Rizen from ashes

            Among all the characters in the book All Over Creation, I view Phoenix as the most typical and impressive role played in the novel. He is neither in his sister’s age, nor a mature adult. Too childish will be too bewildered on what to change, too adultlike will be too stubborn to change, but he is the transition from a child to an adult, so he is one of the most outstanding characters in the novel showing how identity self-consciously shifts in respond to shifting environments.

            In the light of psychological construction to analyze kids, especially those who are very young, probably under ten or so, they are like balls of mud which are very easy to shape and reshape. The reason I use mud as a metaphorical example is that this group of kids does not have a certain concept about the world, personal interrelationship, or natural laws etc., like unshaped sculptures without a structure or even a sketch. Without able to critical think, what they have learnt are all from what the outside world instils into their brains. The outside world can either add more water, cement, or sand into the ball to change the “mud’s” shape conveniently. Ocean, Phoenix’s younger sister who is six years old, takes everything she is told immediately. That’s how young kids are like. They eat everything fed into their mouth without consciously judge what the thing is. They learn only about whether a thing is true or false, right or wrong from what they were taught, but they still lack the ability to be sensitive and make judgement by themselves. The contact between them and the outside world is unidirectional.

            However, as a fourteen-year-old teenager, Phoenix is right on the midpoint between childhood and adulthood. He is a ball of half-dried mud, which is a little bit more fixed than before but still has room to make the change. Some judgements have sprouted in his heart in the beginning, and towards the end of the novel, most of the judgements grow more mature as he experiences more. The first change appears on him is the dressing style as noticed by Lloyd, his grandfather. The boy is “wearing a pair of brand-new Carharts” stolen “off of someone’s clothesline” but the girl is “dressed in whatever it was that her mother put on her” (Ozeki 147, 148). Distinct from his sister, he has a taste of clothes already, which shows us that he starts to realize the contact between him and the outside world can become bidirectional. So once something in the environment changes, he takes action to make the reaction but not nods his head like what his sister will do presently.

            So does Phoenix have a consciousness on his name. Yumi has no clue about why the boy hates his given name and insist others to call him Nix. She forgot the true meaning of the name, but Phoenix does. His birth signifies the turning point of his mom from self-indulgence to living a positive and hopeful life. As Yumi states to her old lover that “Phoenix” means “risen from the ashes” (196), she used to be a homeless drug user after she ran away from home at the age of fifteen, but many people came to help her out and bring her a new life that save her from the “ashes”. Everything dark and hopeless turned out to be bright and hopeful for her during that time, and these are where the name is from. But later, she fells back into ashes again. Phoenix is the one who has witnessed the whole process from a considerable and confident mother to a careless and lax mother. She becomes a mundane, and in the way she treats her children, she is even worse than mundane. Falling again into “ashes”, to not be regarded satirically as a dead phoenix’s son, he prefers to be called Nix.

            Another evidence for his self- consciously identity shifting in respond to environment shifting shows on his gradually stronger attitude of responsibility towards the family. When Yumi can do nothing with her kids’ bullied experiences which happened in school, he starts to look for ways to help him and his sister out because he is the oldest male in the family. Though the way he uses to do the protection- bringing a knife with him every day in school- is not considerable enough and he gets locked into jail because of that, it is one of the milestones on the road to adultness. He stops seeking for help from his mother, but instead, he starts to look out for dangers and tries to protects his family, including his mother. When Yumi keeps meeting her old lover and bringing bad luck to the group, Phoenix tries his best to stop the touch and shows his hostility to the man without any reservation. At the night of funeral and explosion, his desire of protecting all people he loves from loss becomes so strong that he orders Yumi to stay and go nowhere. And then the young man calmed down later, instead of obstructing his mother from leaving the house, he chooses to take care of his young siblings, which are more in need of care. Up to this scene, Phoenix has long not denied his given name that the suffering he experienced recently has set him less wayward but more focus on the real important core affairs.

Growing from the seed of Yumi does not make him Yumilike, since the environment changes the seed’s growing condition. The tragedy happened between his mom and grandparents gave him a costly lesson. Therefore, when facing the similar situation his mom used to face when she was fourteen, he told his mom about the departure rather than ran away in the midnight. He knows clearly every cost of the decisions he makes and he is ready to take the responsibility for his own choices. Though not holding as excellent conditions as his mother did at the similar age, he is now on the right track and very well-prepared for future shift of environment. Someday, his name will not only celebrate his mother but also himself for being “risen from the ashes” (196).

Work Cited

Ozeki, Ruth. All Over Creation. New York: Penguin, 2004