The Particular Sadness of Being A Chair by Lauren

The Particular Sadness of Being A Chair by Lauren - April 2014 Scholarship Essay

“The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” is a novel that many despise. They call it confusing, odd or just plain stupid. It is my very favorite book.

The story is written through the eyes of a young girl named Rose, who can taste the emotions of anyone who prepares food for her. It’s an intriguing concept, and that’s what first attracted me to this novel. I enjoyed following along on Rose’s journey and rooting for her as she, like me, turned her curse into a blessing. My favorite character from this book, however, is not Rose. It’s her troubled older brother Joseph.

Everyone in Rose’s family has a certain “special talent”. Her grandfather could smell emotions, Rose could taste them, and her father and brother had mystery talents that are left up to the reader’s imagination.

Joseph was a quiet young man who was, for all intents and purposes, anti-social. He rarely left his room and when he did, he would mysteriously vanish out of thin air, only to reappear a half hour later, looking sickly and exhausted. This vanishing act puzzled young Rose and even perplexed Joseph’s closest and only friend.

At the end of the novel, we are informed that Joseph could (bear with me on this one)… become one with the furniture. He could morph himself into a chair, or bed, or lamp. This might seem absurd or meaningless, but it is actually far from it.

I believe that Joseph had the gift of touch. He could feel what others were feeling through touching the same object as they had. That sounds pretty cool at first, but as we learned with Rose, feeling other people’s pain is not all it’s cracked up to be. Joseph faced not only his own adolescent struggles, but he was also forced to feel every hurt, every pleasure… every precious human emotion that surrounded him.

The human mind is a delicate and intimate place. It laughs, it cries, it goes crazy sometimes. Joseph honed his ability and used it to halt that beautiful rollercoaster. He was overwhelmed with the complexities of life. Chairs don’t get sad. Chairs don’t discover their mother is having an affair. Chairs don’t stutter or worry about whether other people like them or not. Joseph eventually chose to permanently become an inanimate object, and essentially end his own human life, so that he wouldn’t have to feel things anymore.

I feel Joseph’s pain on this one. I struggle with social anxiety as well… so much that my face turns bright red the moment I leave my house. I can sympathize with someone who would rather be a chair than a person. That makes sense to me. Some days that sounds quite lovely to me. What I have learned in my eighteen years, though, is that life is worth it. Both the good times and the times we wish we were a chair. It all comes together and morphs into something beautiful, even if we can’t always see it when it’s right there in front of us.