Ambition and Success Theme Analysis

Dr. Alice Howland and Dr. John Howland are very ambitious, career-driven people. The married couple are both tenured professors at Harvard University, and they have devoted their lives to their research, Alice in psycholinguistics and John in biology. Their children—Anna, Tom, and Lydia—have inherited their parents’ drive and stubborn determination to accomplish their goals. When Alice is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, however, she gradually loses her ambition and is soon confronted with the fragile nature of what she’s always considered success to look like. In her portrayal of Alice’s gradual decline from distinguished Harvard professor to dependent Alzheimer’s patient, Genova provides a stern reminder that success is not always measured in how many accolades collected in one’s career, but in how much happiness one has experienced in one’s personal life.

Alice had always been ambitious, but her success didn’t come easy. As a mother, Alice faced numerous obstacles that her male counterparts did not. In thinking about all she had to overcome over the course of her career and early motherhood, Alice also doubts “whether [John’s] career would have survived” if he were the one who had to juggle raising children alongside his work. This provides valuable insight into how she felt about her own success: it’s something that she had to work twice as hard as her husband in order to achieve. Alice compares her experience with that of her female colleagues who also had children early in their careers, many of whom “simply jumped the track entirely.” This observation highlights the typical fate that awaits young mothers in academia, and gives the reader an idea of the immensity of the obstacles Alice had to overcome. Without her natural ambition, Alice may never have achieved as much success as she ultimately did. That success, however, came at a cost: she wrapped up so much of herself in her work that career-based success came to define her worth, making her Alzheimer’s diagnosis far more difficult to accept.

Alice not only overcame obstacles, but eventually made an important mark on the field of psycholinguistics and as a Harvard professor. These successes give her a sense of comfort even as she began to lose her memory of them. As she reviews the presentation she’s going to deliver at Stanford University, Alice feels proud that “her contributions mattered and propelled future discovery.” What this also means is that, in a sense, she’ll continue to be a part of the academic world even as her disease prevents her from being active in it. This, it would seem, has always been her primary goal, as shown by her “belief that she had both a duty and opportunity to inspire the next generation in the field” as a professor. This is also the role she takes most seriously even as she gets sicker, insisting on staying on as advisor to her grad student, Dan. Furthermore, her students agree that she’s made a lasting impact as a teacher, as shown by the way their end-of-year evaluations “had […] nodded in agreement” for the past 25 years. For Alice, the personal and professional impacts she’s made on her students are her most important career successes.

There is no doubt that Alice’s career-oriented ambitions have been met with more success that she could have foreseen, but Alzheimer’s puts a halt to her career sooner than she expected. As a result, she’s forced to reevaluate her definition of success and redirect her ambitions towards enjoying the time she has left with her family. When Alice’s Alzheimer’s begins to have a noticeable impact on her role as a professor and lecturer, she steps down from her teaching and speaking duties. As words gets out and her colleagues start avoiding her, Alice begins to feel “bored, ignored, and alienated in her office.” This leads her to believe that all her hard work and academic success haven’t been as meaningful as she believed. As she reevaluates her priorities, Alice realizes that all she really wants is to stay coherent long enough to meet her grandchildren, see Lydia act, and see Tom fall in love. It’s her family, not her career, that she most wants to remember. With her ambitions taking a different direction, Alice finds a new kind of success: “a sense of relief and peace she hadn’t known in a long time” as she meets her new grandchildren and grows closer to her adult children. This happiness stays with her long after she loses memories of her career.

In the final days of Alice’s awareness, it’s love for her family, and the love they have for her, that proves to be the ultimate success. This contradicts her former definition of success and sends the message that personal relationships, not career wins, constitute true success.