Life isn't fair. It's one of the first lessons that every human learns as a child, and it is a lesson forever found in western literature. Modern American literature, however, has embraced this, giving the public dozens of novels filled with cynicism and regret every year, many of them the cream of that year's literary crop.
Hubert Selby, Jr., has been turning out brilliant, well-written novels for the past twenty years, but in 1978 he created one of the most unique examples of the American tragedy ever to appear on the shelves of a bookstore. Requiem for a Dream, recently re-released by Thunder's Mouth Press to celebrate the release of Darren Arronofsky's film adaptation this past September, lacks one simple element of the novel: it has no protagonist. Try as one might, it is impossible to find a hero within the pages of Selby's creation.
Despite the lack of a hero, four principal characters dominate the imagery of the book, each one amazingly believable and uniquely characterized. The story, which takes place in the mid-seventies in Coney Island, Brooklyn, centers on Sara Goldfarb, an aging widow addicted to diet pills and desperate for perfection and adoration; Harold, her son, a junkie constantly searching for true happiness; Tyrone C. Love, Harold's best friend, a young African American in much the same position as Harold; and Harold's girlfriend, Marion, conquered by the streets and depression at an early age, and sometimes prostituted by local dealer and pimp, Angel.
The plot is mundane - not the novel's strongest point - but it sets the stage for a poignant study of self-deprecation and the search for something better in life. The novel tells us of Sara's daily musings in her apartment, dreaming of fame and perfection, and of Harold, Tyrone, and Marion's dealings on the street, which culminate in their plan to steal a pound of pure heroin and become rich selling it.
From the beginning of the novel, the reader establishes a deep pity for each character. Sara, with her dazed moments of staring at the TV and her conversations about self-improvement with her dead husband Seymour, is presented as one of the most pathetic personas in modern literature, and yet her "normal" position in life and seemingly standard situation is frightening. She could very well be any housewife in America, widowed or not.
Harold and Tyrone, too, are eerily familiar to the late high school- or early college-aged boy. Each is given his own dialect, contrasting Harold's laid-back wonderings from Tyrone's haughty, Ebonics-flavored passages. This gives them more believability than most modern characters. With each character speaking in his or her own voice, it is easy to be drawn into the novel and see it as something real - to feel for each character and to truly experience with willful suspension of disbelief that every writer seeks to bring his or her readers.
The story becomes a backdrop for this amazing character study, and draws the reader into the lives and desires of each of the novel's characters. Sara's obsession with fame and bodily perfection is painted as a desire for not only attention but for adoration and, ultimately, the love which she feels she has been denied not only since the death of her husband but for her entire life. The younger characters' actions are soon painted as a pointless and fruitless search for happiness in the realm of the material - they look for some release from their depression in sex, in drugs, and finally, in money.
As the novel draws to a somewhat shocking and unexpected conclusion, the reader begins to realize that none of the characters are true heroes of the story. They are neither conquering nor being conquered in life - they simply are living. In the introduction to the September 2000 re-release, Darren Arronofsky addresses this issue in his new preface by saying that the principal character and hero of the story is addiction itself. It is very easy to see this when reading the novel, which centers around each character's addictions, for drugs, for sex, for love, and, ultimately, for happiness in life.
With credible characterization, fast-paced plot work, and a deeply emotional message, Requiem for a Dream is a beautiful and amazingly well-crafted novel. The message of futility and grief is sure to bring to tears even the most stoic of readers.
