Where D You Go Bernadette Character Analysis

In the novel, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple uses place as a way to connect a characters past, present, and future. Specifically, she uses the Twenty Mile House, Galer Street School, and Antarctica to add to the ideas of tragedy, avoidance, brokenness, and acceptance in Bernadette’s life. In addition, Semple uses Galer Street School to explain how broken Bernadette is presently. She shows how broken Bernadette is with her life when she describes the oldness of the school when she writes, “Our house is old. All day and night it cracks and groans, like it’s trying to get comfortable but can’t” (39). It shows how uncomfortable Bernadette is in her life by how uncomfortable the house is. As well, Semple explains how disheveled Bernadette’s

Semple tells us how amazing the Twenty Mile House is when she writes, “But when they walked into the Twenty Mile House, they started laughing, that’s how gorgeous it was. A sparkling glass box with clean lines, not an inch of drywall or paint. The floors were concrete; the walls and ceiling, wood; the counters, exposed aggregate with bits of broken glass for translucent color” (117). Which reflects how creative, energetic, and full of light Bernadette’s character is like. Likewise, to emphasis the Twenty Miles House significance to Bernadette in her past she tells how Bernadette receives recognition for her creation. “The caller told her she’d been awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. It had never before been given to an architect. The $500,000 grant is awarded to “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction” (116). Showing how much talent, extraordinary, and dedicated Bernadette is to her work then. Giving the reader a look as to who she was before tragedy

She describes the destruction when she writes, “a bulldozer was demolishing the house! Three bulldozers actually, pushing into the walls, breaking glass, crunching beams, just smashing and flattening the furniture, lights, windows, cabinets” (119). The graphicness of the Twenty Mile Houses demise gives a clear picture of how Bernadette’s world shattering in that moment. Furthermore, Semple writes about the effects that the demolishing of the Twenty Mile House has on Bernadette in order to add to the idea of tragedy that occurs in her life. She makes it clear when she writes, “I truly intended to recover from the body blow of the Twenty Mile House by making a home for me and Elgie and the baby I was always pregnant with. Then I’d sit on the toilet and look down, my upper body a capital C, and there it was, blood on my underpants, and I’d weep to Elgie all over again” (130). Even though Bernadette has every intention to recover from the heartbreaking incident, every time she tries to move on she would have another miscarriage causing her to feel the loss of her crown and glory all over again. As a result, it gives reason as to why who she is in the present and for her actions in the