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Part 4

I found the pace of this section to be so chaotic. Chapters 8 and 9 felt very slow-moving, but Chapters 10 and 11 were abrupt. I found Sylvie's fascination with feral children confused me. Is it supposed to symbolize something? Does it tie back to Sylvie dodging the question why she doesn't have children?

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Part Four:

I want to discuss how Ruth compares herself to Sylvie in the beginning of the last chapter: "(I think that night we were almost a single person)" (209). This description is very similar to how Ruth describes her relationship with Lucille earlier in the novel before the girls split apart. My immediate reaction to this (and the end of the novel at large) is a negative one; I worry that Ruth's abandonment issues and tendency to be reserved and more of a "follower" than a "leader" lead her to replacing her relationship with Lucille for one with Sylvie. I imagine that we'll discuss the ending rather extensively, but my immediate takeaway is that this ending was a sorrow one. I worry about whether Sylvie is a positive influence on Ruth, and if going along with her lifestyle is what Ruth truly wants. Ruth's narration ends the text hypothesizing about Lucille's life in their present, even though she barely knows where her sister is at this point. Ending the novel in this way gives me the sense that Ruth is incomplete, like she didn't want to be forced to choose between Lucille's world and Sylvie's world.

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Part 4 - I first found the part of this part where Sylvie and Ruth are in the boat and Sylvie stops responding yet again which leads to Ruth looking in the water and thinking about the train accident and her mother to be rather creepy. It was sad though when Ruth whispered out her mother’s name just out of some hope. Next, the wind has continued to be talked about, but there was a point that stood out to me which was on page 169, “The wind was blowing out from the shore, and the current carried us always toward the bridge. She pulled and pulled but, for all I could see, we hardly moved”. I think it is creepy and skeptical that the author uses this piece of nature to show the weirdness of the two of them being pushed closer to the bridge. I also think that this bridge has an important role in this story. Some examples are, the grandfather’s train going off the bridge, Sylvie standing on the bridge and scaring the girls, and the wind pushing the boat towards the bridge. The closeness of Ruth and Sylvie continues and becomes all the more odd as we see throughout these chapters until the end of the novel.

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Part 3

I think this section really shows off how Lucille is becoming a small woman and Ruth is staying a towering child. Lucille is kind of realizing that the world doesn't revolve around her family and there are people outside of her family. She is moving on with her life while Ruth wants things to stay the same. Ruth's views on her mother and Sylvie are quite the opposite. Ruth puts a lot of blame on her Mother and sees Sylvie as a mother figure. Lucille sees her mom's death as an accident but doesn't see as Sylvie as a fit parent.

(Laura)

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Part 3: One of the main things that stood out to me within these chapters is the drifting between both Ruth and Lucille. There are parts of these chapters where the two don’t seem as close as they used to be. For example, when Ruth is describing who her mother is versus Lucille's mother, it shows the difference in their beliefs. Even when the two girls are spending time together in Chapter 7 where Lucille gets Ruth ready to go out, it still doesn’t seem like the two are as close as they used to be. It also seems as if Ruth is different then Lucille. This increases when the two girls separate for the first time in the novel. Which leads into Lucille leaving the house to stay with someone else. In addition to this, I also noticed the mention of the dogs again on page 107 that says, “Dog’s trotted out growling to sniff our ankles as we passed. Sylvie had a transient dislike of watchdogs, and tossed sticks after them”. I feel like we envision the dogs as harmful animals by this quote and the previous quotes. Then, it seems to change when Ruth says, “But we went there, leaving the house at dawn, joined at the road by a fat old b* with a naked black belly and circles of white around her eyes” (pg. 111). This is where, for me, I started to feel bad for the dogs in the way that Ruth refers to one of them.

