal finds his core values in stability, order, and caring for his loved ones. With this new mindset, he begins the next chapter of his life with Conrad, providing stability and love for his son when Beth leaves.
Conrad also battles with his identity. At the beginning of the novel, Conrad tells himself, “Haven’t lost your sense of humor after all but your sense of identity is what seems to have been misplaced. No. Wrong. You don’t lose what you never had” (15). For years, Conrad tried to be like Buck: He likes the same things, is on the same teams at school, and has the same friends. After Buck dies, Conrad no longer knows who he is anymore because he tethered his entire sense of self to his brother. Dr. Berger notices that this is the root of Conrad’s problem and encourages him to not do things if he doesn’t actually want to. Once Conrad starts making decisions about his life for him—quitting the swim team and devoting himself to choir—the world opens up to him. He makes lists of his goals, finds a girlfriend who he deeply connects with, and throws himself into his love of music. He cobbles together an identity, and by the end of the novel, “[h]e is in touch for good, with hope, with himself, no matter what” (251). His relationships with his friends and family strengthen as they are finally allowed to see the real Conrad.