The seed represents the beginning, survival, resistance, and a culture of farming. In Ruth Ozeki’s novel, All Over Creation, Ozeki redefines the meaning of seeds. Seeds are present in nearly every pivotal moment in the novel and are used to show the characters’ willpower, hard work, skill, and concern for seeds. The seeds are a symbol of the characters’ strength, persistence, loss, and will to survive. Seeds take on different meanings and roles throughout the novel including a demonstration of anger and letting go. Seeds uncover connections that lie below the seemingly unyielding surface.

Meghna Patny

Paper # 8

31 October 2014

Lloyd the Soil

​Yumi was often seen as the rebel. She was the girl who ran away and left her family and the girl who had an affair and got pregnant by her teacher. She was branded “the bad seed”. On wikitionary, being a bad seed is “a genetic source of bad behavior or other results”. Therefore, calling Yumi the "bad seed" would imply that Lloyd also had some bad inside of him but he was just a regular Idaho farmer. Yumi wasn't a bad seed, she was just an organically grown potato in a field full of GMOs.

At its root, the word identity correlates to being who you are as a person is. On that account, it defines an individual as one from the rest of the population. Although identity is a characteristic that changes frequently, it consists of a principles, morals and values that help to create the basic foundations of life. The individual’s principles, morals and values are developed by the environment, which nurtures them. Identity is shaped into an individual through contextual influences (e.g., family, background and experiences) that are influenced by the environment. 

Both children and plants have needs in order to live healthy lives. These needs can be fulfilled by one person, such as father and farmer Lloyd Fuller. His notoriety for raising near perfect potato plants was matched with his notoriety for raising a daughter who repeatedly broke the social norms of their town. Lloyd seemed like a capable man who knew who to create the necessary environment for his prized potato plants; however, his notion to follow a formula, that raising a daughter is as simple as raising a plant, created a rift in his relationship with his own Yumi Fuller. Lloyd neglected to provide for Yumi’s emotional needs, and this troubling childhood environment provided Yumi with a foundation that as too weak, causing her to uproot herself from her town.

Breana Genaro

Altering Environments and Dynamic Identities

Ozeki’s Novel, “All Over Creation” explores the way in which life is complexly interconnected. It explores our relationship to nature and to each other. It also establishes complex relationships that defy our expectations of how such relationships are supposed to work. One of the most interesting relationships explored in this novel is the one between Lloyd and his daughter Yumi. In this novel, Ozeki shows their relationship fall apart due to unrealistic expectations and unshakable moral differences.

 Childhood is the foundation of any personality. According to my psychology class, the attachment towards security starts from childhood. There is a famous experiments tested on toddlers about their attachment types. There are mainly three types of attachments: the secure attachment, the avoidant attachment, and the resistant attachment. For secure attachment, the toddlers are very attached to their parents, even after the parents leave them for a while and come back, the toddler would still want to be cuddled. This type of attachment is the most common one, 65%-70% toddlers tend to have this kind of attachment; for the avoidant attachment, the kids would try to avoid their parents when they reunited.

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