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Part 3:

Chapter 6 -

Skipping/ditching school has become a norm for Lucille and Ruth. I found it interesting that the girls still "play along" to get dressed and act as if they're going to school, but don't. Why do they do this if Sylvie is the one who keeps writing these notes for excuse of absence? Why does Sylvie allow it? They mention how they go by the train tracks and are intrigued by the hoboes and often look at them. A specific part that stuck out to me was on the top of page 99-100, "It was pleasant when she scolded us for coming in late, for playing in our school clothes, for staying out in the cold without our coats on." This part is sad to me as these girls are expressing how they enjoy being scolded which is not the typical reaction from kids. This connects to the lack of authority figures or parent figures in their life. So is all of the 'misbehavior' portrayed by the girls for attention?

Chapter 7 -

The beginning of this chapter Ruth begins to point out her abandonment issues and talking a little bit about her mother. I feel like this is a huge part of this novel not just the feeling of abandonment these kids are enduring, but learning how to cope with this as they age. Another important part in this chapter is the hostility or tension noticed between Ruth and Lucille. I feel as though they had multiple bickering moments, then the argument about halfway through the chapter.

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In Chapter 6, I found it interesting that rather than going to school, the girls would sit in a cave with a tuft of grass between them. In these moments, we start to see how Ruth and Lucille are starting to slowly grow apart from one another. While Ruth starts to find her love for nature in the forest, Lucille starts to see nature as a form of punishment and banishment. The girls are beginning to grow apart in interests as well as physical appearances.

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Part 1:

Chapter 1:

The speaker (Ruth) discusses a storyline or background beginning with her grandparents. Her grandmother (Sylvia) and her grandfather (Edmond) while taking note of how her and her sister (Lucille) were taken care of by their grandmother living in the house Edmond built. She describes the story of back in her grandparents time when they were younger and the significance of this lake in the chapter. She also emphasizes the passing of Edmond and the effect it had on her grandmother and mother (Helen) as well as her mothers sisters (Molly and Sylvie).

After this, Ruth describes how her grandmother is aging and getting too old to care for her and her sister. How once her grandmother passes away it will be the responsibility of one of her grandmother's sisters (Nona and Lily) also taking the housekeeping position.

*Fingerbone (place)

Mother (Helen) dropped the kids (Ruth and Lucille) and left them after borrowing Bernice's car.

Sylvia’s 3 daughters (Helen, Sylvie and Molly) left her, family is not in contact- all left fingerbone

Chapter 2:

Chapter two discusses the life lived by Ruth and Lucille under the care of Lily and Nona. Sylvia’s sisters express a few times how due to their age it is not appropriate for them to look after Ruth and Lucille. They receive a note from Helen’s sister Sylvie and prompt for a meeting to see if Sylvie will take their place, once Sylvia’s place, so they can return home- to their familiarity and closeness to a hospital. Except one thing, none of Sylvia’s daughters are in her will from her passing as they all vanished Sylvia. Nona and Lily seem to not parent in such ways with discipline but only express worry: for example, when Ruth and Lucille went ice skating on the lake.

Chapter 3:

Chapter three was mostly about Lucille and Ruth’s time living with Sylvie in the house. Nona and Lily are still there but go back to Spokane at the very end of the chapter. A key moment in this chapter in my opinion is when Sylvie leaves to go into town and the girls begin to think she is leaving for good, so they follow Sylvie and come back to Nona and Lily worried but Lucille lies and says that her and Ruth went into town to see the sunrise and Sylvie went after them to make sure they were safe (along the lines of that). Is this so Nona and Lily feel more comfortable with Sylvie staying there in place of Sylvia? Did they believe Sylvie had abandoned them when she went into town due to their now developed abandonment issues from their mother and passing of their grandmother?

Another thing is Lucille is very curious about her mother and the life she lived back in Fingerbone. In conversation with Sylvie, the girls ask her questions about their mother as well as their father and the relationship Sylvie had with them. This was flagged to me as Sylvia never spoke of her daughters and dismissed anytime they were brought into conversation.

