Animal Dreams: a Deeper Look Into Relationships
Shaylee Byers
February 27th 2013
Final Draft
Animal Dreams: A Deeper Look into Relationships In Animal Dreams Kingsolver uses the relationships between the characters to give us an idea of what a healthy relationship looks like. The flirtatious conversations and connections that soon lead to love is what it seems like most girls want. For Codi though, that’s not necessarily true right away with her and Loyd’s past and present relationship. Throughout this story there are many different kinds of relationships. There are father daughter relationships, dating relationships, and sister relationships, all of which Barbara Kingsolver portrays the kind of healthiness behind each differently. Her idea of a good healthy relationship is one that you care for each other and trust each other, and that you have a connection.
Codi and Loyd have had a rough past from when they dated back in high school. But Loyd was a jerk and a player who slept around with many different girls, and when he got Codi pregnant she didn’t even tell him. “Anybody would say that baby was my own fault, and he didn’t even know about it” (131). This quote suggests that they didn’t have a very close relationship. Because if they were together as a couple and trusted each other she would have told him about the baby from day one and things would probably be a lot different now. It could also suggests that she wasn’t proud of what had happened considering she was only fifteen and she didn’t have a mother who she could go to for things like this, so she was trying to deal with it the best she could. But because Loyd was a player and they were only fifteen, having a baby wasn’t a good thing in the first place. Making it so no one else knew could have made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. However without anyone knowing about the baby resulted in her having to go through it all alone. Then when she had the miscarriage or stillbirth she was alone in that as well. But now that she has come back to Grace
February 27th 2013
Final Draft
Animal Dreams: A Deeper Look into Relationships In Animal Dreams Kingsolver uses the relationships between the characters to give us an idea of what a healthy relationship looks like. The flirtatious conversations and connections that soon lead to love is what it seems like most girls want. For Codi though, that’s not necessarily true right away with her and Loyd’s past and present relationship. Throughout this story there are many different kinds of relationships. There are father daughter relationships, dating relationships, and sister relationships, all of which Barbara Kingsolver portrays the kind of healthiness behind each differently. Her idea of a good healthy relationship is one that you care for each other and trust each other, and that you have a connection.
Codi and Loyd have had a rough past from when they dated back in high school. But Loyd was a jerk and a player who slept around with many different girls, and when he got Codi pregnant she didn’t even tell him. “Anybody would say that baby was my own fault, and he didn’t even know about it” (131). This quote suggests that they didn’t have a very close relationship. Because if they were together as a couple and trusted each other she would have told him about the baby from day one and things would probably be a lot different now. It could also suggests that she wasn’t proud of what had happened considering she was only fifteen and she didn’t have a mother who she could go to for things like this, so she was trying to deal with it the best she could. But because Loyd was a player and they were only fifteen, having a baby wasn’t a good thing in the first place. Making it so no one else knew could have made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. However without anyone knowing about the baby resulted in her having to go through it all alone. Then when she had the miscarriage or stillbirth she was alone in that as well. But now that she has come back to Grace
Cited: Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal Dreams: A Novel. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1990. Print.