The Rest of Us Just Live Here

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-17

Chapters 18-21

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Indie Kids

Content Warning: The source text includes mentions of suicidal ideation, detailed depictions of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and references to alcohol addiction, disordered eating, and anti-LGBTQ+ bias.

Ness uses the indie kids as a way of satirizing the stereotypical protagonist of the modern YA fantasy novel and, in so doing, creating commentary about the genre itself. Some of the more incisive commentary comes toward the end of the novel, as Mikey and his friends go to prom and Satchel is busy in the school’s basement fixing fissures. Jared notes that there are no indie kids at prom, and Mikey notes that “He’s right. There’s not one. Which makes me sort of sad, really” (247). Mikey’s sorrow stems from the realization that even though there are elements of his life that are beyond his control, he still has his friends and gets to share calm, low-stakes moments with them. Mikey realizes, as his childhood is coming to its end, that these are the moments that have defined his youth—and the indie kids never get to have them. While the indie kids are the perpetual heroes of narratives for young adults, they are also, in Mikey’s estimation, robbed of the most important parts of being young.

The opening of the novel frames the social world of Mikey’s high school as a binary: There are indie kids and non-indie kids, and the worlds of each group are unknowable to the other. The impermeability of this binary reinforces the idea that the indie kids are destined to do the work they do, while the non-indie kids must simply survive the fallout of the indie kids’ actions, having no agency of their own. Ness begins to dissolve this binary—and, by extension, the notion that the non-indie kids have no agency—through the character of Jared. At the end of the novel, it’s revealed that Jared “should have” been an indie kid: He’s part God, has some magical powers, is gay, and his real name is “Mercury.” Jared rejects this framing of his life, though, in favor of remaining friends with Mikey and choosing which world he wants to be a part of. This destruction of the indie kid/non-indie kid binary suggests that Mikey and his friends only lose their agency by buying into the binary itself; by rejecting the idea that some kids have destinies and others don’t, Jared claims his own agency and underscores the novel’s major theme that everyone has free will.

Supernatural Incursions

The Immortals represent the novel’s primary supernatural incursion, but Mikey makes references to a few others, too, that happened in the past, such as the time vampires came and the indie kids fell in love with them and then had to kill them, and the time Gods came from another realm. These supernatural incursions that the indie kids seem fated to deal with alone are, for Mikey and his friends, events whose outcomes are entirely out of their control, yet those same outcomes directly impact their lives. Henna, for instance, lost her brother to the vampire incursion, while Jared has to cope with the fact that he is genetically descended from the Gods whether he wants to be or not. These incursions are representative of one of the novel’s primary critiques of the YA genre: Sometimes there are circumstances teens face that they don’t have enough agency to overcome as cleanly and completely as the indie kids are able to overcome the incursions. Mikey and his friends have no power to defeat the Immortals; they simply have to learn how to deal with the fallout.

The fact that these incursions occur repeatedly—generationally, even—is also notable. Ness starts to hint at the idea that every generation is shaped by its own set of uncontrollable events that give that generation their fear, attitudes, and even politics. Mikey begins to piece this together when his mother explains, in a moment of uncharacteristic candor, that she went into politics because she believes, based on something that happened in her youth, that the world is fundamentally an unsafe place. It’s implied that Mrs. Mitchell dealt with the fallout of a supernatural incursion of her own, but the narrative never specifies what that was. In this way, the incursions become a symbol of the cultural and political undercurrents that give rise to a generation’s worldview but may not be wholly visible to or understood by the generations that follow.

OCD & Behavioral Loops

It would be a misrepresentation of the novel to suggest that Mikey’s OCD only has symbolic value. Ness treats OCD as a very real mental health concern: The descriptions of Mikey’s compulsive behaviors depict both the psychological and physical stress that Mikey endures, and though Mikey finds ways to cope with the disorder (one of which is medication), he doesn’t fully recover from it by the end of the narrative. This being said, Mikey’s OCD also serves symbolic functions. As Mikey approaches the end of high school, he starts feelings increasingly trapped—by the inevitability of moving away from his best friends, by his unrequited feelings for Henna, and by the ever-growing notion that he might start to become more like his parents as he gets older. The behavioral loops that stem from Mikey’s OCD (i.e., repeatedly washing his hands or face, touching the corners of a book’s pages, etc.) are a physical representation of this feeling of entrapment. Mikey’s irrational notion that there’s a “right” way to complete the loop that will free him of it reflects his frustrations with Coping with an Uncertain Future. He’s searching for a manageable, understandable solution to his internal anxieties, and the failure to find one only drives him further into anxiety.

Mikey learns to cope with his OCD not by overcoming it, but by accepting that uncertainty will always be a part of his life. While this new understanding, coupled with medical treatment, allows Mikey to start to break out of some of his behavioral loops, he’s not entirely free of them. In fact, Ness chooses to end the novel with a visual loop: “We watch the fire. We watch the fire. And still we watch” (317). The recurrence of a loop at this point in Mikey’s development suggests that Mikey has found a way not to overcome the loops, but to use them. By allowing himself to be “stuck” in the moment, to truly settle and enjoy the time he’s spending with his friends, Mikey finally moves past the anxiety that he won’t have enough time to spend with his friends before college.