The Life We Bury

About the Book

The novel The Life We Bury follows the protagonist, Joe Talbert as interviews an alleged rapist and murderer named Carl Iverson for his autobiography class. When Joe interviews Carl, Carl maintains he was falsely accused of raping and murdering Crystal Hagan, who was fourteen years old at the time of her death. Interested in Carl’s case, Joe tries to solve the mystery of who killed Crystal Hagan alongside his neighbor; love interest; and later girlfriend Lila. Although Joe really develops a crush on Lila, Lila does not really seem to return his feelings. However, what seemed to be Lila uninterested in Joe was actually years of suffering Lila tried to hide. She eventually opens up to Joe and tells him she earned a reputation of being promiscuous in high school after losing her virginity to a guy she really liked, who later spread rumors that she was “easy”. Lila then acted on the reputation she earned and earned the nickname “Nasty Nash”, Nash being her last name. He then tells her she was raped and took a year off from college, which she tells Joe earlier in the novel, because she was cutting herself, exposing mental illness. When she exposes all of this to Joe, she tells Joe she has issues, to which Joe replies, “I’m not afraid of issues”.

Impact

Although mental illness is not the main theme of The Life We Bury, Lila’s mental illness serves as a bigger idea in the text: acceptance of one’s past. Lila tells Joe about her past, and he accepts her, flaws and all, similar to Lawson’s idea. This passage made me sentimental because even though I don’t have a gravitation to overly sentimental love stories, I love the love stories in which two characters who are broken can find solace within each other. Joe tells Lila that he is willing to accept her no matter how broken she is from her mental illness. This made me have faith that there is someone out there willing to love and accept me despite my past issues with mental illness. Joe takes care of Lila despite her past problems, and makes sure he is there to ease her pain.

Values

As I said before, The Life We Bury does not have a heavy emphasis on mental illness, but it touches on it significantly enough to teach values as it pertains to it. To elaborate, it teaches people to accept one another despite each other’s struggles with it in the past and “issues” as Lila puts it. In other words, people need to be as loving and accepting to others as possible. Furthermore, it also teaches that if one is going through a hardship, there should be a friend there to help ease the pain. In other words, it is important for one person to comfort someone else struggling with mental illness or even a traumatic experience without judgement so that one knows that one has support.

Significance to My Students

The idea of acceptance of others that Furiously Happy portrays is similar to how it is portrayed in The Life We Bury. Although Lila is ashamed of her past and “issues”, Joe still thinks she is a beautiful person inside and out. Although romantic relationships are not prevalent among fourth or fifth graders, this teaches people that they should love each other regardless of the past they have been through. Similarly, fourth or fifth graders should learn to love their peers, or at least accept them, despite their backgrounds. Students should never feel that they should have to be ashamed of their past or who they are and should always support each other. Furthermore, there should be there to comfort fellow students in a time of need. As teachers, it is important to encourage a friendly classroom environment in which the entire class is like a family, and we are there to support and encourage and support one another, and we can overcome our issues together. Therefore, the values The Life We Bury teaches that are important to fourth or fifth graders are love, support, and acceptance.