From Elizabeth Strout on Olive Kitteridge (and why we will study Olive for insights into Type Eight):
"Ferocious and complicated and kindly and sometimes cruel. In essence, you are a little bit of each of us."
"Which students did you like the most, Olive?" "The ones who had spit and vinegar to them."
"The reader might need a little break from her, at times, as well." Sometimes 8s are told they are too much; all in the eye of the beholder.
"Her desire to appease her appetites." Donuts and a general difficulty modulating her force figure prominently in the story!
" I think Olive is partially aware of how people in the town perceive her, but there are difference perceptions of her, remember. To some she is insightful and likeable. To others she is bossy and contentious. I think to some extent she believes that she doesn’t care what people think of her, but I also think that she does care. She is easily wounded, as when her first daughter-in-law insults her new dress. And she is fiercely proud of her New England ancestry. I think she may not understand that her relationship to her son is as possessive as it originally is. but the best thing about Olive is her forthrightness, her ability to eventually see more and more of herself. While she is, like most of us, blind to aspects of herself, she does not shy away from the things she beings to perceive about herself; she is willing to strive after the truth. This makes her commendable, I think."
"Ferocious and complicated and kindly and sometimes cruel. In essence, you are a little bit of each of us."
"Which students did you like the most, Olive?" "The ones who had spit and vinegar to them."
"The reader might need a little break from her, at times, as well." Sometimes 8s are told they are too much; all in the eye of the beholder.
"Her desire to appease her appetites." Donuts and a general difficulty modulating her force figure prominently in the story!
" I think Olive is partially aware of how people in the town perceive her, but there are difference perceptions of her, remember. To some she is insightful and likeable. To others she is bossy and contentious. I think to some extent she believes that she doesn’t care what people think of her, but I also think that she does care. She is easily wounded, as when her first daughter-in-law insults her new dress. And she is fiercely proud of her New England ancestry. I think she may not understand that her relationship to her son is as possessive as it originally is. but the best thing about Olive is her forthrightness, her ability to eventually see more and more of herself. While she is, like most of us, blind to aspects of herself, she does not shy away from the things she beings to perceive about herself; she is willing to strive after the truth. This makes her commendable, I think."
Dale's Notes on Olive Kitteridge (book)
Chapter: Pharmacy. Denise is an innocent and vulnerable, and is the object of Olive’s judgement (warriors and wimps). Olive said of her “’…she didn’t seem to have a bit of oomph to her.” (p 20)
Olive’s first words in the novel (p 5) show what is part of Type Eights focus on BIG and SMALL…. “‘Mousy… Looks like a mouse’” in judgement of Denise. “‘Not keen on it,’” about having Denise and her husband over for dinner. (p7) “‘Oh for God’s sake… Leave it’ Olive commanded, standing up. ‘Just leave it alone, Henry. For God’s sake.’ Henry… perhaps at the sound of his own name being spoken sharply, sat back, looking stricken.” (All this from Olive over spilled ketchup at the dinner.) She swears regularly in the book. Type Eight Excess and Misuse of Force.
(p11) “… in the act of loving his wife he was joined with all men in loving the world of women, who contained the dar, mossy secret of the earth deep within them.” “‘Goodness,’ Olive said, when he moved off her.” — Type Eight directness, a speaking directly of their own experience without edits.
Henry’s character is set up as a softie and it contrasts Olive’s exterior toughness: (p 17)“The one time in his youth when he had shot a doe, he’d been sickened by the way the sweet, startled animal’s head had swayed back and forth before its thin legs had folded and it had fallen to the forest floor. ‘Oh you’re a softie,’ Olive had said.”Henry is a big softie and tough on the inside, Olive is tough on the outside and a big softie on the inside (as you get from the book from perspectives of others). Olive can be hot in an argument at night and is totally over it in the morning (not a Type 1 or 4 ). Orientation to time: This seems a Type Eight trait that when it’s done it’s done, regardless of what is left in their wake— they know what is at their feet now (not what is behind or in the future).
p 18 Olive’s softness when care is required: “Henry’s mind seemed to take a picture of that moment, his son’s instinctive deference at the very same time they heard Olive’s voice in the next room. ‘ Oh, you poor child’ she said, in a voice Henry would always remember— filled with such dismay that all her outer Olive-ness seemed stripped away. ‘You poor, poor child.’”
(p 21) Yet weeks later when Henry says that Denise is helpless after her husband’s death, Olive replies “People are never as helpless as you think they are.”
