Grief and Loss in Fredrik Backman’s My Friends
Thematic Claim: Grief as a Recurrent, Physical Wound
In My Friends, grief is not a linear process or a stage to pass through; it is a recurrent, physical wound that reopens every time loss is remembered or newly discovered. Backman shows that the death of a loved one—whether from overdose, domestic violence, accident, or illness—does not end with the funeral. Instead, grief resurfaces across decades, reshapes identities, and paradoxically becomes the force that binds the living to one another and to the art they create.
Grief Across the Plot: Three Key Expansions
1. Fish’s Overdose and Louisa’s Unfinished Calling
Louisa’s grief for her best friend Fish is the engine of the present-day story. Fish taught her to break into buildings, shared foster care, and promised that the main character never dies in fairy tales. When Fish dies of an overdose, Louisa wakes screaming into the dark: “I give up! Just come out!” This visceral, repetitive mourning is not a phase—it is a nightly ritual. Louisa’s art vandalism, her escape to the train, and her eventual determination to become an artist all emerge from this unclosed wound. She paints wings on Kimkim’s gravestone and later on Ali’s, because she cannot bear to leave them without markers. Her grief is physical: she cries so hard her ribs feel broken. Even years later, hearing of Ali’s death makes her feel as if Ali died “now.” This illustrates Backman’s claim that stories make loss recur.
2. Joar’s Guilt and the Death of His Mother
Joar’s grief is tangled with guilt and rage. He planned to kill his abusive father, but his mother came home early and was killed by a blow to the temple intended for his father. The discovery of her body—flashbacks reveal Joar screaming “MOM” repeatedly—shatters him. He spends years drinking, unable to board a plane to visit Kimkim, wanting to be remembered as “young” and “beautiful.” His grief is silent, hidden behind gruffness, but it leaks out when he confesses on the roof. He drove Kimkim away for the same reason: he could not bear to lose another person he loved. Joar’s grief is a repetitive wound that keeps him stuck in the harbor town, unable to move forward until Ted and Louisa force him to tell the story.
3. Ted and the Artist (Kimkim) – The Repetition of Loss
Ted loses two people: his father (offstage, discovered at the piano with beer cans) and his best friend, the artist Kimkim. Ted’s grief is quiet and caretaking. He spends two years in Kimkim’s apartment after being stabbed, soothing his dying friend, promising to be happy when Kimkim is gone. But happiness never arrives; instead, Ted carries the ashes and the painting, fulfilling the artist’s last wish. The grief is physicalized in Ted’s limp, his germophobia, his inability to live. Kimkim himself grieves his mother’s mental illness and his father’s distance; his art becomes a tool to process that. When Christian’s mother quotes Tranströmer—“You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be”—she articulates the novel’s refusal to offer closure. Grief is permanent incompleteness.
Character and Symbol Connections
- Louisa and Fish: Fish’s “red fish” symbol (drawn beside the painting) becomes a recurring motif of life amid loss. The red fish is the small, vibrant detail in a seascape—like the memory of Fish in Louisa’s present. The knife and soap (Louisa and Fish’s protection against assault) symbolize the precarity of their lives; the knife reappears in Joar’s story as an object of intended violence.
- Joar, Ali, and the Skulls: Skulls in Kimkim’s painting are stolen from a janitor, representing death as coincidence and absurdity. Ali’s surfboard death is similarly random. Joar’s hidden knife (later taped soaps) shows his attempted agency against loss, but he cannot prevent it.
- Ted and the “One of the Sea”: The painting itself is a memorial: it hides tiny flowers for Joar’s mother and includes the ghosts of Fish and Ali (Louisa later sees Kimkim’s drawing on Joar’s fridge). Art becomes the container for grief—a shield, as Christian’s mother says, against eternity.
- Kimkim’s Ashes and the Train: The relay of conductors who pass the ashes from one to another mirrors the way grief is passed between friends. Ted cannot escape the urn; he carries it everywhere, until the ashes are buried and Louisa paints wings on the stone.
Complexity and Contradiction
Backman does not romanticize grief. Joar’s grief makes him cruel—he drives Kimkim away, isolates himself, and drinks. Ted’s grief makes him passive; he hides in the artist’s apartment for two years. Louisa’s grief makes her reckless and angry. Yet grief also generates connection: the four friends on the roof, the library heist, the reverse heist of the painting. Grief is both destructive and creative. The novel’s final image—Louisa calling Ted from art school about a teenage artist she recognizes as “one of us”—shows that loss creates a tribe. The dead are not replaced, but the living find each other through shared wounds.
Another contradiction: the characters often say they want to be happy, but happiness is impossible because grief is permanent. The artist’s final wish—“I want you to be happy when I’m gone”—is a burden Ted cannot fulfill. Instead, he teaches in a prison, offering stillness to others. That is not happiness; it is a form of surviving. Backman suggests that “coping” means learning to carry the weight, not shedding it.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does Louisa’s grief for Fish differ from Ted’s grief for the artist? Louisa’s grief is active and vocal—she breaks into buildings, draws graffiti, yells at the night. Ted’s grief is inward and caretaking; he soothes the dying artist and later carries the ashes. Both are physical: Louisa’s ribs ache; Ted’s limp worsens. But Louisa channels loss into rebellion, while Ted channels it into stillness. The novel shows that there is no single way to mourn.
2. What role does the painting “The One of the Sea” play in processing grief? The painting is a vessel for multiple deaths. It hides flowers for Joar’s mother, contains skulls for the unknown dead, and includes a tiny red fish that Louisa draws next to the original. When Louisa later sees Kimkim’s drawing on Joar’s fridge, the painting becomes a site where all the lost characters coexist. Art, as Christian’s mother says, is humanity’s defense against death.
3. Why does Joar drive Kimkim away after Ali’s death? Joar is overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for everyone. He knows that if Kimkim stays, Joar will have to hold him up—and Joar is already drowning in guilt and alcohol. He yells cruel things so Kimkim will leave and become the artist he is meant to be. This sacrifice is not altruistic; it is a desperate act of self-protection that also saves Kimkim.
4. How does the theme of “recurrence” appear in the narrative structure? Backman uses flashbacks that loop back to the same moments: the pier, the crossroads, the “HERE!” cries. Death is repeated in storytelling: Louisa hears of Ali’s death as if it just happened, Ted loses his father again in memory, Joar relives finding his mother. The structure mimics grief’s nature—it never stays in the past.
5. What does Christian’s mother mean when she says, “You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be”? She rejects the idea that grief can be resolved or that characters should “move on.” Instead, incompleteness is the human condition. The novel’s final image—Louisa spotting a teen artist she recognizes as “one of us”—shows that loss forges a permanent identity. The living carry the dead forward, unfinished but connected.