December 14, 2015 - 23:16
People live within and affected by environment—both social and physical environment, and people’s identities are gradually shaped by the environment. Although social and physical environment seem different from each other, and environment seems different from identity, Ozeki shows us that these are all closely intertwined. Environments become inextricable from identity. Also, I find that Leguin deeply demonstrate how they affect each other by describing the behavior of people and environment in his science-fiction.
The identities of the characters in Ozeki’s book are affected by the social environment while the “environment” receives people’s care or is influenced by them at the same time. The social environment here includes the people that have close relationship to the characters—genetically and physically. The main character, Yumi’s identity was shaped by the social environment, especially her parents, who have genetic relationship with her. Her physical identity which looks differently from the whites is shaped by her Japanese mother, and her characteristics as a person? was influenced by her father somehow. Her father was stubborn that he let her daughter run away and did not try to find her or contact with her. When someone asked about his daughter he answered without hesitation: “I have no daughter” (29). This outspoken characteristic definitely appeared in Yumi in that she ran away from home and did not come back in twenty years and in the letters she wrote back to her parents, she said ruthlessly: “I hate you” (40). This identity is reflected on Yumi’s son Phoenix too. “The look in my son’s eye was cool and bitter. ‘That’s what you say about all of our fathers.’ He gave the dirt one last vicious kick” (232), which clearly shows the outspoken of Phoenix. This is how Yumi’s family environment influenced her identity and her identity continually affected her son.
For the physically social environment, Cassie, Yummy’s friend, was influenced by Yumi’s son, Poo. They have no genetic relationship, but Poo somehow refreshes Cassie’s identity.
“When she had him along, the world looked different, and she liked the way she saw things she'd never seen before […] But she noticed other things, too -- the way she herself felt acutely visible with the baby in her arms, and the way some people's faces lit up when they saw a child. His warm weight was like living ballast, thrumming with energy, giving her substance. Folks were drawn to that” (130).
Cassie found her identity started to change while she was holding a baby, especially a different race baby from herself. She feels the attention from others and feels the warmth brought by the child. At the same time, the child, as a social environment to Cassie, was looked after by Cassie and Cassie was taking care of him. This is a kind of reciprocal relationship between identity and environment. This relationship has the opposite effect compared to Osken and other people in Leguin’s story but owns similar principle. Instead of indifferent mood that others show to Osden, when people show respect to Cassie, Cassie reflects it as care to the little boy, and the little boy again transfers the warmth to Cassie. This delivery of the attitude is a positive empathy contrast to the negative empathy in Leguin’s story. Thus, this kind of empathy helps people shape their positive identity and transfer the kindness between people and their social environment.
An important character in this book, Momoko, shows us theintersection of identity and the ‘social’ and ‘natural’ environments. Momoko is from Japan, so she brought a lot of exotic seeds with her. She grew those seeds, which are cultivated well by her and spread them to other farmers, which is her identity influencing both the natural environment and the social environment. At the same time, those seeds are the nature environment that shaped her identity—she loves the plants and sees them as her children. She felt extremely sad when she forgot the names of the seeds; even it seems like forgetting the names of seeds is more serious to her than forgetting her daughter’s name. I think she was always trying to use the seeds as a reminder of her Japanese identity. The interaction between Momoko and seeds as well as the other farmers is again the contrary to the interaction between the crew and the forest in Leguin’s story. When Momoko shows her concern to the seeds, the seeds report a well-growing back to farmers. The moods of both people and environment influence each other. Characters’ identities were shaped by the nature environment because people are always a part of nature and they always live on nature; at the same time, nature is definitely influenced by humans because human are trying to change it.
There is a paragraph in the book that spoken by Geek that explains to us the relationship between people and nature. Geek is an activist of in the Seeds of Resistance—a group of people who tried to persuade farmers to change methods of “training” the plants, and he explained how he understands “seeds” by comparing seeds as software:
“And all the other plants, too. Each one is a complex software program, and so are we. And the really wild part is, we're all interactive! We can all learn […] The pea trains the farmer, and the farmer trains the pea. The pea has learned to taste sweet so that the farmer will plant more of it. Vegetables are like a genetic map, unfolding through time, tracing the paths that human appetites and desires have taken throughout our evolution." (124)
People in the country plant potatoes or produce other foods and they can be facing some problems such as pests and disease. That is how the plants “train” the farmers. When the farmers are using pesticides and other medicine to cut off the disease or try to produce more, they are “training” the plants. However, then people found out the danger of using those interventions, and this is how plants “train” people again. When farmers are training plants, the growth of that specific plants can be transformed and even the larger environment can be changed; this is like the empathy that people give to the forest, which is how people behave decides how plants behave. When plants are training the farmers, they are making people think and change people’s idea or even change their life; it is like the empathy that forest reflects to people, which is trying to make people introspect their behavior. Thus, we can see the identity of people—including farmers and activists—are shaped or influenced by nature and the nature can be changed by the identity of people.
Ozeki offers her readers an opportunity to understand identity and environment in new ways and Leguin tries to alarm people they should consider their fault in the relationship between them and the environment. This could lead us to see our own interactions with our social and physical environments differently, perhaps understanding ourselves more on how to improve the relationship between people and environment.