Chapter: Incoming Tide. Kevin is an innocent, and vulnerable. Olive and Kevin both had mentally ill parents who suicided; we get a deeper glimpse into her own vulnerability and empathy. An eye for the weak and vulnerable. Often from the perspective that early on they had to be strong bc of weakness in adults/caregivers/system. Patty’s miscarriage is another mention of vulnerability that Olive can have empathy for.
Kevin’s memory (p 37) is that Olive was “the seventh-grade math teacher that kids were scared of. He’d been scared of her, even while liking her.” The scene of them in the car is so tense, sweet and tender. “‘I thought of you, Kevin Coulson… I have. I liked your mother…’ ‘I know you did,’ Kevin said, turning to the big, intelligent face of Mrs. Kitteridge. ‘She liked you.’”
Olive proves herself a savior, a protector of the lost and vulnerable in this chapter.
Chapter: Starving. p 96 highlights another innocent and vulnerable person that Olive encounters, and Olive is seen by neighbor Harmon as a more full human being. “‘Jesus’ said Nina. ‘Okay I’m sorry.’ Olive Kitteridge was crying. If there was anyone in town Harmon believed he would never see cry, Olive was that person. But there she sat, large and big-waisted, her mouth quivering, tears coming from her eyes…. “‘I don’t know who you are, but young lady, you’re breaking my heart… I never saw a girl sick like you’ and she touched the girl’s head. She must have felt, beneath her large hand, something Harmon didn’t see, because she slid her hand down to the girl’s bone of a shoulder, and the girl— tears creeping from her closed eyes— leaned her cheek on Olive’s hand… ‘And we’re going to get you help... never, never, never, never give up.’” Care, strength, vulnerability outside is seen and vulnerability inside can be shared, a connection to helping (2) those clearly in need of it.
Chapter: A Different Road. p 105 describes Olive considering Andrea Bibber “had never seemed to her to be anything more than a small, dull, asseverating mouse. Like her mother.” “‘Huh.’ Olive, big, solidly built, towered over her” as Cynthia attempts to point out Henry and Olive’s vulnerability after their hospital experience, and Olive will not let her guard down. “’I see,’ said Olive again, quite loudly this time. ‘Aren’t they ugly words, Cynthia, that those people thing up—— process, internalize, depressive, whatever. It’d make me depressive to go around saying those words all day.’” I’m strong, you’re a wimp, everything else is stupid bullshit.
“‘Always nice to hear other people’s problems.’” (p 108) (hahhhha!)
SMART/KNOWLEDGABLE/COMPETENT/WISE: “Olive had graduated magna cum laude from college.”
Vulnerability in getting sick and needing to go to the hospital first for the bathroom, and submitting to the exam. The entire scene of open gown, violence, threats, Henry wetting his pants— all vulnerability. And yet we are treated to Olive’s perspective of the nickname pointing to the wimp factor in “Pig Face.” Olive has no tolerance for weakness or anyone praying: “‘God will you shut up with that crap?’” She feels betrayed by Henry’s weakness: “No matter how many times she went over it in her mind, she didn’t understand why Henry had sided with the nurse like that. Unless it was because the nurse didn’t swear (Olive bet that nurse could swear) and Henry, trussed up like a chicken and about to be shot, had been mad at Olive for swearing. Or for putting down Pauline earlier, when Olive had been trying to save his life.” I am big says the 8, you are little.
Henry accuses Olive of being too much, in general; including “‘from the day your father died, you took over that boy’s life. You didn’t leave him any room. He couldn’t stay married and stay in town, too.’” (p 120 121)
At the end of this chapter, the final paragraph describes some kind of love that she had for the red-haired boy who was part of the attack and would now be in prison. An eye for the vulnerable— a tapping into Type Nine’s Universal Love, maybe?
Chapter: Basket of Trips. Another chapter about someone vulnerable, lost and in grief; and Olive finds herself there. “An innocent, Olive thinks, gazing at this woman. A real one, You don’t find them anymore. Boy, you do not.”
“‘We all want to kill someone at some point.’ Olive’s ready right now to say, if Marlene wants to hear, the different people she might like to kill.” (p179)
Chapter: Ship in a Bottle. More vulnerable innocents, Winnie and Julie (class/home situation). Julie reports what Olive said in class one day: “’Don’t be scared of your hunger. If you’re scared of your hunger, you’ll just be one more ninny like everyone else.’ ‘I know that, dopey. But she’d say these weird things, very powerfully. That’s partly why kids were scared of her. You don’t have to be scared of her— if she’s still teaching next year.’ ‘ I am, though. Scared of her.’” Julie ends up showing us her strength and independence, as does her little sister Winnie (withholding a secret like a Type 5).
