October 26, 2015 - 14:15
"when she had him along, the world looked different, and she liked the way she saw things she'd never noticed before... the way she herself felt acutely visible with the baby in her arms, and the way some people's faces lit up when they saw a child" (page 130).
Cass, who's always wanted to be a mother, realizes that when she has Poo with her she's seen as one. She notices that people treat her differently, and that she can "tell a lot about people" when he's with her. In some ways, our identity (or the salience of different aspects of who we are) is affected by the people with whom we choose to be in relationship.
"I rubbed my eyes to rub away the images before they unfurled into memories... in an unconscious sequence of automatic gestures, my hand reached toward the wall justas my foot crossed the threshold, resulting in a flood of illumination that startled me -- the spatial relationships were familiar but the details of the room confused me with their sudden clarity. For a moment I wondered where I was" (page 66).
When Yumi first comes home, everything is familiar -- very little in Liberty Falls has changed. And yet, while the environment has changed, she is different and the town has continued without her... which leads to an interesting contrast between who she is and who people think she is. Her home environment is both influenced by and influencing her.
'I hadn't seen him like this since I was a kid... his sentences began to unfurl, tracing the peaks and valleys of his conviction, and his sudden confidence was like the scent of his aftershave, bracing to my pride" (page 301).
Lloyd regains his confidence as he speaks, presumably because he's passionate about his topic. Yumi says he used to be like this, part of things, and "now he had it back". It's interesting to think about how our environment influences how we feel internally, and that how we feel internally influences how we present ourselves externally, and that how we present ourselves externally goes back to influencing our environment-- it's like a giant triangle of identity-environment effects.