December 11, 2016 - 20:55
In Ruth Ozeki’s novel All Over Creation, identity and environment intersect continuously, especially for one character in particular. Yumi Fuller, the daughter of a Japanese woman and a native Idahoan, grows up in an area where she, as an Asian American, looks quite unlike any of her other peers. At age fourteen, she runs away, leaving her home environment behind and focusing on creating a new life, as well as a new identity, for herself. No longer is she the foreigner in Idaho. She is now the self-made woman: A real-estate agent, professor, and single mother.
In many ways, Yumi’s relationship to her environment can be very much likened to a seed: A seed is both affected by the environmental pressures that surround it, and grows in such a way that reflects the conditions, but at the same time, a seed will give rise to a plant, altering the makeup of the environment forever. Yumi never loses the hurt and fear that she took up at a young age, but simultaneously changes the environment she lives in to reflect her growth and maturity.
It becomes clear from the beginning of the novel that Yumi very much wants to be a different person than she originally was at fourteen. It is not so much that she desires to have grown and developed into a mature adult; she desires to be a new woman, distinct even at the cellular level from the one she was at fourteen: “The mirror was the same, but the girl was gone, leaving only phantom limbs and a flicker of her excitements. The particular collection of cells that comprised her, the ones that Elliot had stroked and fucked, had long ago been sloughed off and replaced by new ones. Cellular turnover occurred in seven-year intervals, didn’t it?” (Ozeki 208) The reason for this is simple: guilt. Yumi continues to blame herself for what Elliot did to her. She claims to be complicit in the act, even if she tries to rationalize to herself that she was a child, and couldn’t have been held responsible. She claims to have flirted with him, and that even “… in my awkward, childish way, I had seduced Elliot, hanging around the classroom after school, loitering by his desk at dusk.” (Ozeki 209) Because of this feeling of guilt, the feeling that she, herself, is responsible for having sexual relations with an older man and getting pregnant, she desires to be a completely different woman. She now claims to be a woman that is in control, powerful, and can set a better example for her own children.
How much of that woman who she claims to be is she actually? When coming back into the environment of Idaho and her hometown, she seems to slip back into her old self quite easily. The fourteen-year-old girl who left twenty-five years ago is slowly but surely reappearing, as if she just left home for a few hours. She picks up smoking again within hours of touching down in Idaho, after fourteen years of having quit. She does, however, feel guilty for the continuation of this bad habit. It is possible that her guilt in relation to smoking could have been caused by her daughter’s condescending remarks, coupled with Yumi’s desire to be a good role model for her children. Although, even when she is drinking whiskey, perfectly legally and responsibly, she remarks that she feels as if she and Cass have to be careful, as if they could “get caught.” (Ozeki 75)
Her fear of authority and policemen also establishes a link between her past and current self. When she ran away, she went through difficult times and struggled with drugs, alcohol, and addiction. Naturally, this instilled a primal fear of authority deep within her. Even at times when she has nothing to be afraid of, fear still lingers: “… no matter how often I assert my own authority—that of a parent, a professor, an abandoned Ph.D.—the time I spent on the street overshadows it all.” This psychological complex can also be linked to her affair with Elliot. As a young girl, having an affair with an older man was both exciting and dangerous for her. She had to hide what she was doing from her parents and other members of authority. This, wrapped up with her fear of being arrested due to her use of drugs while living on the street, explains her dread of authority figures. The fact that she still, after all of these years, has still not overcome this, makes one important aspect of human nature very clear: We never change completely. Small features of ourselves that we think we may have suppressed or covered up still linger in the dark. It only takes the right environment to bring them to light.
It is not just the environment that affects Yumi’s personality, however; Yumi also desires to reshape her environment, to use her newfound confidence and maturity to associate new, more positive ideas with the place where she grew up. This is especially true when it comes to Yumi’s relationship with Elliot. In her youth, he seduced her. He told her she was beautiful, told her she was mature, and she ate up his praise like candy: “’Don’t ever change, lady,’ he sang. Your heart swelled. You couldn’t help it. ‘Mmmm,’ he whispered, nibbling your neck. ‘You’ll always be yummy to me.’” (Ozeki 28) She grew dependent on him, for love, for appreciation, for anything and everything. Due to the impact he had on her life, her childhood home and even Idaho in general hold such strong negative connotations. Once back in Idaho, she decides to open up the relationship with Elliot again. At first, it is mostly out of curiosity that she pursues this relationship. However, it soon becomes evident that he is definitely more dependent on her for affection and she realizes that the tables have now turned. She knows that this time, she is totally in control: “His hopes had finally caught up with the ones I’d discarded some twenty-five years earlier.” (Ozeki 387) By becoming the aloof, emotionless one in the relationship, she redefines what the relationship, as well as what Idaho, means to her.
The connection between identity and environment is a complex and multifaceted one. Why, or better, how, a person is affected by the environment versus affects the environment is still uncertain. Latour, in his essay Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene, also highlights the way individuals interact with the environment in terms of the environmental impact that humans have. He argues that humans attempt to control their environment, just as the Army Corps of Engineers tried to alter the flow of the Mississippi River (Latour 9). Yumi, just like this group of engineers, attempts to change her environment. She pushes back against the negative associations she has made in Idaho, and tries to redefine them. Simultaneously, the environment is changing Yumi. Latour makes a case for this phenomenon as well, by recognizing that “One of the main puzzles of Western history is not that ‘there are people who still believe in animism,’ but rather the naïve belief that many still have in a deanimated world of mere stuff…” (Latour 7). If we indeed see the environment as animated, it becomes easier for us to recognize the ways in which it changes Yumi. It is no longer simply a backdrop that simply has an affect on her just by the nature of its being; the environment of Idaho is a living, breathing space which affects just as a living thing would.
The concept of the environment being alive is not a noteworthy one; the aborigines of Australia believe very strongly that their ancestors are represented in the landscape that surrounds them (Tilley 41). Their ancestors inhabit the trees, the rocks, and the streams. In the same way, Yumi’s thoughts and memories pervade the environment of Idaho. The environment becomes animated for her and shapes her actions and thoughts, even. The reason that she slips back into her old self is simple: the only memories she has of this area are of her as a child. Since those are the only memories and thoughts present in this place, those are the thoughts that affect her.
Yumi is a very interesting and noteworthy character in this novel. She represents the seed itself: Once small, fragile and gentle, grown up into a sturdy and resilient plant. She represents reinvention, rebirth, and renewal, qualities we associate with a natural environment and plant life. The fact that she is able to both be affected by and affect her environment at the same time strengthens the power of the seed simile even more. A seed takes in nutrients from its environment, and the end product is often highly dependent on the quality of the soil, the abundance of water, etc. In addition, a seed is also changing the environment, pushing away the dirt, making its own path, and rising up into the sunlight.
References:
Latour, Bruno. Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene. New Literary History, Volume 45, Number 1, Winter 2014, pp. 1-18.
Ozeki, Ruth. All Over Creation. Penguin Books, 2003.
Tilley, Chris. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments. Oxford, 1994. pp. 35-54