Insightful Olive

            Books offer readers a unique opportunity to see inside someone else’s head and live a different life, unveiling insights one may have never considered. Such is the case in the novel Olive Kitteridge by award-winning author Elizabeth Strout. Strout tells the chronicle of Olive Kitteridge through thirteen short stories focusing on various residents of Crosby, Maine as well as Olive herself at varying ages. The tales focusing on the Kitteridges at an older age especially resonated with me and taught me valuable lessons. After losing both of my grandmothers, I had never taken the time to truly comprehend their passing’s effect on my grandfathers, only how it impacted me. Through Strout’s depiction of Olive losing her husband, Henry, I began to genuinely understand and sympathize with my grandpas. For instance, after Olive’s friend and widower, Jack Kennison, declares that his wife had recently passed away, Olive states “Then, you’re in hell,” (55). Her short syntax and simple statement evokes pathos, generating empathy from those who have lost a loved one. Personally, Olive’s facile declaration allowed me to understand what my grandfathers have to deal with on a daily basis: a living hell. Moreover, Olive noted how young people do not understand that “aged… bodies were as needy as theirs,” (270). Through this simile, Strout asserts that humans, especially the youth, tend to forget that all people stand as equal and have the same needs, regardless of age; we all want to love and be loved. Admittedly, I have forgotten this more than once, but Olive’s cogitation combined with the portrayal of her loneliness allowed me to understand how important a thought it is. Throughout the novel, I would think back to the times where I would not stay home for a family dinner with one of grandfathers because I had plans to hang out with my friends and felt immense guilt. I used to treat outings with my friends as more important, despite seeing them every day, but Olive taught me to treat those you love equally as just that: equals. I believe Strout writes to people like me who did not take time to fully understand the struggles of aging in order to illustrate how much the elderly value companionship and that one should cherish each moment spent with loved ones.