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Part Three:

I’d like for us to discuss the argument that occurs between Ruth and Lucille on approximately 126-130.  We begin to see some of Lucille’s displeasure with her life and more condemnation of Sylvie, which ends with her leaving at the end of the chapter. We briefly discussed how Ruth seems to follow Lucille a lot in our previous discussion (with Ruth even noting that she found it easy to refer to herself and Lucille as one unit), and I cannot help but wonder if this argument was sparked by Ruth not following along with Lucille like she normally does. Lucille is beginning to show signs of the “vanity” used to describe the older generation in the early chapters, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this focus on appearances from (Lucille) vs the flowers (Ruth) ends with the family splitting up, as it did for the older generation.

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Part 2: A few things that stuck with me when reading these chapters was in chapter 4 the weather. I thought back to class when we discussed the weather and wind that Sophia brought up. Especially in the beginning when the girls are playing in outside playing in the snow. Then the sudden weather change...does that represent something? I also really saw the perspective of Lucille and Ruth where they started really noticing the resemblance of their mother in Sylvie. I had foreshadowed their abandonment issues due to their history with their mother and grandmother. The girls testing Sylvie's reaction to them having issues with school, and even questioning or doubting Sylvie's presence if she will truly stay.

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Part 1.

Part 1 + Part 2

Narrator = Ruth

Setting: Idaho, Mountain Town: Finger bone ?

Ruth mother commit suicide

Grandfather died from a train accident due to a derailment.

Hellen (mother who commit suicide)

Molly (Missionary in china)

Sylvie (aunt who takes care of Ruth and Lucielle)

Lucielle disagrees with the lifestyle of Sylvie and believes in more social standards where Ruth follows ideas of Sylvie.

Themes: Family Identity & Social Standards

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Part Two: Something I found interesting in chapter four was the family's luck around the flood. The family has been deeply affected by the lake but barely touched by the flooding.

I think the moment Ruth has page 70 could be influenced by her abandonment issues. Her mother left and then died. Her mother is no longer there because she can't see her. Whenever she can't see Sylvie, her first reaction is that Sylvie has left them. If we can't perceive the world around us is it even there at all?

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Part 2: On page 80 when Sylvie walks onto the railroad bridge, although to her the act may have been innocent and out of pure curiosity, the girls believe it to be rather jarring. Because the girls lost their mother to suicide, seeing Sylvie on the railroad tracks reminds them of their past traumas that they have not yet overcome/properly dealt with. As Sylvie walks the girls back to the house, Ruth thinks to herself, "How far might she have gone had she not seen us watching her? And what if the wind had risen?" (pg 58 ebook). These thoughts show the readers her deep-rooted fear of abandonment.

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Part 2 - I absolutely adore the paragraph on page 70 that begins with "But Sylvie had fallen silent again." It's a short section when Ruth, Lucille and Sylvie are standing quietly in the dark and Ruth comments that their presence in the space together began to feel like an intuition, something that she suspected but couldn't (or didn't want to) prove. I think there's a lot in this section between the personification of the lake ("thundered and groaned") to touching the idea of space vs place in how Ruth experienced the darkness.

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Part 2 - First, the discussion of wind has continued throughout these chapters. An example of this is when Ruth is talking about Lucille. Ruth says, “It was a hard wind in her face; if she had made the world, every tree would be bent, every stone weathered, every bough stripped by that steady and contrary wind” (93). Again, the use of imagery to discuss the wind. One part that really stood out to me is how Sylvie began acting in these two chapters. We discussed in class how Sylvie is a bit odd and it really showed in these chapters. Especially when the power was out and she went radio silent from the girls. Ruth has to pull her up the stairs. It left me with a very eerie feeling. Lastly, the lake is talked about in great detail throughout these two chapters which was also something that we discussed in class.

