The Character of Alice in Animal Dreams :: Animal Dreams Essays

The Character of Alice in Animal Dreams She is dead. She does non appear physically but haunts mentally. She is Codi and Hallies mother Alice, the late wife of home runo Noline. passim 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 upstage man who assay to resemble a father but veered more(prenominal) towards the tin man. Homero existed beyond his wife as only a foliate out of an instruction manual, the ane with the caution statement. Homeros delicate heart headstrong that the only way to endure Alices death was to flush any medical record 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 Homers general flashbacks which are usually mishaps from the past involving his daughters. These incidents are his only recollection of his daughters disoriented childhood in which he strained to create slippery and unmothered women. Homers affright 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(prenominal) Alice died all he could do was provide his kids with orthopedic shoes and the right medicine. When not fixing Codi or Hallies present or future ailments Homero took photographs of innate objects and slyly transformed them into man- made devices by doing what he seemed to be silk hat at, distorting images. Codi, similar to her father mentally blocked out her past. Her childhood remained inwardly her as only a series of stained and misplaced memories. Codi attempted to follow in her fathers emulsion lined footprints, fixing every one of lifes problems with an internal wrench. By approaching life from behind this falsified image Codi managed to remoteness 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