November 6, 2015 - 13:52
There is a complex, yet undeniable relationship between environment and identity. Every aspect of one’s identity has been molded by the environments they have resided in. In All Over Creation, Ruth Ozeki deliberately lays out an elaborate web of almost inconceivable connections between her characters and environments to convey the importance of the relationship between environment and identity. In All Over Creation, Ozeki answers the fundamental question, “What makes me, me?” by exhibiting the dependency of individual identity on environment.
Environment is a generic term referring to anything outside of an individual. This can include people, objects, ideas, or emotions. Anything that can directly or indirectly influence the character in focus can safely be identified as environment. Within environment there are two branches: natural environment and social environment. Natural environment is relatively simple. Our natural environments are the physical locations which influence our lives. In All Over Creation, the protagonist, Yumi’s, natural environments include Idaho, Hawaii, and the various destinations she inhabited in between. In contrast, social environments are the tangible and intangible convergences between the lives of two or more living beings.
If environment is anything outside of an individual, identity is everything within an individual. Identity is composed of three parts: physical identity, hereditary identity, and individual identity. Physical identity is made up of appearance and other physical qualities of the body such as ethnicity or health. Hereditary identity are the qualities passed on from other individuals or groups of individuals, often family, and includes religion, values, and certain behaviors. Everything that is specifically unique to an individual—skills, interests, and behaviors—make up individual identity. While each component of identity may develop separately, the memories, values and experiences which shape identity are all dependent on environments the individual inhabits.
Within many regions, a population’s identity or numbers can influence the natural and social environments just as much as the environment influences identity. For example, different variations of ethnic or religious identities lead to extremely distinctive ideals and behaviors which affect environments in correspondingly different ways. A lack of diversity, or smaller population size will often affect the environment with a more conservative mindset. The physical region can just as easily draw in groups with certain values while repelling others. One person may find urban life alluring, while another may prefer quiet, rural areas. Therefore, it can be acknowledged that the relationship between environment and identity is symbiotic in nature.
The most common manner in which natural environments impact identity is by limiting or encouraging certain behaviors and thoughts. Yumi Fuller grows up on a potato farm in Liberty Falls, Idaho. The monotony of farm life combined with ethnic homogeneity are a limiting factor in Yumi’s youth. Her limits push her to rebel in an effort to create an individual identity. She explains, “I was a random fruit in a field of genetically modified potatoes,” displaying the isolation she felt from the rest of the community (4).
Being the sole Japanese, albeit half, child born into a white dominated community, causes disturbances in Yumi’s social environment. Her irregularity, as a minority in Liberty Falls, changes the way others interact with her. As a child she was ostracized, even unintentionally. In the elementary school Thanksgiving play, “Yummy was always the Indian Princess […] It wasn’t like they didn’t have real Indians in school. They did” (7). Yumi was chosen to fulfill a role which represented a minority, because in her community she was the minority, not the “real Indians.” Her isolation, in turn, causes Yumi to behave in such a way that she stands out for her rebelliousness, rather than for an ethnic identity she has no control over. Shifting others’ focus from what she cannot control, to what she can control, provides Yumi with feelings of power born from the reclaiming her identity. Eventually sexual interaction with her ninth grade teacher, Elliot Rhodes, who has a self proclaimed, “Asian fetish,” takes Yumi too far in her rebellion and destroys the sense of control she has gained over her identity. At the age of fourteen, Yumi runs away from home and only returns twenty-two years later when her parents are nearing death. Every learning experience Yumi has in the novel is constructed by her environments.
Within environment there is a subclass— interactions within families— which leads to what I have referred to as hereditary identity. For this purpose, family will consist of a group of people who offer each other support both physically and mentally for extended amounts of time. The family introduced in All Over Creation, and the most central factor to the plot, is the Fuller’s. The family originally consists of Yumi, her mother, Momoko, and her father, Lloyd. The hereditary identity which Yumi receives is made up of her parents’ mental and habitual traits. In Chapter 1, Yumi states, “honestly, I had never liked potatoes much. I preferred rice, a taste I inherited from my mother, Momoko” (4). This seemingly insignificant preference is a small manifestation of Momoko’s identity within Yumi.
As time progresses, Yumi’s family grows to include her children, the Quinn’s, and the “Seeds of Resistance,” a group of young environmentalists. Yumi reads a book called “The Harvest of the Years,” to her daughter: “‘… The newborn child has a heritage of tendencies and inclinations which furnish the foundation of groundwork from which he must build his house of Life.’” (177). Ozeki’s emphasis on family dynamics and identity call attention to the enormous amount of identity that is inherited. A list can be made of the instances in which traits are passed down through family. Lloyd and Yumi’s stubborn personalities mirror each other. Yumi’s identity is imposed upon her son Phoenix, who almost reciprocates her action of running away from the family at the exact age of fourteen. Again, in the character of Elliot Rhodes, the reader is informed that his repulsive habits of womanizing and lying are actually reminiscent of his father, who Elliot explains, “ran out on my mom when I was just a kid. […] He was a real womanizer […] My dad was a lousy role model” (224). Elliot’s warped personality can be attributed to the family environment of his upbringing.
Within her novel, Ozeki’s characters reveal their pasts and the logic behind their life choices to give their actions a strong sense of reality and draw in readers. Through character histories, Ozeki examines the central role of environment in forming unique identities. Her questioning of the compositional makeup of human identity brings readers to the conclusion that the formation of identities relies entirely on environments.
Ozeki, Ruth. All Over Creation. Penguin, 2004. Print.