Throughout my childhood, my older brother never failed to command the spotlight. He did not hesitate to express himself, and attracted attention from his peers through sheer confidence alone. With his self esteem inflated, he did not require technical skill, or even talent, in order to succeed and strive in any field. While I grew up spending hours on end studying and perfecting my work to maintain average grades, my brother achieved straight A’s with hardly any effort. He also easily won over his audience whilst trying his hand at my own hobbies, often outshining my content with his own. I can clearly recall a scenario in which, upon observing my habit of doodling on the daily, he took it upon himself to follow pursuit, and composed sketches of our favorite cartoon characters, only to claim that he was the “better artist,” between the two of us.
Art held a particular value for my brother and I, due to the fact that our mother’s partner was an astonishingly skilled, self-taught artist. He commonly composed illustrations of characters from our favorite series’ for us, quickly earning our utmost admiration. Unfortunately, he passed away at a relatively young age, leaving behind only our memories with him and the drawings that he created. To this day, I have a particular drawing of TinkerBell that he orchestrated for me framed upon the wall in my bedroom. I remember sitting beside him as he drew it, watching in awe as he perfectly depicted TinkerBell from looking at my TinkerBell-themed book-bag. Looking back, I can speculate that perhaps his passing contributed to my brother’s subconscious desire to undermine my artwork.
Because of this fraught family dynamic, Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You The Sun resonates with me, and, ultimately, inspired me. The novel revolves around two twin siblings with completely contradictory personalities. After the beloved mother of these siblings is killed in a fatal car accident, their personalities interchange, as a result of their remorse. Noah forces himself to conform to social normalcy, while Jude completely shelters herself, blaming and punishing herself for her mother’s death, as well as the tarnished relationship with her brother. Ultimately, the siblings search for their distinct identities, encounter their interdependence, and come to terms with the severity of mental illness. Similarly, my brother experienced a period of depression during his high school years; he periodically attended an infamous technical school, where he felt that his outgoing personality and work had gone neglected by his peers, due to their competitive nature and fixation upon their own success. We were both forced to experience loss at a relatively young age, and, like Noah and Jude, we similarly lost ourselves—and our bond—for some time, before finding it again.
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Noah and Jude are at first inseparable. At the time of their closest bond, they are young, and rely upon one another for a sense of mutual understanding. Growing up, I was close with my brother, who was born exactly a year and a day before me. Similar to Noah and Jude, my brother and I possessed an understanding for each other’s thoughts and feelings without the need for conversation. I immediately associated our relationship with that of Noah and Jude, who once did everything together; my brother and I were the same. I recall sitting on countertops in the kitchen, invested in random, prolonged conversations that lasted for hours.
Up until high school, my brother and I attended the same schools. We bonded during our walks home, killing time along the way by buying snacks from the corner store and visiting our mutual friends on the block. However, similar to Noah and Jude, we became emotionally distant with age, until eventually we had developed our own distinct, contrasting personalities. Jude, unlike Noah, developed into a social butterfly, someone who inhibited the ability to strike up a conversation with anyone about anything. But despite her confidence socially, Jude created magnificent sculptures, yet kept her identity as the artist of these works masked from the world, fearful of being outshined by her brother. Noah, however, never once considered masking his art from those around him. Like my brother, Noah took pride in his creations, and exhibited defiant confidence toward achieving his future goals. I related to Jude as creating art had always been my most favorable pastime, although I was never confident enough to express it. Unlike my brother, who would not hesitate to present his accomplishments, I had always been more concerned with the perception of others. I was never particularly confident in myself, or my creations, perhaps due to the fact that I had always been a slow learner. Even now, although producing artwork brings me joy, I find that expressing my work typically results in distress.
Particularly after the death of her mother, Jude expresses an ongoing, depressive struggle with coming to terms with her identity, both as an artist and as an individual. The impact of Jude’s mother’s passing is similar to that of my mother’s partner’s. “Maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people…Maybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time,” Jude concludes, highlighting the fact that her personality often wavers depending on who is in her company. For example, while Jude remained isolated and unengaged when with her classmates, her emotions were easily apparent in the presence of her educators.
I have struggled with identity similarly, and in certain circumstances, I have experienced detachment, or distance, from my own sense of self. People often advise others to “be themselves,” but I had never desired to “be myself,” as I had never quite liked myself. If anything, I wanted to be someone different– someone with a more flattering appearance, better communication skills, and artistically technical skill. I made a habit of adjusting my interests, mannerisms, and values to find compatibility with whomever I encountered. During high school, for example, I surrounded myself with a specific circle of “friends,” solely due to the fact that they appeared normal. They typically used the word “cringey” to describe my interests, which further encouraged me to conform to their standards, and conceal my true self. As a result of my social neutrality, I became uncertain toward the attributes that define me as an individual, as well as to how to “be myself.” I lost my self-worth and my personality. I failed to realize this as a problem until I analyzed Nelson’s novel, and noticed that Jude’s problematic behavior—hiding, and retreating—reflected my own.
While I had assumed that I had outgrown most of the conflicts portrayed by Noah and Jude, I now realize that some conflicts are still part of my present. For example, once Jude begins attending art school, she quickly learns that she lacks personal satisfaction with her work, and her creations often fall apart before she finishes the project. Whilst attending art school, I have often compared my artwork to the quality of others, and questioned my potential, as well as my decision to pursue art. I habitually compare my work to that of my peers, and I shame myself for failing to progress as quickly as my classmates. Presumably, this tendency derives from my experience with competing against my brother during my childhood. I struggle to designate my assigned work as my own, which takes from the jubilance of the creative process. At art school, one often feels compelled to prioritize creating for the sake of others, rather than for their own sake—students abide their professor’s definition of “art,” rather than their own. In the novel, Jude attempts to resolve this by seeking out a personal mentor, who provides her the time, space, and materials to construct any composition that she desires. In doing so, she ultimately constructs a sculpture that symbolizes her relationship with her brother, distilling the merits of their bond, and its positive place in her heart. The sculpture not only diminishes Jude’s self-consciousness as an artist, but additionally supports her in rediscovering her own identity.
In my current position as an art student, I feel compelled and inspired to follow in Jude’s stead, and search for an outlet in which I can freely take pride in producing work for my own pleasure, and based upon my personal standards. Concerning my brother: we are slowly but surely reforming our bond, and opening ourselves up to each other once more. As Jude states, “We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.” My brother and I, despite our differences, have always been and always will be part of the same story. We share the same experiences, despite being on opposite ends of the experience, and that in itself allows room for us to understand each other better than anyone else can.
In conclusion, the realistically flawed characters in I’ll Give You The Sun revealed my own self-deprecating tendencies, and urged me to improve upon myself for the better. Jude Sweetwine’s personal uncertainty, dissociation from her identity, and insecurity toward her artwork are all conflicts that I understand—But seeing them in a literary character allowed me to realize I am not alienated by my insecurities. Despite the fact that the novel is labeled under the “young adult” genre, the reality that I can still relate to the characters in various aspects, years after reading the piece, earns my utmost appreciation. Additionally, further analysis upon the novel enabled me to better understand my the motives of my brother, as well as his own insecurities and vulnerability.
