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            Among all the characters in the book All Over Creation, I view Phoenix as the most typical and impressive role played in the novel. He is neither in his sister’s age, nor a mature adult. Too childish will be too bewildered on what to change, too adultlike will be too stubborn to change, but he is the transition from a child to an adult, so he is one of the most outstanding characters in the novel showing how identity self-consciously shifts in respond to shifting environments.

Who is Yumi Fuller? Who is she to the people around her and herself? Yumi’s experience in the subtly racist Idaho as the sole Asian student forces her to take a look into the environment that has helped shape who she is. While Yumi is not solely defined by her childhood and the people in it, their influence and reactions to the differences between Yumi and the other townsfolk help to direct Yumi in discovering who she is. The environment around her, both the physical world and the emotional relationships, aids Yumi in part as she attempts to find her place. By experiencing the various events occurring around her, some of which are fueled by ignorance and others a desire for the exotic, the reader is able to understand the various influences the town had on Yumi.

        The novel “All Over Creation”, by Ruth Ozeki, is a celebration of the beauty that can be found in the natural world. The book opens with a passage describing the Earth in loving detail, from core to crust, and then asks the reader to imagine themselves as a seed. Ozeki is asking us to step away from our usual human viewpoint and empathize with plants. There’s a kind of purity and stillness in her opening words, that comes to an abrupt end when the plant you have just sprouted into is, “grrrrrip, weeded right out of there.

The world encompuses a variety of places that have a unique set of of features whether that is the way the seasons change or lack of change, variety of biological life, temperature, etc. As mankind writes its way through history, will they decide to disconcern themselves with the man made damage to their environment and lead themselves to an inevitable fate or chose to make a change to the damage.  This is what I saw as the purpose of Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s book, The Collapse of Civilization.  One of the main problems with the issue of climate change is no one knows how to fully handle the capacity of the environmental impact that is expected.

People’s identities affect the environment as much as the environment affects people’s identities. If a person’s belief is to protect the environment then part of their identity is that they are an environmentalist. Likewise the environment can shape people’s identities because if they are given many resources they can either choose to use it respectfully or take advantage of it. Despite the interconnected ideas of the environment and people the relationship is largely not a mutual relationship from what I’ve seen. Starting from the colonists who arrived to the Americas, people have continued to take more resources from the environment than needed to sell for a profit.

No two characters could appear more different than Lloyd and Yumi, Ruth Ozecki’s father-daughter duo at the center of her novel All Over Creation. Lloyd, a small-town Idaho farmer, holds very strong conservative views and religious beliefs, while his daughter, a runaway at fourteen and now the mother of three children, all with different fathers, prides herself on being incredibly progressive and open in her values and way of life.

Burying Seeds of Thought  

Through their science fictional essay, the authors of The Collapse of Western Civilization argue that people of the Western world are not taking action against climate change, despite having complete knowledge of its existence and causes, because of belief in capitalism and market fundamentalism. Resistance to government regulation of any kind means resistance to government regulation of industries and products that harm the environment. This resistance and the prioritizing of short term economic benefits over future concerns is preventing Western nations from enacting time sensitive economic measures to finance clean energy infrastructure.

The Suffering Child of Humanity

In Ruth Ozeki’s novel, “All Over Creation”, there are many times where cultures clash both due to identity and environment. There are clashes between race and values that cause tension and separation between the Fuller family.  When Yumi comes back home after 25 years, she forms her new identity that is very different to that of most people in the community, both racially and culturally.  Ozeki shows how much community and environment are intertwined. The community very much defines the environment because the interactions between people within a community can project a certain feeling that impacts the overall environment.