Surfacing | Themes

Surfacing Themes

Appearances and Reality

One the novel's main themes involves the tension between what appears to be and what is. Closely related to that is the theme of deception. The truth about the narrator's past emerges slowly because she has avoided much of the pain she experienced during an abortion she had a few years ago. The pain has been so great that she has deceived herself and others into thinking that she had been married and that she gave birth to a child who she subsequently gave up to her husband. A hint of the truth emerges when she notes that she has never told Anna or Joe about her baby, explaining

I have to behave as though it doesn't exist, because
for me it can't; it was taken away from me, exported,
deported. A section of my own life, sliced off from
me like a Siamese twin, my own flesh canceled.
...
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