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Cass Unger – the potato

In the novel All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki, Cass Unger Quinn begins by having to play a potato in the school Thanksgiving pageant and ultimately develops her identity as a potato as well as negative body image. From her childhood to her adult life, Cass has been surrounded by potatoes and they influenced her identity. Throughout the novel, she consistently returns to the idea of her as a potato and it plagues her mind.

Changing the Lives of Others

            In the earlier portion of this class, my peers and I were asked to read a passage by Ursula Le Guin, entitled “The ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” In this text in order for the society to function as a utopia, or for everyone to be happy, one child was to suffer, and stay where he/she was being detained from the outside world for as long as the Omelas people desired. In so many words these people decided the course of this child’s life and instead of allowing he/she to live normally they decided it was best for the child suffer, so that everyone else could be happy.

Culture, era, structure, class, all matter when dealing with the complexity of a family’s relationship.  I want to understand the importance of Yummy’s letters to her parents in All Over Creation.  Lloyd and Momoko, Yummy’s parents, originate from Japan so their ideals of what a child is supposed to do varies from those of many Americans.  Yummy’s character is more complex in the culture, time, family structure and her family’s economic status she was raised in. Yummy’s letters are important aspects of the book because it allows us to understand more about her character and her relationship between their family and friends.

Speaking Through Seeds

              “Imagine you are a seed…” (Ozeki 3). This request Yumi Fuller, a character from Ozeki’s novel All Over Creation, asked paralleled a motif that was splattered throughout the novel. Just as the readers were to imagine themselves as seeds, Yumi was represented by through seed imagery throughout the novel. This seed symbolism revealed various characters’ innermost beliefs and suppressed emotions. This usage of symbolism in the novel to communicate unspoken thoughts emphasized humans’ nature to subconsciously reflect their personal beliefs through secondhand means.

The environment in which you grew up shapes your identity. The people who live around you shape your political stance, mannerisms, and beliefs. In the majority of cases, this is true. And in "All Over Creation", two of the character's environments did shape their identity. For Yumi Fuller and Cass Quinn, both women struggled growing up to find their identities in their hometown of Liberty Falls, Idaho. The conservative nature and mannerisms of the town, and their parents, influenced both women to stray from the norm. Yumi grew up to be a liberal and "free spirited" adult, unlike her conservative and strict parents and members of her community. Cass grew up to be a loving, strong, and caring parent unlike her abusive father.

In Ruth Ozeki’s novel All Over Creation, the intersection of identity with environment becomes apparent time and time again. For one character in particular, this intersection plays a large role. 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 the home environment behind and focusing on creating a new life, as well as identity, for herself. No longer does she want to be the foreigner in Idaho: she is now the self-made woman: A real-estate agent, professor, and single mother.

            All of the characters in All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki, have very distinct identities that were transformed by many different aspects of their lives.  When Yumi was only 14 years old, she left her family to live on her own and find her true self.  During her journeys she formed her own identity along with her children’s identities in Hawaii.  Her mother, Momoko, found a special connection to nature that allows her to explore her own identity.  While the people in one’s life have a very large effect on one’s identity, the biggest factors that form a person’s identity is their environment.

The environment can have a large impact on a person’s identity. The people that they surround themselves with influences their values and beliefs. That does not mean that a person cannot divert from that and develop their own identity, based on how they truly want to be. Yumi, in Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation, is an example of a person who feels the need to run away in order to thrive and become the person she wants to be. Additionally, I also felt that I need to be in a new environment in order to create my true identity.

           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.

“All Over Creation” tells the story of Yumi and how she runs away from home at fourteen and how she must come back years later to face her dying parents. The reason she runs away is because her father lashed out when he found out she had an abortion. Elliot is the teacher who impregnates her. He is the new guy in town and everyone is wary of him for good reason. Elliot is the real foreigner in their quiet farm town.