Since the beginning of our lives, our surroundings have influenced us. In school, our teachers and friends help shape our identity and most importantly, our families have guided our views since birth. While our environment has a profound impact on our identity, we have an equal impact on our surroundings. We constantly change our surroundings through contribution or removal of their aspects to accurately reflect our transforming personality. In Margaret Laurence's, A Bird In the House, Vanessa transitions from an imaginative young girl into a realistic and complex woman. I have symbolized this transition through the changing environment of her bedroom.
At age 9, Vanessa is mainly characterized by her extensive imagination. The scenery of castles displayed outside of the door and
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In this room, Vanessa’s chair faces the window directly and outside the window is the blue sky of the world. Thus she faces the scenery of reality head-on. She is capable of experiencing the positives and negatives of life and understanding its implications on humans. The magnifying glass on her table symbolizes her ability to examine her current life and the memories of childhood which are hidden away in the green boxes beside her desk. She is able to go beyond her previous conclusions and deduces the circumstances and struggles of the people she encountered in her life. The painting of the iceberg on the wall symbolizes the information hidden within people and she uses her magnifying glass to discover the majority of the content beyond the surface of the water. For example, she expresses the responsibility of Harvey's aunt for raising Harvey into an abusive and violent person. Therefore making a statement as to the extent of the influence of circumstance on the outcome of a person’s life. By examining her past, she shows the growth of her complexity and her understanding of the depth of