Analysis Of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

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Actions speak louder than words, and in Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, We are All Completely Beside Ourselves, she presents many different themes regarding communication and its importance. Rosemary Cooke’s father, a psychology professor at the University of Indiana, suggests that there is a difference between communication and language by explaining that “language is more than just words” (Fowler 98). Fowler agrees with the professor, language is much more than words, but they differ when he argues that “language is the order of words and the way one word inflects another” (Fowler 98). In We are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Fowler suggests that communicating with others can go beyond verbal form. Different forms of communication help us exchange …show more content…
Many characters in the story reduce to silence after Fern’s expulsion. Rosemary, a talkative child, learned to keep quiet in order to keep herself out of trouble (Fowler 110). Her mother chose silence as a defense mechanism to control her grief (Fowler 60). Actions allow us to see deeper into the minds of others as well. The Theory of Mind states that humans are born with the ability to recognize expressions in order to make predictions on the thoughts and emotions the subject is experiencing (Fowler 186). “We are constantly [trying to] infer someone else’s intentions, thoughts, knowledge, lack of knowledge, doubts [and] beliefs” through expressions and body language (Fowler 186). Chimpanzees’ facial appearances are more definitive than humans, so Rosemary learned at an impressionable age how to analyze people and understand what they mean by reading their faces (Fowler 103). She uses this ability to interpret other’s perceptions without them telling her directly. For example in kindergarten, she first learns how to “read children’s faces, which are less guarded than grown-ups’, though not as expressive as chimps’”(Fowler 103). Rose also comes to the conclusion that when Lowell visits her, he has changed. She could tell from his body language that “there was something wrong in the way his eyes moved, the way he held his shoulders, and the way he worked his mouth” (Fowler 226). Lowell was able to communicate the trauma he had been through to Rosemary by the way he carried himself. Similarly, their mother’s “sunken eyes” and disheveled hair revealed that she was distressed over the loss of Fern (Fowler 60). Rosemary also fell victim to the Uncanny Valley Response. When something looks “almost but not quite like people” we have a natural inclination to distance ourselves from the unsettling object (Fowler 102). Her peer’s response to her uncanny features told rose that “something was

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