Less Than Zero (1985)
Young Adult Novel Analysis
Written by DJ Hadoken
Disappearing in a Tranquilized World
The 80’s. California coasts. The Go-Gos. Listening to music, taking drugs, having dirty deeds, getting drunk. No second thoughts because the only person around to guide you along a path of morality cannot put their hand on your shoulder (because they have none).
So what if they only have stubs for hands? They don’t notice because they are too coked up to care. The person being guided only has to fit one criteria: be a rich kid from Hollywood who can take a good snort, shot or pill here and there. Outsiders disappear into the mess, soon absorbed into the anonymity of this anesthetized world.
This person is guided by nothing in his life. The drugged up man with stubs for hands only nudges him every once in a while (although both of them are generally too high most of the time to notice). He has no moral compass because he lacks the guidance required during life that is usually fulfilled through the role of parents.
He is able to witness his friend being bear-hugged without bothering to help, because he has been desensitized. There is no inner voice within that whispers, “This is wrong, this is wrong!” Or perhaps, that voice is there, only it is choking on an elusive little white powder.
He has had no one to teach him that certain acts and behaviors are demeaning crimes against the body. He has had no foundation that would set a basis of surprise and disgust at a situation like the sight of a dead body found in an alley.
When one’s father has left their wife for a man and their mother succumbs to drunkenness and detachment, one is unable to develop a fully functional moral base. Encouragement and awards are replaced with impersonal visits and disbursement of checks mechanically during holidays and birthdays.
Not even a psychiatrist can act as guidance for this person, because the psychiatrist is primarily self-interested. Nor does he have friends of substance, true friends: friends who look out for each other, take care of each other, trust each other and generally only desire to do good for each other.
This moral compass is finally taken, thrown on the floor and smashed to pieces by the lifestyle that this person leads. It is the life of having everything and what is lacking is soon bestowed. There is no need to work or struggle. The only work he or his peers might find themselves doing is paying off a drug debt. They have no ambition because they have nothing more to attain, or at least, see no more to be obtained.
Religion is nonexistent, save for the occasional preacher chattering about salvation on the television. He lives a life of sin alongside the other sinners of Hollywood.
Although, it is not entirely his fault, because there are no good role models. Because these role models, they are horrible sinners. Living lives of immoral dirty deedual behavior and relationships with family residing solely in the heart money. A potentially meaningful meeting with the father becomes suddenly meaningless as the father ignores his son in favor of directors, then simply asks his son if he needs money, then each goes their separate way.
There is a little light of guidance, however, where he has disappeared. The stubbed man occasionally rises from his drugged induced stupor and gives this person a good nudge. This nudge shows him that there is something wrong, though it appears as if he is not quite aware of what it could be.
He has not always been in the world he stands. He has left it, he has seen the outside world. He may have met some good role models during his time away, which influenced him slightly. They were successful enough to implant within him a sense of meaninglessness in this lifestyle. This sense of hopelessness, this despair at the realization that this is no longer his place, reveals itself through tears in nightclub bathrooms.
He is worn down physically through the ceaseless use of drugs and alcohol. He is in a constant stage of lucidity. He is tranquilized, whether it be while he is awake or asleep. This submerges his mind, leaving him in a void, disappearing because he lacks a sense of reality.
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His leave of absence and return to this lifestyle causes him to become disconnected. If he ever developed a sense of responsibility or obligation during his time away, it vanishes when he returns to his old crowd- becoming anonymous, it is no more his responsibility to act upon a hideous situation than it is that of another person.
He cares not to help his friend who is being dirty deedsploited, because he has given up on his friend and only desires to see what a horrible void he has fallen into. He hands out no salvation because he is selfish within this large crowd. No one is concerned about this friend in despair, they only acknowledge that he is missing and are more concerned about his debt and missed drug deals than what is personally wrong with him.
To help another within this culture is to commit a selfless act. It is putting the needs of another over one’s own, it is to come closer to merging by cooperating. This is against all conformity within the lifestyle. This division between help and selfishness is invisible to all but outsiders.
Those within are so engulfed in this life that to them it is norm. It is only when one is separated from this when one can notice the dysfunctions. And this person being blindly guided, who has become an outsider in his own culture, is named Clay from Brett Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero.
Works Cited
Ellis, Brett Easton. Less Than Zero. Simon and Schuster, 1985.
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