Olive Kitteridge

A key driving force behind much of the suffering of the characters in the novel is their lack of human connection, often despite the apparent availability of humans with which to connect. Even in the midst of long-term marriages and seemingly tight-knit families, all within a single small town, relationships are fractious and volatile. Family structures, despite the protection they should afford against loneliness, can be destructive, toxic, and irreparable. Nonetheless, as much as the characters pull away from one another, often causing each other great pain, they cling to one another. This theme of The Necessity of Human Connection is a driving force throughout the novel, especially in the life of the titular character.

Loneliness is the unbearable force that drives The Trials of Grief and Mental Illness. Kevin Coulson, as he sits in his car contemplating suicide, reflects on how every city he moves to ultimately “assured him that he didn’t, in fact, fit” (43). At her son’s wedding, Olive observes that “loneliness can kill people—in different ways can actually make you die” (68). Loneliness, more than anything else, must be avoided in order to survive. The specter of mortality compounds this drive; most of the characters are older, aging as the story progresses, and their awareness of their own mortality intensifies their awareness of the need for human connection. As Olive reflects in the end, “love was not to be tossed away carelessly” (270). However, being with a person does not necessarily lend to human connection, which is far more difficult to find, let alone hold onto and fully embrace. Olive sums up the dilemma as she reflects on her status after Henry’s stroke: “She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like being with people” (148). In the stories after Henry’s stroke and death, the transistor radio serves as a powerful symbol of Olive’s need for human connection and her uncertainty as to how to obtain it. Olive’s reflections on the importance of talking, or at least on the dangers of not talking, further suggest the mental cost of isolation.

The novel pushes into the question of just how helpless we are in the face of this need, using its flawed characters to examine equally flawed pursuits of human connection. Angie O’Meara poignantly suggests that “[y]ou couldn’t make yourself stop feeling a certain way, no matter what the other person did. You had to just wait” (56). Many of the characters seem to embody that philosophy, allowing the currents of their need for human connection to carry them along—at least until consequences arrive, threatening their stable, if thin, existing connections. This aspect of the theme manifests most often in affairs that are often deeply regretted. Kerry Monroe gets drunk at a funeral and reveals to the widow that she slept with her deceased husband. Bob Houlton attempts to assure his beloved wife, Jane Houlton, that the night he spent with another woman was meaningless: “If only you could know how stupid and awful and miserable it was” (137). That said, the author complicates affairs too. Harmon (no surname given), who is one of the few characters self-aware enough to exercise autonomy, actively pursues his deep connection with Daisy Foster. Recognizing loneliness in others, Harmon is able to adapt his perspective: “now he saw her [Bessie Davis’s] loneliness as a lesion on her face. The words Not me, not me crossed over his mind” (102). His effort to seize and deepen his connection, rather than squander it by relying instead on the safer, if fading, connection with his wife, seems to be rewarded as Daisy accepts his confession of love.