Hi world! Chris here. Today, I was looking back at some of the old essays I wrote in college to think of some different books for programming and whatnot for my job.

During my search, I happened to stumble upon one of the most interesting topics I think authors can try to tackle. Feelings of emptiness or loneliness always fascinate me in characters and even though I’m typically not drawn to the realism of it all, I think Strout does a great job implementing it in her novels. So, I decided to share some of her work today.

Fair warning, there is some graphic content in her writing that is briefly mentioned in this essay just without the descriptions. Otherwise, it’s clean.

Enjoy!

Themes of Emptiness from Elizabeth Strout

Most everyone has heard the saying that no two people are exactly alike. It has become a widely promoted fact that everyone is different in their own unique way. However, no matter the disparities in personalities or bodies and everything in between, every person still shares the similarity of being human and, according to author Elizabeth Strout, this means they share a lot more than they might know. Constantly enthralled with the common pitfalls of everyday life, Strout creates compelling novels that look into the lives of average people and finds the strings that tie them to one another. The most common string of all seems to be the ever-present feeling of emptiness or longing that plays a central role in her first three novels Amy and Isabelle, Abide with Me, and Olive Kitteridge.

In her first novel, Strout follows the events leading up to and immediately following the affair between the main character, Amy, and her math teacher while she is in high school. Her relationship with her mother, Isabelle, is shown to be rocky from the beginning of the novel, but this is assumed to be because Isabelle is still reeling from the news about her daughter. It is only as the novel progresses in its un-linear fashion that the reader learns this sense of unhappiness has always been between them (Strout, Amy and Isabelle 59).

Amy reveals these feelings early on as she is constantly described as someone who “stood awkwardly” or was “made anxious” when she is interacting with Isabelle (Strout, Amy and Isabelle 58). Rather than finding comfort in her mother like most people do, Amy finds only nerves. However, Isabelle also seems to suffer in some ways from being around her daughter. After being reprimanded for mispronouncing the name of an Irish poet, Isabelle realizes “her daughter would be ashamed of her” and feels resentment for the different lives they will lead (Strout, Amy and Isabelle 80).

Family bonds are often considered to be some of the strongest ties a person can have. It is why homes are so often associated with safety and family is associated with joy. For Amy and Isabelle, this simply is not the case. Both of these women are missing a fundamental feeling of belonging and being loved without pretenses, but rather than look for it in one another, they decide to fill themselves with other things. When having breakfast, both women seem to substitute food for love as they share a rare moment of contentment eating doughnuts in a coffee shop. Rather than fall into their usual awkward conversation or bickering, the doughnuts allow them to be “silent, eating and gazing around the coffee shop” (Strout, Amy and Isabelle 55). Of course, this doesn’t last and the two are forced to find other ways to fulfill themselves including fantasies about Isabelle’s boss and scandalous affairs with Amy’s teacher.

Despite being the two main characters of the novel, they are not the only characters that Strout chooses to look at. The comical character of Fat Bev also seems to experience this sensation of emptiness as she comments on how “an ache stayed inside of her . . . some kind of longing that had been answered once and was simply not answered anymore” (Strout, Amy and Isabelle 41). Even the minor character of Paul seems to share this feeling. Before Amy agrees to give him a blow job, she realizes that “he, in some queer, agitated state, was desperate for her” in a way that was not romantic, but rather a way to fill the void Stacy had left in him when they broke up (Strout, Amy and Isabelle 267). He is in no way as complex as Isabelle and Amy, nor does he share Bev’s kind understanding of others, but they are all still connected by this emptiness inside themselves.

This string of loneliness does not go away in Strout’s next novel but surfaces just as prominently in the characters of Abide with Me, starting with Tyler Caskey. Recently left a widower as well as living without one child due to the interference of his mother, Tyler is obviously unhappy with his current position in life (Strout, Abide with Me 10). As the preacher of a small, but successful church in Maine, one would assume he would search for solace in scripture or prayer as is so often advised by men of faith; however, that is not how Tyler chooses to respond to his inward ache.

