Family Duty and Responsibility
What This Theme Explores
Family Duty and Responsibility in The Life We Bury interrogates what we owe the people who raised us or grew up beside us, especially when those bonds are frayed by addiction, neglect, or violence. It asks whether duty is a sentence we serve or a commitment we choose—and what happens when love and obligation pull in opposite directions. The novel contrasts the protective, sacrificial care Joe Talbert gives his brother with the Lockwoods’ warped “loyalty,” exposing how responsibility can either nurture or destroy. Ultimately, the book argues that true responsibility is measured not by proximity or blood, but by the moral courage to protect the vulnerable, even at personal cost.
How It Develops
At the outset, duty is a weight Joe is desperate to escape. He has fled to college to carve out a future, but the moment his mother is arrested, he’s dragged back into the role of parent—this time not just to her, but to his autistic brother. The frustration and anger that surface early are less selfishness than a survivor’s fatigue, the ache of a child forced to grow up too soon (see Chapter 1-5 Summary). Here, responsibility feels like a trap: someone else’s chaos becoming Joe’s crisis.
In the middle stretch, responsibility complicates every sphere of Joe’s new life. He folds Jeremy into his routine, jeopardizing his classes, his job, and a fragile romance with Lila Nash, even as his mother weaponizes his conscience to wring money and attention out of him. Joe’s investigation into a separate crime threads a counterpoint through this struggle: a family whose “duty” operates as concealment and complicity, where protection means enabling harm. The novel thus reframes responsibility as a moral question rather than a familial reflex.
By the end, Joe’s duty transforms from something he resents to something he chooses. When Jeremy is in danger, he confronts his mother and her abusive boyfriend, accepts legal and practical responsibility for his brother, and recalibrates his own future accordingly. This is not self-erasure; it’s self-definition. Joe claims a life in which love dictates his obligations—and in doing so begins to build a new, healthier unit with Lila and Jeremy.
Key Examples
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The Phone Call from Jail: The very first crisis snaps Joe’s new independence back into the orbit of his family’s dysfunction, forcing him to weigh compassion against self-preservation. His mother’s pleading and insults are less a request than a demand that he resume the role of fixer—because he always has.
“Dammit Joey…get down here. You don't love me…you ungrateful…I'm your mother. Joey, they…they…get down here. Get me out.”
The scene establishes duty as a pressure point where love, guilt, and anger collide—and where inaction has immediate consequences for Jeremy. -
The Bail Hearing: Joe must choose between his savings for college and his mother’s freedom, a stark embodiment of future versus family. She manipulates him by dangling Jeremy’s wellbeing as leverage.
“Well then…” She leaned back in the plastic chair. “…you'll have to take care of Jeremy while I'm in here, cuz I'm not goin’ on no damned monitor.”
Sacrificing the coffee-can fund is more than lost money; it’s the cost of being the only responsible adult in a family that exploits responsibility rather than sharing it. -
The Glass Menagerie: Watching Tom’s conflict with his fragile sister mirrors Joe’s own dilemma so closely that the distance between art and life collapses.
Then the son of a bitch onstage looked directly at me and said, “Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be.”
The moment crystallizes Joe’s grief and loyalty, revealing that what feels like a trap also defines the best part of him—and helps him let Lila see the burden he carries. -
The Final Confrontation: When Jeremy’s safety is at stake, Joe refuses the old script of appeasing his mother and instead asserts a new one grounded in protection.
“You made your choice,” I said. “You chose Larry, so Jeremy's coming to live with me.”
“What about your precious college?” Her voice pitched with sarcasm as she spoke.
For a brief second, I saw my future plans withering on a vine. I drew in a deep breath and sighed. “Well,” I said, “I guess I made my choice, too.”
Here, responsibility becomes a vow Joe writes for himself, not a rule imposed by others.
Character Connections
Joe’s arc tracks the theme’s movement from obligation to devotion. He begins as an exhausted caretaker whose life has been defined by other people’s emergencies; he ends as a self-directed guardian who chooses the work of safeguarding Jeremy. The growth isn’t martyrdom—it’s moral clarity, and it gives him a steadier sense of self.
Douglas Lockwood embodies responsibility’s darkest mutation: he shields Dan "DJ" Lockwood not to protect the vulnerable but to preserve power and reputation, even if it means lying, obstructing justice, or condoning violence. His “duty” functions like camouflage for evil, revealing how loyalty without a moral compass becomes complicity.
Kathy Nelson converts the language of duty into a tool of control. By abdicating her own responsibilities and exploiting Joe’s conscience, she turns care into a currency she can spend. In her hands, family ties are not bonds of love but ropes that keep Joe tethered to chaos.
Finally, Carl Iverson offers a wartime counterexample: responsibility as brotherhood. His fidelity to fellow soldiers—especially Virgil Gray—complicates judgments about his past but clarifies a principle the novel upholds: duty that risks oneself to protect the vulnerable bears a moral weight that legal or familial labels alone cannot capture.
Symbolic Elements
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The Coffee-Can College Fund: A tin full of small, hard-earned bills symbolizes Joe’s hope for escape—and the fragile boundary between the life he wants and the life he inherited. When it’s emptied to post bail, the gesture exposes how often responsible people must spend their dreams to keep a family afloat.
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The Glass Menagerie: As an intertext, the play functions like a mirror angled at Joe’s soul. It frames responsibility as both anchor and chain, forcing him to see that fidelity to a fragile sibling is not weakness but a throughline of who he is.
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Jeremy’s Toothbrush: The mundane urgency of buying a toothbrush after rescuing Jeremy turns abstract duty into daily labor. It’s a quiet emblem of the “chain of small emergencies” that defines caregiving—and of Joe’s acceptance that real responsibility lives in the details.
Contemporary Relevance
The novel’s portrait of “parentification” speaks to countless young people navigating school, work, and caregiving for relatives battling addiction, trauma, or disability. It captures the hidden costs—financial strain, deferred ambitions, emotional burnout—while honoring the dignity in choosing to protect someone who depends on you. In an era that celebrates individual advancement, the book insists that maturity sometimes means redrawing the timeline of success to include the people you refuse to leave behind. It also warns that appeals to “family loyalty” can mask abuse, reminding readers to test duty against ethics, not pressure.
Essential Quote
“Well,” I said, “I guess I made my choice, too.”
This line distills the theme’s turning point: responsibility ceases to be something done to Joe and becomes something he declares. In choosing Jeremy, Joe accepts sacrifice without surrendering his future, reframing duty as an act of love that shapes identity rather than stifling it.