The Challenges In Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler’s novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is the powerful and captivating story of Rosemary Cooke’s life and her learning how to accept who she has been, who she is, and who she will become. Rosemary, often referred to as Rose in the story, was raised with a chimpanzee for a sister. Obviously, being raised alongside a chimpanzee causes some very significant challenges in Rosemary’s life, which she overcomes throughout the novel. However, the reader does not know that Rose’s sister Fern was a chimpanzee in the beginning of the novel. Rose wants readers to think of Fern as her sister and not just as a chimpanzee (Fowler 77), so she tells her story by starting in the middle of it rather than from the beginning. Fowler’s technique of organizing the events in her novel in an unchronological order helps readers to understand exactly who Rosemary is and how she overcomes the challenges in her life and learns to accept herself. As a result of being raised with a chimpanzee for the first five years of her life, Rosemary is very different from her peers. Young children tend to imitate

When they meet again, Rosemary writes, “I didn’t know what she was thinking or feeling. Her body had become unfamiliar to me. And yet, at the very same time, I recognized everything about her. My sister, Fern. In the whole wide world, my only red poker chip. As if I were looking in a mirror” (Fowler 308). The reader can interpret this interaction as Rosemary gaining acceptance of herself and feeling okay with being different from everybody else. She realizes that Fern is the only person she can completely be her monkey-girl self around, and she is content with that. Even though this event took place in Rosemary’s late twenties, Fowler places it at the end of the story so the reader will fully understand who Rosemary is and realize that she completely accepts herself as the