by Rachel Stockton

Created on: September 12, 2008

Judith Guest's novel, ORDINARY PEOPLE is about just that; ordinary people thrust into the fray of extraordinary circumstances.

Calvin and Beth Jarrett have built a successful life for themselves. Their home is a sort of a 1970s, American Beauty-esque household, one that looks great on the outside, but is struggling with grief and dysfunction within its walls.

The novel opens a year after Calvin and Beth's son, Buck, a stereotypical all-American boy, talented and athletic, dies in a sudden storm that arose while he and his brother, Conrad, were sailing on Lake Michigan. Six months after the accident, Conrad tries to commit suicide by slashing his wrists. He is then put into a mental facility.

We read of the struggle each of the Jarretts experience on an individual basis. Beth, who is maniacally, scarily controlled (Conrad recalls later that his mother didn't cry at Buck's funeral), to the point of seeming hard and distant. We get the impression that Buck was the favored child, the golden boy, the one whom Beth was the most proud of.

Calvin, as the father, is caught between his wife, who he gradually begins to see as remote, cold and emotionally bereft,and Conrad, his son for whom he cares deeply, and is profoundly worried about. Beth cannot seem to bridge the gap between herself and her surviving son; nor does she see the necessity to put for the effort to do so. In fact, she comes to resent Calvin's concern over Conrad; she believes that Conrad's suicide attempt was nothing more than a manipulative gesture.

Then there is Conrad, who is struggling with survivor's guilt, and with his place in the family. He lost Buck just at a time when his own identity was forming. His older brother's death left Conrad in a state of emotional and psychological trauma.

ORDINARY PEOPLE also deals with the following paradoxes:

1. What appears strong, is actually weak. Beth's stoicism, on the outside, seems to be borne of strength, when in reality, her inability to get in touch with her own feelings and communicate them is due to debilitating terror. Conversely, Conrad, who never felt he "measured up" to Buck, feels guilty for surviving. It was Conrad, not Buck, who had the physical strength to hold on and keep from drowing. It was Conrad, not Buck, who had the emotional strength to keep Buck alive as long as possible. Conrad, the "weak" one, was, on so many levels, the strong one.

2. The more "in control" we seem, the more chaotic and out of control we are inwardly. Beth tried in vain to maintain rigid, pathological control over her household by implementing impossible standards. And the more tightly she clung to her old ideas, the more unraveled she became.

Published in 1976 and made into a movie by Robert Redford in 1980, ORDINARY PEOPLE demonstrates the extraordinary capabilities of our mortal selves.

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