66 pages • 2-hour read
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
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Themes
The Relationship Between Animals and Humans
Relationships between humans and nonhuman animals and the differences between the two are central themes in the work. One recurring element is the scientific study of nonhuman animals and interspecies relationships versus the intangible, emotional elements of these relationships. Rosemary’s father views Rosemary and Fern through a strictly scientific lens, so averse to the idea of anthropomorphism that he leaves little room for findings that cannot be put into an experiment and proven. Conversely, the rest of the Cooke family opens their minds to potentially anthropomorphic ideas. For example, young Rosemary believes that she and her sister can communicate telepathically. When Vince and the graduate students focus more on Fern’s behavior than Rosemary’s pain, Rosemary believes her sister empathizes with her, sharing an example of a time when Fern shared a red poker chip with Rosemary in what Rosemary believes is an apology. In believing that nonhuman animals experience emotions just like to humans do, Rosemary is able to have empathy for animals, seeing herself in them and them in her. Once animals are recognized as beautiful and intelligent, it becomes harder to objectify and abuse them.
As an adult, Rosemary connects her physical and emotional experiences with those her sister may be having. The second time she is incarcerated, she thinks: “I couldn’t not see how I’d been put, drugged, into a cage just the way she’d once been put, drugged, into a cage (173). She acknowledges a serious difference between human and nonhuman incarceration, in that she knows her situation is temporary while Fern’s is permanent. This openness to the idea that nonhuman animals feel many of the same things as humans changes the way that Lowell, Rosemary, and their mother process the grief of Fern’s departure. While Vince worries about his professional standing, his family grieves the being that they have spent five years loving. Eventually, they all go on to try to improve Fern’s circumstances.
The book is not anti-science, but rather against science that uses animal bodies unless entirely necessary, and against the scientific assumption that animals are inferior to humans. Rosemary is weary of scientific claims about animals: “It seems to me that every time we humans announce that here is the thing that makes us unique—our featherless bipedality, our tool-using, our language—some other species comes along to snatch it away” (301-02). The book highlights ways in which nonhuman animals are more capable than humans as well as ways in which humans are much more like animals than they would like to think. As Rosemary states on page 175, “superpowers are relative.” For example, while Rosemary speaks a language with her mouth, Fern is able to swing from trees. Characters in this book make quick decisions based on emotions and pheromones, which are characteristics generally assumed to be more “primitive” or “animalistic.”
The Fallibility of Memory and Creation of Self-Conception
As Rosemary attempts to narrate the story of her life in its entirety, she comes up against the issue of memory over and over again. She has trouble facing certain memories and often tells the reader that she cannot trust her own memories. There are certain memories that Rosemary has thought of and repeated so often that they feel diluted and changed, while other memories have been so hidden and silenced that she’s not even sure they are real. She often shares a memory and then reminds the reader that it might not be totally true. For example, in telling the story of Fern killing the kitten, Rosemary advises the reader: “Here now, I believe, is what happened before. It comes with one cautionary note—that this memory is only as vivid to me as the one it replaces” (248). This acknowledgment that her memories are altered is a running theme throughout the story. Consequently, Rosemary lacks a huge amount of self-trust and appears stuck in the past, unable to think about her path forward. The lack of honesty that she and her parents have about their past adds to this dilemma, as Rosemary has no one to confirm or deny her memories.
There is one instance, as a child, in which Rosemary is able to ask for confirmation of her memory. When she suddenly remembers her father running over a cat, she is disturbed and asks her grandmother if this happened or not and is informed that it did not. Rosemary, an adult now, thinks: “To this day, I can feel the bump of a tire over the cat’s body. And to this day I am very clear in my mind that it never happened. Think of it as my own personal Schrodinger’s cat” (91). Rosemary holds this story as a memory and a fallacy at once, unsure of what to do with something that feels so real. She cannot determine which matters more: the truth or what one thinks and feels happened. Furthermore, as everyone’s memory is subjective, it is impossible to know whose version of events to trust. This, likely made-up, traumatic experience, sits in Rosemary’s body the same way that a real memory would, negatively impacting the relationship with her father. Rosemary goes on to suggest that the truth is not inherently the best answer when it comes to memory: “There are moments when history and memory seem like a mist, as if what really happened matters less than what should have happened” (28). As the concept of screen memories suggests, there are times when changing ones memory of an event is a survival tactic and powerful form of self-preservation. Interestingly, regardless of the input that Rosemary gets from outside sources on her memories, it seems that her own recollection will always feel the strongest. When she and her parents finally address the past, the ways that they remember things are radically different from one another. Rosemary does not entirely believe her parents.
This focus on the fallibility of memory makes Rosemary an unreliable but honest narrator. The honesty about the gaps in her memory makes her feel more real and human, and thus more relatable and close to the reader. The stated intent of the story is to tell her siblings truths, and Rosemary’s radical honesty about the obscurity of the truth seems like the way to get closest to whatever the real truth of the matter is.
Absence, Loss, Denial, and Silence
A major theme in this novel is absence. This absence appears in many forms, from people and objects being literally missing, to the absence of familial commiseration, to the absence of understanding. Before Fern is taken away, the Cooke family appears to have a full life. The house is loud, Rosemary is always chattering, and everyone loves one another. After Fern is taken, a void starts to form: “It’s hard to overstate how lonely I was. Let me just repeat that I’d once gone, in a matter of days, from a childhood where I was never alone to this prolonged, silent only-ness” (138). Rosemary loses not only her sister, but the respect of her brother, parents, and the graduate students as well. From this point onwards, the family uses silence as a tactic to avoid experiencing grief in the face of Fern’s absence; this silence causes Rosemary to start losing her sense of self and her confidence in her memories.
Rosemary feels as if she has lost part of herself after Fern is taken away. She writes: “Whoever I was before is no one I ever got to know. I felt her loss in a powerfully physical way. I missed her smell and the sticky wet of her breath on my neck” (107). Rosemary spends the rest of the book trying to discover who she is without Fern. Aside from having a very close relationship, being Fern’s sister got young Rosemary attention, because they were subjects in an experiment. With Fern gone, Rosemary also feels the absence of validation and interest that she had gotten prior. It is clear that Rosemary felt as if Fern was her twin in many ways, as she often ponders about the effects of having, or losing, a twin. On page 108, she says that studies show that a twin losing their sibling is the worst grief one can experience.
With her siblings gone, Rosemary feels responsible for filling their absence and fixing her family. As a child, she tried to fill this hole with fancy words and verbosity. As an adult, she decides to attend UC Davis in hopes of finding her lost brother, who left the house in hopes of finding his lost sister. Rosemary’s anxiety about losing people and things can be seen in her relationship with Madame Defarge. She is immediately nervous about losing the doll, as it is someone else’s property, and once she has had her for a bit, becomes saddened by the idea of Madame leaving. Before Harlow, Rosemary does not really have friends, which is one way to make sure that she is never abandoned. On page 259, Rosemary asks her roommate whether they are friends and he assures her that they’ve been friends for years; this difference in opinion and reaction shows the way in which Rosemary denies herself intimacy in order to avoid later loss.
After finally opening herself up to her memories, Rosemary becomes clear on what she has been missing: “In my head, I finished the grid I’d started in the holding cell, the grid of what was missing and for how long. One, my bicycle; two, Madame Defarge; three: the journals; four: my brother. Five: Fern” (181-182). After a decade of familial silence and a personal denial of memory and emotion, Rosemary starts to find ways to feel less loss and absence. She finds a career that allows her to feel useful and see Fern, she heals her relationship with her mother and they talk openly about the past, and she learns to trust her memories.
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