Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal Dreams”: Alice Essay, Research Paper

Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal Dreams”: Alice

She is dead. She does not appear physically but haunts mentally. She is

Codi and Hallie’s mother Alice, the late wife of Homero Noline. Throughout the

novel Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, Alice impacted the characters, action,

and theme(s).

When Alice passed away she took part of Homer with her. What she left

was a misfit of time and circumstance; an emotionally distraught and distant man

who attempted to resemble a father but veered more towards the tin man. Homero

existed beyond his wife as only a page out of an instruction manual, the one

with the caution statement. Homero’s delicate heart decided that the only way

to endure Alice’s death was to flush any remembrance or resemblance of her out

of his fortified technical realm which throughout the novel becomes increasingly

skewed. Kingsolver pushes home this idea by omitting Alice from any of Homer’s

frequent flashbacks which are usually mishaps from the past involving his

daughters. These incidents are his only recollection of his daughters’

estranged childhood in which he strained to create slippery and unmothered

women.

Homer’s fear of becoming attached to anything which reminded him of

Alice resulted in an unorthodox childhood for Hallie and Codi. Homero was more

of a child mechanic than a father. Retaining only his technical aptitude after

Alice died all he could do was provide his kids with orthopedic shoes and the

correct medicine. When not fixing Codi or Hallie’s present or future ailments

Homero took photographs of natural objects and slyly transformed them into man-

made devices by doing what he seemed to be best at, distorting images.

Codi, similar to her father mentally blocked out her past. Her

childhood remained within her as only a series of stained and misplaced memories.

Codi attempted to follow in her father’s emulsion lined footprints, fixing

every one of life’s problems with an internal wrench. By approaching life

from behind this falsified image Codi managed to distance herself from

everything and everyone who could have hurt her. One aspect of life and time in

which Codi was bred to be distanced from is the past. As Codi grew older she

began wondering about her family’s past. Homer basically told her they had no

past. So with no past and no identity, Codi lived, searching for security and

stability through a mother figure. Everywhere Codi went she managed to find a

mother figure. Whether it be a man or a woman friend or even Hallie, Codi hid

herself in other’s security. This search for stability is catalyzed by the lack

of a mother in Codi’s childhood. The lack of maternal instinct in Codi left her

with no sense of direction, therefore; she searched aimlessly for years, for

herself.

When Codi returns to her childhood home in Grace, Arizona she discovers

she does have a past, both in her lifetime and prior to it. Contrary to what

Homero told her, her original family was from Grace, her roots were there. The

absence of Alice lays down a theme for the novel: you must return to your roots

to find your identity. This is feasible because Codi had to come back to her

family’s origin and her mother’s resting place to finally find her self.

Throughout the novel Animal Dreams there is an invisible presence which

effects the characters, action, and theme. The reason why this presence is so

dramatic and forceful is the fact that it is a spiritual presence, one which we

will never meet.