Chapter: Security. Vulnerability of citizens of the U.S. is evoked “fragile as a class of kindergarten children, brave in their terror. Jumping from the windows— it clutched her heart, and she had felt a private, sickening shame to know that two… had come down through Canada and walked through the airport in Portland {Maine}”— A Body Type 8 that senses their emotions, and like 9s are bodily-environmentally (Portland, Maine) sensitive. (p200)
Afterwards, she is described as having “a sudden surging greediness for life.” LUST IS ZEST FOR LIFE, GREEDINESS is the challenge of Type 5 connecting point. (p202) “Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed.” (p211)
Chapter: River. She meets Jack in a vulnerable state, lying on the ground wondering if he is dead.
“‘He’s like a child… He touches everything. Honest to god…’” BIG/LITTLE/INNOCENT (p264-265)
“… and that night he lightly kissed her on the mouth… At the same time in her head she criticized him. He’s afraid to be alone, she thought. He’s weak. Men were. Probably wants someone to cook his meals, pick up after him. In which case, he was barking up the wrong tree. He spoke of his mother with such frequency and in such glowing terms— something had to be wrong there. If he wanted a mother, he’d better go looking elsewhere.” You can see Olive is being touched, and her defense is to tell a big/little story that Jack is weak or has a manipulative man-boy agenda for a mother. (p262) “‘However, I am not the least bit sophistocated. I’m essentially a peasant. And I have the strong passions and prejudices of a peasant….’ ‘ Perhaps you mean you’re a cowboy’” Jack replies good-naturedly.
READ THE FINAL THREE PARAGRAPHS OF THIS CHAPTER, a wonderful reflection on vulnerability and wisdom and experience in aging as embodied people. Beautiful!!!
Chapter: Interview with Elizabeth Strout and Olive Kitteridge
" ES: You are ferocious and complicated and kindly and sometimes cruel. In essence, you are a little bit of each of us.
ES: I thought the reader might need a little break from her, at times, as well.
ES: A heedlessness in her desire to appease her appetites (doughnuts).
OK: That I couldn’t control everything. I didn’t think I could, of course. But I still saw that— that things happen that you can’t control. That you can go on. Amazing, really.
ES: Which of your students reminded you most of yourself? OK: The ones who were mad… I mean angry mad. The ones who had some spit and vinegar to them.
ES: I think Olive is partially aware of how people in the town perceive her. but there are difference perceptions of her, remember. To some she is insightful and likeable. To others she is bossy and contentious. I think to some extent she believes that she doesn’t care what people think of her, but I also think that she does care. She is easily wounded, as when her first daughter-in-law insults her new dress. And she is fiercely proud of her New England ancestry. I think she may not understand that her relationship to her son is as possessive as it originally is. but the best thing about Olive is her forthrightness, her ability to eventually see more and more of herself. While she is, like most of us, blind to aspects of herself, she does not shy away from the things she beings to perceive about herself; she is willing to strive after the truth. This makes her commendable, I think. "
Throughout the novel: Olive’s vulnerability seems to reside in her love of (and her reluctant reliance on) Henry, her internal emotional betrayal of (and subsequent loyalty to) Henry, and her love of her son Christopher who leaves her more and more each chapter. Where else does her strength show up, in pure form?
Reflection
(Quick note on handout below: You do not need to "subscribe" in order to access the download.)
Chapter: Pharmacy. Denise is an innocent and vulnerable, and is the object of Olive’s judgement (warriors and wimps). Olive said of her “’…she didn’t seem to have a bit of oomph to her.” (p 20)
Olive’s first words in the novel (p 5) show what is part of Type Eights focus on BIG and SMALL…. “‘Mousy… Looks like a mouse’” in judgement of Denise. “‘Not keen on it,’” about having Denise and her husband over for dinner. (p7) “‘Oh for God’s sake… Leave it’ Olive commanded, standing up. ‘Just leave it alone, Henry. For God’s sake.’ Henry… perhaps at the sound of his own name being spoken sharply, sat back, looking stricken.” (All this from Olive over spilled ketchup at the dinner.) She swears regularly in the book. Type Eight Excess and Misuse of Force.
(p11) “… in the act of loving his wife he was joined with all men in loving the world of women, who contained the dar, mossy secret of the earth deep within them.” “‘Goodness,’ Olive said, when he moved off her.” — Type Eight directness, a speaking directly of their own experience without edits.
