Cyclical Nature of History

Throughout Everything Under, the author uses Gretel, Sarah, and Marcus's stories to explore the cyclical nature of history. As Gretel takes up her search for her mother, discovers increasing details about Sarah's life, and pieces together stories of her past, the characters' reenactment of their family's history seems inevitable.

Despite Gretel's attempts to forget her mother, to release herself from the guilt of finding her again, fragments of her childhood return to her, Sarah's voice frequently permeating her consciousness. Towards the beginning of the novel she say, "each time I revisited [a memory] it would be slightly different and I'd realise that I couldn't tell what Id made up and what had really happened. After that I stopped remembering and tried forgetting instead" (11). The sections that follow, however, prove the impossibility of Gretel's forgetting. No matter how her imagination or memory distorts the...