“You Are What You Are” From “Break” Is Real and I Read It
Fans of Apple TV+’s The Breakup , your day is about to get better: Apple has released eight chapters of You, You Are, the fictional self-help book by Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale that is central to the show’s plot. If you want to read it, you can even download it for free or listen to the audiobook version narrated by Ricken himself (actor Michael Chernus).
The brief excerpts from You, You Are that appear in Severance are some of the funniest moments in the series, but the book released isn’t just for laughs: it’s also an excellent representation of how propaganda works, both in the Severance universe and in real life.
In the “outside” world of the series , “You, You Are” is a joke, a pretentious self-help book that only fools take seriously. But in the world of innies, an ill-gotten copy of You, You Are is seen as the work of a remarkable genius with the power to change lives and change the world. This is only because the only other book in Lumon’s office is the Compliance Handbook , a ponderous, quasi-religious text that exists only so Lumon can keep its employees in check. The innie’s reaction to Ricken’s work reminds me of those people who read half a book (or one title) and suddenly think they know everything about a complex topic, and who haven’t met some of them?
What is the series “You, You Are” about?
The excerpt from Ricken’s book is hilarious and fits the darkly comic style of the series. It begins: “As a child, Wolfgang Mozart is said to have killed another boy by slamming his head into a piano. Don’t worry. My research for this book has proven that this statement is not true,” and continues in the same vein.
Ricken’s book purports to be a practical guide to self-improvement, asking readers to gain self-knowledge by following a series of steps:
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Determine your YouType (more on this below), write it on a piece of paper and pin it to your dressing table.
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Write your name on another sticky note and stick it next to your YouType.
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Select a theology and add its “totem” to your YouShrine. “It could be a Christian cross, an An-Ra scarab, or a Masonic square and compass,” writes Ricken, and also invites you to “use my photograph or engraving.”
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Add something you find sexy. As the author says: “Something that whispers to your feet in a voice that only they can hear. It could be a wartime pinup photo, a favorite pair of underwear, or a still life of a stringy pumpkin.” Ricken also suggests using his photo for this step.
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Think about an insult you heard. Write an acrostic poem using the letter of each word of the insult and add it to your vanity. Ricken says, “Everyone laughs at you as soon as you leave the damn room,” which is what Severance’s protagonist Mark S once told him.
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Print out a copy of the poem written by Ricken and tape it to your vanity.
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“Conceive and create a charitable organization based on a cause you care about… Whether you want to reduce the bear population, bathe the infirm, or send bottled water to astronauts, stay the course until the organization is procedurally viable. Then, once your licensing papers arrive, attach them to your vanity among other totems.
This is where the passage ends. It’s a pity; I hear slaps on page 197.
Are there any clues about the plot of Severance in You, You Are ?
In Chapter 3, Ricken mentions that he went to the theater to see “an American religious satirical film that I consider the most overrated piece of commercial cinema ever made,” the film we know as Sister Act . There’s more evidence in the series, but Sister Law does provide some confirmation that Severance takes place somewhere now, in something similar to our world, despite the ancient computers and everyone driving cars from the 80s and 90s.
The You You Are also gives us a ton of background on Ricken’s character and history. For example, he was conceived and born as part of a “nine-month performance art project created by [his] parents called ‘Smells Like Afterbirth, Bastard’.”
There is no information on how Ricken got enough money to afford a relatively luxurious lifestyle. It’s not his book sales, of course, and his parents were performance artists, so it’s hardly family money either – unless, as some have suggested online, Ricken is actually the black sheep of the Egan clan.
Perhaps the most important thing about “You, You Are” are the passages in which we learn about Ricken’s feelings for Mark’s (possibly) dead wife Gemma. When Ricken writes about Gemma, he seems to be in love with her. This may be a red herring, but as Severance progresses, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ricken’s feelings for Gemma become a major plot point.
The deeper meaning of “Thou, thou art” in the Severance universe.
The “big idea” at the heart of Ricken’s book is “YouType,” a kind of fictional psychological concept common in self-help books, pseudoscience, and cults—think “love languages,” the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory, and Scientology’s “Emotional Tone Scale.”
According to Ricken, each person corresponds to one of the five YouTypes: Coward, Warrior, Dove, Scribe and Vestal. This reflects the ethos of the Lumon Compliance Guidelines . According to Cyrus Egan, there are four “characters”: Sorrow, Gaiety, Horror and Malice, and all the others are determined by the relationship of each within itself. The ponderous religiosity of Cyrus and the crazy aphorisms of Rickens seem to be two sides of the same coin.
In the series, when the “powers that be” in Lumon discover that the book has inspired the inhabitants to revolt, their reaction is not to ban or discredit You That You Are . Instead, they approach Ricken with a proposal to write a new version of the book specifically for innies. Ricken, always selfish and attention-seeking, really wants to continue the project so that at least someone will take his book seriously. Lumon’s plan, no doubt, is to take (unintentionally) subversive ideas from Ricken’s book and twist them to support Lumon’s status quo. This is not a difficult job, considering that the book contains passages such as: “A society with rotting workers cannot prosper, any more than a man with rotting toes can gallop.”
This is all a sly commentary on how revolutionary ideas are regularly manipulated and used in the service of the ruling class, and how easily people can be deceived into feeling that they are “sticking to the Man” even when the Man is both benefiting and protecting himself by cutting his teeth out of dangerous ideas. Imagine Wal-Mart selling Che Guevara T-shirts, or one of the richest corporations in the world making a TV show about the dehumanization and suffering of corporate drudgery.