Henry’s character is set up as a softie and it contrasts Olive’s exterior toughness: (p 17)“The one time in his youth when he had shot a doe, he’d been sickened by the way the sweet, startled animal’s head had swayed back and forth before its thin legs had folded and it had fallen to the forest floor. ‘Oh you’re a softie,’ Olive had said.”Henry is a big softie and tough on the inside, Olive is tough on the outside and a big softie on the inside (as you get from the book from perspectives of others). Olive can be hot in an argument at night and is totally over it in the morning (not a Type 1 or 4 ). Orientation to time: This seems a Type Eight trait that when it’s done it’s done, regardless of what is left in their wake— they know what is at their feet now (not what is behind or in the future).
p 18 Olive’s softness when care is required: “Henry’s mind seemed to take a picture of that moment, his son’s instinctive deference at the very same time they heard Olive’s voice in the next room. ‘ Oh, you poor child’ she said, in a voice Henry would always remember— filled with such dismay that all her outer Olive-ness seemed stripped away. ‘You poor, poor child.’”
(p 21) Yet weeks later when Henry says that Denise is helpless after her husband’s death, Olive replies “People are never as helpless as you think they are.”
Chapter: Incoming Tide. Kevin is an innocent, and vulnerable. Olive and Kevin both had mentally ill parents who suicided; we get a deeper glimpse into her own vulnerability and empathy. An eye for the weak and vulnerable. Often from the perspective that early on they had to be strong bc of weakness in adults/caregivers/system. Patty’s miscarriage is another mention of vulnerability that Olive can have empathy for.
Kevin’s memory (p 37) is that Olive was “the seventh-grade math teacher that kids were scared of. He’d been scared of her, even while liking her.” The scene of them in the car is so tense, sweet and tender. “‘I thought of you, Kevin Coulson… I have. I liked your mother…’ ‘I know you did,’ Kevin said, turning to the big, intelligent face of Mrs. Kitteridge. ‘She liked you.’”
Olive proves herself a savior, a protector of the lost and vulnerable in this chapter.
Chapter: Starving. p 96 highlights another innocent and vulnerable person that Olive encounters, and Olive is seen by neighbor Harmon as a more full human being. “‘Jesus’ said Nina. ‘Okay I’m sorry.’ Olive Kitteridge was crying. If there was anyone in town Harmon believed he would never see cry, Olive was that person. But there she sat, large and big-waisted, her mouth quivering, tears coming from her eyes…. “‘I don’t know who you are, but young lady, you’re breaking my heart… I never saw a girl sick like you’ and she touched the girl’s head. She must have felt, beneath her large hand, something Harmon didn’t see, because she slid her hand down to the girl’s bone of a shoulder, and the girl— tears creeping from her closed eyes— leaned her cheek on Olive’s hand… ‘And we’re going to get you help... never, never, never, never give up.’” Care, strength, vulnerability outside is seen and vulnerability inside can be shared, a connection to helping (2) those clearly in need of it.
Chapter: A Different Road. p 105 describes Olive considering Andrea Bibber “had never seemed to her to be anything more than a small, dull, asseverating mouse. Like her mother.” “‘Huh.’ Olive, big, solidly built, towered over her” as Cynthia attempts to point out Henry and Olive’s vulnerability after their hospital experience, and Olive will not let her guard down. “’I see,’ said Olive again, quite loudly this time. ‘Aren’t they ugly words, Cynthia, that those people thing up—— process, internalize, depressive, whatever. It’d make me depressive to go around saying those words all day.’” I’m strong, you’re a wimp, everything else is stupid bullshit.
“‘Always nice to hear other people’s problems.’” (p 108) (hahhhha!)
SMART/KNOWLEDGABLE/COMPETENT/WISE: “Olive had graduated magna cum laude from college.”
Vulnerability in getting sick and needing to go to the hospital first for the bathroom, and submitting to the exam. The entire scene of open gown, violence, threats, Henry wetting his pants— all vulnerability. And yet we are treated to Olive’s perspective of the nickname pointing to the wimp factor in “Pig Face.” Olive has no tolerance for weakness or anyone praying: “‘God will you shut up with that crap?’” She feels betrayed by Henry’s weakness: “No matter how many times she went over it in her mind, she didn’t understand why Henry had sided with the nurse like that. Unless it was because the nurse didn’t swear (Olive bet that nurse could swear) and Henry, trussed up like a chicken and about to be shot, had been mad at Olive for swearing. Or for putting down Pauline earlier, when Olive had been trying to save his life.” I am big says the 8, you are little.
Henry accuses Olive of being too much, in general; including “‘from the day your father died, you took over that boy’s life. You didn’t leave him any room. He couldn’t stay married and stay in town, too.’” (p 120 121)
At the end of this chapter, the final paragraph describes some kind of love that she had for the red-haired boy who was part of the attack and would now be in prison. An eye for the vulnerable— a tapping into Type Nine’s Universal Love, maybe?