When returning home from a meeting with his daughter’s teacher, Tyler takes a moment to speak with his housekeeper. Without speaking too deeply or getting to close, the two share “one of those surprising moments that occur sometimes, when there’s a fleeting sense of recognition, when, in less than half a second, there’s a sense of having glimpsed the other’s soul” (Strout, Abide with Me 30). From that moment on, Connie becomes a kind of substitute wife for Tyler without any of the romantic or physical associations. She is merely a presence that he can use to fill the hole his wife left in him just as Connie seems to use Tyler to fill the void her decaying marriage is creating in her as well (Strout, Abide with Me 76).

In Tyler’s congregation, someone else suffers from “a nauseating ache” deep in his chest (Strout, Abide with Me 64). Charlie Austin is another character of Strout’s that fails to find peace and happiness from his family. Rather than look on his son with pride, he considers him a “terrible in-between mess of pitiful self-consciousness” just as he seems to dislike not only his other children but also his loud wife (Strout, Abide with Me 65). While these facts set up Charlie as a rather unlikeable character, they also connect him to Tyler as both men seem to feel the same sense of emptiness and loss despite having suffered different pains. Charlie seems to be suffering from some kind of PTSD or depression as he claims he “wanted this all to stop, cease and desist as they had said in the army” (Strout, Abide with Me 64). However, instead of finding support in his family, he substitutes their love with a sexual affair with a woman in Boston (Strout, Abide with Me 65).

Unlike in Amy and Isabelle, these empty men and women have not reconciled by the end of the novel, but they are all incredibly different characters from one another just like Amy, Isabelle, Fat Bev, and Paul. Tyler is a God-fearing pastor while Charlie is a violent adulterer. They are almost complete opposites, but they still manage to share this basic need for human connection as they face the empty abyss inside themselves.

In Strout’s third novel, this idea is present once more in the character of Olive Kitteridge and some of the others that she comes in contact with as the story progresses. Nina is introduced as a teenager who suffers from anorexia as she hides out in a neighbor’s house after breaking up with her boyfriend. She is a sharp contrast to the large and looming Olive, but when the two meet Olive still informs her “I’m starving” (Strout, Olive Kitteridge 95). Of course, when she continues to comment that “we all are” it becomes clear that Olive is not referencing a physical starvation for food (Strout, Olive Kitteridge 96). Both Olive and Nina are starving to feel something that really matters in their lives. Olive combats this emptiness inside herself by “eat[ing] every doughnut in sight,” but Nina fills herself with real hunger to overpower the deeper longing inside (Strout, Olive Kitteridge 95). Neither of these women are alone in their longings.

While Nina seems to be a physical foil to Olive, Jack Kennison is presented towards the end of Olive Kitteridge as a more mental foil. Even Olive herself admits that he “was not a man she would have chosen before this time . . . he most likely wouldn’t have chosen her either” based on their internal differences (Strout, Olive Kitteridge 270). Nobody in Crosby, Maine seems to lean radically left when it comes to politics, but Olive does seem to defer from leaning to the right. This is not the case for Jack as the two argue over homosexuality and men with money which turns angry enough that Olive seems to feel the two of them have broken up in a way (Strout, Olive Kitteridge 266). However, this break up does not last long as Olive is forced to face “the gaping loneliness of this sunlit world” and the two decide to reconcile and come together again, using each other in place of their deceased spouses to fill “the pieces life took out of you” (Strout, Olive Kitteridge 269; 270). They were both widowed and they were both lonely. Past that, none of those differences that had kept them apart really mattered anymore.

It might be considered a sad way to look at the world believing that everyone feels an intense longing they are trying to fill, but Strout has managed to make it something beautiful too. Feeling lonely or hungry for something that is not food is what brings people together. Amy’s intense emptiness eventually allowed for her to meet the rest of her family, Tyler’s broken heart got his daughter back, and Olive’s internal ache gave her the chance to get to know a man she would have never spoken to if she had not been lonely. Strout understands the pain of everyday life, but she does not ignore the possibility of growth that can come with it. She uses the theme of longing to connect people and remind her readers how much humans need other humans. No matter how different someone seems, they are still a person on the inside.

Works Cited

Strout, Elizabeth. Abide with Me. Random House, 2007.

Strout, Elizabeth. Amy and Isabelle. Vintage Books, 1998.

Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kitteridge. Random House, 2008.

Thanks for reading! I’ll see you all next week. Until then, stay safe out there!