And it’s here that art can be viewed as activism.īy creating or simply appreciating art as a person (rather than the slightly stereotypical caricature of the rich art collector who gains their money through exploitation) in the capitalist system, you are rebelling. The reason why is because of the erasure of the arts. They are passionless individuals, if they can even be called that. They have no internal world or secrets, just these external factors. Racism and other issues have not been solved in Yanagihara’s future, to the extent that even questioning the government surrounding these issues leads to death. Stripped of their individuality, the figures in this bleak future are their work… as well as a decided amount of external factors like their race, gender, class, sexuality and immigration status.

Yet for a society that places so much emphasis on individuality, we place little emphasis on the arts.Īnd this is taken to extremes in Yanagihara’s book. It’s through the arts that we find our personality and this individuality that we all crave: we are what we wear, listen to, read, watch and look at. Now, I’m not against science- I think it is necessary, but only with it’s counterpart of the arts, because science is pure fact and fact doesn’t breed individuality. This is partly from need, due to the pandemic after pandemic that this society faces, but in the end, their lack of individuality is linked to their universally mutual field of work. The narrator’s life centers around work: going to and from it, what she does when she’s there and when she’s not.Īnd it appears that everyone in this near-future work in science. They are blocked off from the world emotionally, partly from trauma, partly from the medicine for a disease and partly by a government that curates emotionless workers. It’s through this absence that the reader is allowed to see their inherent connection.ĭespite being under a government that is wholly American- Capitalist and how this ideology is often associated with individuality, the characters here have none. With each narrative the passion shared between characters has been whittled down to the world the reader finds themselves in in this final part: one without creativity or, seemingly, emotion. Here, disease has shut down boarders, cities, houses and bodies, leaving a once lively cityscape dull. The final part is set in a dystopian 2093.

Each of these narrative echo each other with their issues of class and race, their focus on relationships with grandfathers, and the setting of the same house. Three turn of the century narratives of 1893, 19 surrounding this one American family and their descendants.

Hanya to paradise