Judith Guest's Novel Ordinary People

Judith Guest's novel, Ordinary People, is quite a unique story in that it has two protagonists. It alternates between the Conrad's story and Calvin's, his father. Although they seem interrelated, especially at the beginning, they are more like two completely different stories which happen to occasionally affect one another before splitting off and going their own ways once more. Conrad's main concern seems to be his emotional time bomb, always threatening to blow but never knowing when it's going to happen and drag him back into his depressed and suicidal state. Calvin's story seems at first to be all about trying to control Conrad's emotional problems, but it gradually becomes a fight to simply keep the family together. As the story progresses, he gets into more arguments with his wife, Beth, about how to deal with the past and Conrad's emotional state. Calvin believes the family should talk through their problems whereas Beth believes that the family should simply move on and forget the past, which leads to friction between the two and the eventual breakup.

The novel spaces out these two stories by using alternating chapters for each story, thus creating two stories that progress at the same pace, but seem to mirror each other. Conrad's story starts off with a suicidal and depressed teen who just got out of the hospital and tells the tale of his recovery, whereas Calvin's story starts with a healthy marriage and just worries about his emotionally unstable son, but as the story progresses his marriage disintegrates and eventually ends with Beth leaving him, although they do not discuss an official divorce. We can see that Conrad's story seems to start on a dismal tone, as if he lived in a hopeless and dying world, he gradually gets better and returns to a rejuvenated world. His father's tale seems to take the opposite course however, starting with a perfect marriage, although maybe not a perfect world, it crumbles and decays until there is nothing left ad he is left standing on the remains of what used to be a happy marriage, though he also seems to get closer to his son by the end of the novel. This shows that this s a novel of fertility and reconstruction. Metaphorically, the story starts in a decimated landscape and explains how the characters try to rebuild and recover. It seems in a way to criticize society, who, in such catastrophic circumstances spend more time trying to point fingers and find who is to blame the they do trying to reconstruct and repair. The story shows that although they start in a ruined world, it is possible to rebuild and recover.

This novel could also be interpreted as a sick and inversed coming-of-age novel. The story starts after most of the action has already taken place. Jordan dies and Conrad attempts suicide before the story even starts, making it so that the characters have already had traumatic and life changing experiences and have already felt intense pain and sorrow and throughout the story strive to return to the moment of childish innocence in Conrad's case or back to a "happily ever after" family ending they had before Jordan' death in Calvin's case.

This is also a memory novel. Judith uses flashbacks to recall most of the action in the story, rarely telling it as it happens. This not only allows for suspenseful situations, for we hear of Jordan's death in the beginning, but we never realize what happens until after Conrad blurts out the story to Dr. Berger, but it also allows the reader to imagine his own version of the incidents, for, memories are never exact narrations, and tend to be exaggerated or incomplete, as it is in human nature to exaggerate and/or forget, not to mention the character can only relate what he remembers. Being memories, they are sentimental and somewhat unrealistic, as Tom explains in the Glass Menagerie. However, we also see that some events cannot be properly understood in the present, and it isn't until Conrad looks back upon his brother's death with Dr. Berger that he can analyze it and realize how it happened and that it truly was not his fault.

The story begins with a confused teenager who identifies himself as Conrad dealing with something which really resembles paranoia. We then learn that he has just returned from the hospital after attempting suicide. Conrad goes off to school and gets teased by the others about seeming to notice a certain new girl (Jeanine Pratt) a little too much, and he seems to struggle to maintain sanity with just that comment, showing the reader that he is having some serious problems.

The story then switches to Calvin, his father, whom starts by thinking to himself that he cannot really be accused of being a bad father, since, being an orphan, he had no example to follow. This train of thought stems from his worrying about his son's anti-social attitude since he got back from the hospital and trying to sort out his fatherly duties. He spends the chapter unsure of himself, wondering if he is really happy or successful and whether he should send his son to see a psychologist, the pushing his son to go see Dr. Berger.

The story ten switches back to Conrad. At school, it seems as though all the teachers and students are nervous when talking to him, as if they didn't know what to expect. He says that his choir class he can "let his guard down". Jeanine Pratt happens to also be in his choir class and starts talking to him, but, taken by surprise, he just kind of stands there dumbly. He then goes off to swim after school, and is stopped by the coach after practice who asks him if he is having fun and getting enough sleep, suggesting that he does not NEED to stay on the team. As if to rub it in, on his way home, Stillman, a guy on the swim team who is always picking a fight with Conrad, starts telling him about how much better the two sophomores are than Conrad, probably trying to get him angry.

The story switches back to Calvin again, and we see him having dinner with his wife in a restaurant, where they argue about whether or not the family should go on a Christmas vacation this year. He later talks with a fried at work, who annoys him by offering advice with what to do with Conrad. At work, he thinks back to the fight he had with Beth, revealing it to us in a flashback. She accused him of asking too many wrong questions without asking the important ones, like whether or not Conrad wanted to go to London. He then thinks back to his mentor, who helped him become the tax attorney he is now. He then remembers not feeling real sadness when his mother died due to his very young age and really only experiencing it for the first time when his mentor died.

Conrad goes and meets with the good humored Dr. Berger, his new psychologist, who asks him to return twice a week and