Chapter: Basket of Trips. Another chapter about someone vulnerable, lost and in grief; and Olive finds herself there. “An innocent, Olive thinks, gazing at this woman. A real one, You don’t find them anymore. Boy, you do not.”
“‘We all want to kill someone at some point.’ Olive’s ready right now to say, if Marlene wants to hear, the different people she might like to kill.” (p179)
Chapter: Ship in a Bottle. More vulnerable innocents, Winnie and Julie (class/home situation). Julie reports what Olive said in class one day: “’Don’t be scared of your hunger. If you’re scared of your hunger, you’ll just be one more ninny like everyone else.’ ‘I know that, dopey. But she’d say these weird things, very powerfully. That’s partly why kids were scared of her. You don’t have to be scared of her— if she’s still teaching next year.’ ‘ I am, though. Scared of her.’” Julie ends up showing us her strength and independence, as does her little sister Winnie (withholding a secret like a Type 5).
Chapter: Security. Vulnerability of citizens of the U.S. is evoked “fragile as a class of kindergarten children, brave in their terror. Jumping from the windows— it clutched her heart, and she had felt a private, sickening shame to know that two… had come down through Canada and walked through the airport in Portland {Maine}”— A Body Type 8 that senses their emotions, and like 9s are bodily-environmentally (Portland, Maine) sensitive. (p200)
Afterwards, she is described as having “a sudden surging greediness for life.” LUST IS ZEST FOR LIFE, GREEDINESS is the challenge of Type 5 connecting point. (p202) “Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed.” (p211)
Chapter: River. She meets Jack in a vulnerable state, lying on the ground wondering if he is dead.
“‘He’s like a child… He touches everything. Honest to god…’” BIG/LITTLE/INNOCENT (p264-265)
“… and that night he lightly kissed her on the mouth… At the same time in her head she criticized him. He’s afraid to be alone, she thought. He’s weak. Men were. Probably wants someone to cook his meals, pick up after him. In which case, he was barking up the wrong tree. He spoke of his mother with such frequency and in such glowing terms— something had to be wrong there. If he wanted a mother, he’d better go looking elsewhere.” You can see Olive is being touched, and her defense is to tell a big/little story that Jack is weak or has a manipulative man-boy agenda for a mother. (p262) “‘However, I am not the least bit sophistocated. I’m essentially a peasant. And I have the strong passions and prejudices of a peasant….’ ‘ Perhaps you mean you’re a cowboy’” Jack replies good-naturedly.
READ THE FINAL THREE PARAGRAPHS OF THIS CHAPTER, a wonderful reflection on vulnerability and wisdom and experience in aging as embodied people. Beautiful!!!
Chapter: Interview with Elizabeth Strout and Olive Kitteridge
" ES: You are ferocious and complicated and kindly and sometimes cruel. In essence, you are a little bit of each of us.
ES: I thought the reader might need a little break from her, at times, as well.
ES: A heedlessness in her desire to appease her appetites (doughnuts).
OK: That I couldn’t control everything. I didn’t think I could, of course. But I still saw that— that things happen that you can’t control. That you can go on. Amazing, really.
ES: Which of your students reminded you most of yourself? OK: The ones who were mad… I mean angry mad. The ones who had some spit and vinegar to them.
ES: I think Olive is partially aware of how people in the town perceive her. but there are difference perceptions of her, remember. To some she is insightful and likeable. To others she is bossy and contentious. I think to some extent she believes that she doesn’t care what people think of her, but I also think that she does care. She is easily wounded, as when her first daughter-in-law insults her new dress. And she is fiercely proud of her New England ancestry. I think she may not understand that her relationship to her son is as possessive as it originally is. but the best thing about Olive is her forthrightness, her ability to eventually see more and more of herself. While she is, like most of us, blind to aspects of herself, she does not shy away from the things she beings to perceive about herself; she is willing to strive after the truth. This makes her commendable, I think. "
Throughout the novel: Olive’s vulnerability seems to reside in her love of (and her reluctant reliance on) Henry, her internal emotional betrayal of (and subsequent loyalty to) Henry, and her love of her son Christopher who leaves her more and more each chapter. Where else does her strength show up, in pure form?
Reflection
- What do Type Eight Protectors bring to the world as gifts?
- What are the challenges when this attention is not in right measure?
- If you are a Type Eight, what does this character have to teach you and others?
- If you are not a Type Eight, what might be available to you in Type Eight energy that could enhance your life?
(Quick note on handout below: You do not need to "subscribe" in order to access the download.)