Student Question
How does Buck die in Ordinary People?
Quick answer:
In Ordinary People, Buck died in a boating accident. Buck and his younger brother Conrad had taken the boat out onto the lake when a storm occurred and caused the boat to capsize. While Conrad managed to hang on and survive, Buck drowned. Conrad and his parents' attempts at dealing with this tragedy, and with Conrad's failed suicide attempt, haunt the Jarrett family and eventually bring about the family's dissolution when Conrad's mother, Beth, leaves.
In Judith Guest’s 1976 novel Ordinary People, it is revealed during the course of the story that Buck drowned when the boat in which he and Conrad had been sailing capsized.
Ordinary People is the story of a family torn apart by tragedy. Conrad, the surviving sibling of the Jarrett family, is the novel’s main protagonist . An emotionally distraught teenager, Conrad carries within himself guilt for having survived the boating accident while his brother, a popular figure at the local high school, perished. Conrad’s difficulties dealing with Buck’s death—the details of which are related in a flashback sequence late in the novel—result in a failed attempt at killing himself. His parents, the foundation of whose previously tranquil, affluent suburban lives has been shaken to its core by the events of the previous year (Buck’s death and Conrad’s attempted suicide), have descended into a passionless existence. Beth,...
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Conrad’s mother, has attempted to fill her grief by submerging herself in activities like golf while Cal, the father and Beth’s husband, is forced to lean for emotional support on a business partner for whom he had similarly provided support during the partner’s marital difficulties. Cal struggles with the growing emotional distances between himself and the two surviving members of his family. An orphan in his youth, he had taken great pride in the financial and social stability he had provided his family.
While Buck’s death, and the prominent role he played in life among his family and friends, provides the darkness at the core of his family’s existence, it is Conrad and his guilt about surviving the accident that took Buck’s life that haunts him while awake and in his sleep. It is during a dream-like sequence in chapter 25 that Buck relives the accident and that explains his sense of guilt and of anger at Buck for failing to hold on to the capsized boat.
The description Guest provides of the accident and the two brothers’ attempts at survival is emotionally wrenching, the consequences of Buck’s death already conveyed in the preceding pages. A fierce storm has raged and Buck tries desperately to save them both. Buck was always the adventurous, braver of the two, and manages a grin even while acknowledging the severity of the situation, telling the terrified Conrad, “We screwed up this time, buddy.” Buck drowns, and the Jarrett family will never be the same.