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Part 1: One part that stood out to me in this section of the reading was the way that wind was talked about in a section of chapter one and of chapter two. On page 19, Ruth’s grandmother is in the garden some time ago when her children were young. The book says, “She felt the hair lifted from her neck by a swift, watery wind, and she saw the trees fill with wind and heard their trunks creak like masts” (19). This sentence alone stood out to me because of how elegant the author makes the wind sound. While I was reading this, I felt as though I could see and hear the trees moving from the wind. In addition to this, on page 40, Nona and Lily are discussing their sister-in-law’s funeral and ways to get Sylvie’s attention. The author says, “Nona and Lily speculated that if some vagary of wind should carry this black-bordered page under Sylvie’s eyes…” (40). The point of including this quote is to show the ways the author incorporates wind in sentences to pursue imagery for the reader.

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Part 4

1)  On 149-50 and in a few other places, Ruth ruminates on the lake and death. She seems to think of it as another kind of experience. How does this contrast with the ways people traditionally think about death?

2) On 157-58 and many other places, the image of a window with some looking in and those inside looking out is used to symbolize two different types of perception, of being. What do these two types of perception seem to represent in the novel?

3) Water is heavily symbolic in the novel, particularly in the idea of drowning in the lake. Does the novel connect this symbolic view of drowning to other qualities of water, such as birth and nourishment for our bodies?

4) On page 186, Sylvie insists that family is important and stays with you. How does this idea relate to the book’s consistent assertion of the world’s impermanence?

5) Page 200 puts me in mind of our discussions about poststructuralism and language. Ruth says of their burning the magazines: “It was absurd to think that things were held in place, are held in place, by a web of words.” Is it ironic to have a statement like this in a novel?

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Part 3

1) How do you define the term “housekeeping?” What does it mean to keep a house? Does it carry any connotations for you?

2) When Ruth and Lucille go to the woods and ultimately get lost overnight, they seem to react to the space of the woods differently? Can you characterize their reactions? (99ish).

3) What do you make of Ruth’s realization on page 105 that she doesn’t really know her own mind? She seems like a very sensitive and perceptive person. How can this be true?

4) On page 116, Ruth feels the darkness of the woods is “coexstensive” with her. What do you think she means?

5) In the last parts of chapter 7, we witness Lucille’s movement away from Sylvie, Ruth, and the house. What is behind Lucille’s actions? How do Ruth and Sylvie understand what is going on?

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Part 2

1)  What do you make of the narrator’s assertion that Fingerbone was not “impressive,” in part because “the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere” (62).

2)  On page 70, Ruth considers that the utter darkness seems to almost erase their existence. What does this suggest about the way our perception of ourselves relies on perspective of what is around us? Does this darkness connect to other ways darkness is imagined in the text?

3)  Ruth notes that the flood has “strangely transformed” the town (73). Then she goes on to talk about how the perception of everyday objects has changed. What does she mean here? Does it relate to what we have been discussing about humans’ relation to place and space?

4)  On page 77, Lucille begins skipping school. How does this change in her behavior affect her relationship with Ruth and/or Sylvie?

5) On page 80 the scene begins when Sylvie goes on the railroad bridge. It frightens the girls, but Sylvie simply suggests she wanted to see what it would be like. Do her actions suggest simple curiosity or something deeper?

6)  From Tuan’s Intro to Space and Place: “The ideas ‘space’ and ‘place’ require each other for definition. From the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness, freedom and threat of space, and vice versa” (6). Is this tension present in the ways Robinson’s novel portrays characters’ relationship to the landscape of Fingerbone?

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Part 1

1) How does the narrative explain how the “place” of their home came to be?

2) The train accident on page 6 is a central event in the story. Is there a way to understand the accident as symbolic of a larger idea in the book?

3) Of the lake, the novel says “one is always aware of the lake in Fingerbone, or the deeps of the lake, the lightless, airless waters below” (9). How does the lake seem to shape Fingerbone as a place? What other images of the lake appear in the reading?

4) Can we link Kern’s essay to the book? For instance, what about his idea that an eco-centric text places the writer (or characters?) “among” their setting rather than above or apart from it?

5) Much is made of the importance and power of darkness around the town of Fingerbone. For example, the section around page 33 when the lake freezes. What might the darkness symbolize?