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Loneliness In Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams

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One of the most disconcerting aspects of human nature is the concept of loneliness. It is impossible to go through life without, at some point, experiencing some kind of detachment, some isolation that sets one aside from others. The obstacle of finding a place to belong is confronted by everyone, and it not easily conquered. In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Animal Dreams, she addresses the potent longing that drives one to seek out one’s own niche in one’s life, while celebrating the shifting ties between family and friends that moves one to vanquish the deafening tide of loneliness. The novel showcases the starkly human desire to find a place a belonging, through Cosima’s hesitant search for her identity and her unwavering bond with a sister …show more content…

The sisters’ relationship is one of the single points Codi fixates on over and over: how her sister, who endured the same childhood, could turn out so capable and utterly different. This discrepancy is a great deal of what holds Codi back from making commitments: “This judgement of herself as inferior to Hallie provides Codi with a convenient excuse for life’s failures and for self-sabotaging her own identity resolution” (Austenfeld 163). Despite how Hallie negatively impacted Codi’s picture of herself, she also was instrumental in Codi finally recognizing the place she had in …show more content…

She displays a startlingly contradictory belief: while she mourns the absence of a home and family, she is too anxious to stay in Grace. Codi demonstrates this while commentating her philosophy, saying “I wasn’t keeping on any road, I was running, forgetting what lay behind and always looking ahead for the perfect home, where trains never wrecked and hearts never broke, where no one you loved ever died. Loyd was a trap I could still walk out of” (Kingsolver 236). In her determination to avoid getting hurt and her blind drive to find a “perfect home,” Codi is ignorant to the connections she had already built on her stay in Grace. She is afraid to accept the town as her home- Codi is searching for a utopia. Reaching the end of the novel, Codi realizes that a home is not a flawless place; her acceptance in Grace leads her to recognize the imperfections in any

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