44 pages • 1 hour read
Ottessa MoshfeghMy Year of Rest and Relaxation
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
On the train to Long Island, the narrator looks down to find shopping bags, white roses (addressed to Reva), and jewelry; in her Infermiterol-induced blackout, she has been shopping. She remembers neither the shopping nor what station she is supposed to get off at, but one of the train-service crew tells her that her stop is in the New York village of Farmingdale. At the Farmingdale station, Reva drives up; the narrator, who assumes she unwittingly arranged the pick-up while sleepwalking, also gradually realizes with horror that her narcotized self must have agreed to attend Reva’s mother’s funeral, which is today. Her skin crawls at the thought of having to comfort Reva through it—but Reva, who believes the narrator’s attendance is a genuine act of friendship, is moved by the gesture.
They drive to Reva’s childhood home, where Reva’s family is preparing for the funeral. The house is a small ranch-style, and even before entering, the narrator is certain it will be repulsive and “cheap” inside, unlike her parents’ expensive estate. While Reva introduces the narrator to her family, the narrator is surprised that Reva seems unembarrassed at how middle-class her family is. Reva then takes her to her childhood bedroom in the basement so the narrator can nap. When she is alone in Reva’s room, the narrator is unable to fall asleep, so she reflects on her relationship with her own mother. It is clear from Reva’s grief that she “had loved her mother in a way that I hadn’t loved mine” (135). Even though the memories of her parents were painful, the narrator realizes that she cannot conjure up any emotions. She tests her theory by recalling her father’s death and how she spent a week crying by his side while he died from cancer, while her mother drank herself sick in her bedroom. She remembers the funeral, how she had yearned for her mother’s comfort, and how her mother died by suicide weeks later. The narrator feels almost nothing.
At Reva’s mother’s funeral, the narrator feels oddly guilty, as if Reva’s suffering is her own fault. She feels secondhand embarrassment watching Reva’s emotional eulogy, which the narrator feels is clearly rehearsed and badly delivered. Later, she thinks about her time with her friend, believing Reva’s grieving process has been somewhat pathetic. Watching Reva “take what was deep and real and painful and ruin it by expressing it with such trite precision gave me reason to think Reva was an idiot, and therefore I could discount her pain, and with it, mine” (166). The narrator likens Reva to her sleeping pills, as both can turn everything, good or bad, into “fluff I could bat away” (166).
After the funeral, Reva insists on driving the narrator back to the city. At the narrator’s apartment, they spend New Year’s Eve watching porn movies on mute and passing a bottle of alcohol back and forth. The narrator takes an Infermiterol and tells Reva she loves her before she passes out.
Chapter 4 Analysis
In this chapter, the narrator is forced to reckon with her loveless relationship with her now-dead parents, as well as consider the impact that her hibernation project has had on her emotional state so far.
When the narrator wakes up on the train to Long Island following an Infermiterol-induced black out, she realizes that she is on her way to attend the funeral of Reva’s mother, something she likely would not have done had she been awake. This is one more instance of her hibernation project’s irony: She wants the sleep to be a form of escape from such emotional pain, but her sleepwalking self has other arrangements in mind. It is also darkly ironic that this gesture—attending the funeral—is the kindest thing the narrator has done for Reva thus far, yet she made the gesture in her sleep and without her own consent. Reva, unaware of this, is as grateful as the narrator is appalled.
Going to Reva’s childhood home for the first time since knowing her gives the narrator the opportunity to get insight into a part of Reva’s life that she has not yet shared. The narrator is not surprised to find that Reva’s home is what she herself would have referred to as “unglamorous,” but she is surprised that Reva seems unembarrassed, “like she had dispensed with her usual uppity pretensions” (130). Reva’s lack of concern for putting up a front suggests that she both feels comfortable enough with the narrator to share parts of her true self and is more preoccupied with her grief. The visit puts the narrator’s unreliable narration on vivid display; as she describes Reva’s eulogy, she relishes painting it as shallow when, in fact, there is nothing to actually suggest insincerity or hollowness. Reva shows the narrator nothing but long-suffering kindness throughout the visit, yet the narrator is wholly unmoved by the hospitality and even seems unaware of it, reframing all her friend’s beneficence as something clumsy and trivial.
Nevertheless, something about Reva’s grief affects the narrator. The narrator’s recognition of this grief—“the particular sadness of a young woman who has lost her mother” (134)—forces her to reckon with some uncomfortable truths. Sitting in Reva’s childhood bedroom, she admits to herself that “Reva had loved her mother in a way that I hadn’t loved mine” (135). The discrepancies between her relationship with her mother and Reva’s relationship with her mother makes the sadness in the air feel fake and cliched to the narrator; while it is a sadness that she can recognize, it is not one that is particularly resonant, given her relationship with her mother was unemotional and distant.
Reva’s grief for her mother drives the narrator to remember the deaths of her parents and how unceremoniously they left her alone in the world. Even though the memories themselves represent the narrator’s unresolved trauma and pain, she realizes that she cannot actually feel anything. Halfway into her year of rest and relaxation, the narrator feels no pain or regret—in fact, she feels nothing at all—when she thinks about her parents. She views this as a sign that her sleep is working and that she is becoming immune to the painful memories she is trying to escape. The irony, of course, is that such emotional numbness is no sign of healing, and the hibernation project has not brought her any closer to rebirth.
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By Ottessa Moshfegh
