Denial and Grief

In LaCour’s novel, the protagonist Marin experiences strong denial, in that she cannot accept her past as it was; instead, she wants to erase her history as a person altogether and become a totally new individual. Marin’s denial can be observed in her insistence that she is not the same person who she was prior to starting college. Marin narrates: “This person who stood in the doorway wasn’t me” (200). A literal interpretation of this sentence would make this novel’s genre that of fantasy or science fiction. Because the conditions of Marin’s world are not those involved in the supernatural, this statement is a result of Marin’s warped perspective on the world at this moment; it is a reflection of her denial.

For the longest time, Marin refuses to believe that she has agency over her own life. When...