Two Dimensions of "Animal Dreams" By Barbara Kings
Two Dimensions of "Animal Dreams" By Barbara Kingsolver
When painful memories surface and reopen healing wounds it seems like running away from the past is the easiest path out of misery’s way. However, it would be disguising the inevitable truth that life cannot continue without people facing what they fear. In the book Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver demonstrates the importance of the past and its necessary presence in lives to create a future. A character in Animal Dreams learns that moving forward in life usually means facing the past or forging head first into the present.
Codi is just one of many young women who try to run from the truth in hopes of never again confronting the problem, only to find themselves back where it all began. Codi distances herself from people in an attempt to escape her past, but finds it more difficult than she originally expected. At the Labor Day weekend fiesta people are lively and inviting. However, Codi is unenthusiastic by the thought of conversation, distances herself from the crowd and stands “near the edge of things” (59). She both physically and emotionally distances herself from people. She has the chance to talk to Loyd, her former boyfriend, but carelessly settles that she “would have had to step on a hundred toes to get to him” (61). She does not see Loyd as a significant part of her life any longer and discourages herself from confrontation. Codi tries to forget her secret teen pregnancy and hides the truth from everyone. However, returning to Grace, Arizona where it began brings back memories of that life-altering event she desperately wants to forget. During a casual conversation with Loyd, the father of the baby, Codi is reminded of the “child of Loyd’s that was unknown to him” (92). Saddened by her past, she thinks, “It felt furtive and strange to hold it in mind in his presence, as if I were truly holding it, and he might see it” (92). Codi is discomforted by the thought, and is quick to push it away. However brief it may be, those reminders are enough to bring about old emotions of confusion and helplessness, things many people would much rather avoid.
Codi, like many people, allows herself to come out of the isolated skin she has been living beneath in the past and be given opportunities to find her purpose in life for...