How Does Border Crossing: Can People Change?

“You see the real question is: can people change?” How does Border Crossing answer this question?
Change is something that is common for most individuals, whether it presents a positive or a negative outcome. Pat Barker’s text Border Crossing deals with the idea of people changing and is shown by her use of different characters, the representation of settings and her central idea of crossing borders. All of these aspects in Barker’s narrative make the reader look back at their own understanding of change, to help understand whether change occurs in the text Border Crossing.
Pat Barker’s use of characterisation in the text Border Crossing explores that people can change, or at least have the potential to change. An example of a character that
Change occurs in the narrative due to the impact of Danny’s manipulative character in which he is able to get people to ‘cross borders’ but also the over involvement Tom and Martha have in their supposed professional relationship with him. Tom describes him as a skilled liar, with the ability to get people to break the rules to help him get his way. His manipulative character “drained” people, as “he was a bottomless pit” that “borrowed other people’s lives”, making him feel more powerful. Although Tom describes Danny as a liar, Tom “steps across that invisible border” and the relationship between Tom and Danny which once was professional, becomes personal. Another example would be between Martha and Danny. Martha, just like Tom, becomes too attached to Danny and “didn’t want to lose him,” when Danny was getting taken away after being discovered by the media. Both Tom and Martha had Danny as a client and both of them crossed borders, due to Danny’s controlling and manipulative self. The central idea of crossing borders shows us that people that try to help Danny become too emotionally involved with him, due to him being able to step into their minds. This suggests that Danny is able to make people change, however has not changed himself, as he is still a manipulative and controlling character and will always be known as the murderer of Lizzie Parks. Barker’s text uses the central theme of crossing borders, to imply that Danny is still the same person, and while he is able to make other people change, he shows little proof of this