Surfacing

Travel Guide

The island environment, the remote island the isolation which results takes the woman and the reader back to the raw and graphic nature of where we all came from. Of where life begins and where the beasts of the forest roam freely, unafraid and unrestricted. Not like humans who need to go back to find out where they are really from and who they really are.

“What I’m afraid of is my father, hidden somewhere on the island”

The setting of the island and the woman who looses herself there and finds herself in other way shows how powerless she feels and how her language and use of language changes according to her new environment. Animals don’t use language but still communicate. The feeling of isolation she had when she lost her father is now bigger and stronger than ever. Maybe this is why the woman is not named but remains anyone you want her to be.

The other setting of the story is the way that the Americans are coming in and changing Canada in ways not always for the better.  They change and alter the landscape, search for minerals and water and they are also referred to as a ‘brain disease”

Women, isolation, america expansion and one cold and remote island in the north coldness of Quebec. Even the wooden barometer in the house watches over a time gone by and the changing seasons. Here, the narrator show us that women are isolated and trapped in more ways than one.