Zoe’s transformation occurs when she becomes strong enough to accept her past that she has been trying to escape from and decides to rebuild herself. When it comes time for the last race, Zoe’s persona of being indestructible starts deteriorating: “The image of Sophie’s face came to her instead. Something she had been fighting for years stirred inside her[…]Whenever the thought had stirred to surface, she had pushed it back under[…]for the first time in her life, she didn’t know if she wanted to win” (Gold 253-254). Struggling to contain these sudden thoughts of Sophie, Zoe begins to imagine what her life would be like if she had not given up her daughter. Zoe has never experienced adversity when preparing herself for a race until this moment
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Cleave presents female protagonists in his novels as heroines endowed with perseverance and endurance. In their respective novels, the female protagonist reveals moral dilemmas, resilience, and strength. Through his use of destruction, Chris Cleave reveals context that readers can relate to, because we confront destruction often in our world today. While discussing different texts and motivations behind them, critic Mihaela P. Harper references Chris Cleave’s works in her syntax of violence: “Chris Cleave articulates the same intensity of compulsion[...] a consuming urge to think and to imagine the catastrophe, to inhabit it not as an event but in a particular detail, in a particular life” (Harper). Cleave’s inspirations for his works developed from his own experiences, and his impulse to write allows readers to relate to the events in his novels in real. The physical and mental destruction in Incendiary, Little Bee, and Gold appears in our world today, and we are often faced with the dilemma of enduring the hardship or being defeated, just as Cleave’s protagonists, who persevere through different adversities and improve their
Cleave presents female protagonists in his novels as heroines endowed with perseverance and endurance. In their respective novels, the female protagonist reveals moral dilemmas, resilience, and strength. Through his use of destruction, Chris Cleave reveals context that readers can relate to, because we confront destruction often in our world today. While discussing different texts and motivations behind them, critic Mihaela P. Harper references Chris Cleave’s works in her syntax of violence: “Chris Cleave articulates the same intensity of compulsion[...] a consuming urge to think and to imagine the catastrophe, to inhabit it not as an event but in a particular detail, in a particular life” (Harper). Cleave’s inspirations for his works developed from his own experiences, and his impulse to write allows readers to relate to the events in his novels in real. The physical and mental destruction in Incendiary, Little Bee, and Gold appears in our world today, and we are often faced with the dilemma of enduring the hardship or being defeated, just as Cleave’s protagonists, who persevere through different adversities and improve their