Loneliness and Alienation

Over the course of the novel, the author develops her thematic considerations of loneliness and alienation by placing her protagonist Lamentations in complete isolation. At the start of the novel, Lamentations has just fled the settlement where she lived. In choosing to flee, the narrator says in Chapter 1, “she had left behind her everything she had, her roof, her home, her country, her language, the only family she had ever known, the child Bess” (3). Although Lamentations killed Bess’s father and thus felt forced to leave the community, in making this choice, Lamentations has chosen alienation over community. Venturing out into the unknown on her own is, she believes, the only way that she might survive.

However, the longer that Lamentations is wandering in the wilderness by herself, the more compounded her loneliness becomes. The often barren or desolate landscape acts as an extension...