Rosemary In 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves'

Animals are often treated in the most harshest ways, with little to no regard of their well-being. Presented in an abrupt manner, Karen Joy Fowler, author of the novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, depicts Rosemary, a young woman who recounts her childhood experience with Fern, a young chimp who lived with Rosemary as part of a social experiment to observe how they lived together as well as comparing how their intelligence grew when they lived as siblings. Living with Fern impacted Rosemary, the human sister, in the sense that she saw Fern as a sibling that was becoming a threat to her family’s livelihood. As Fern continued to grow, she showed more violent and erratic behavior, up to the point where Rosemary’s family saw her as a …show more content…
Throughout the novel, Rosemary expresses her discontent with Fern throughout her childhood, always conveying her dissatisfaction when more attention was given to Fern. She complains, “She gets to know about rheumatism and she gets praised for not talking when she can’t even talk. I think that Fern has gotten praised for nothing and that I never get praised for nothing. It’s clear that Mom loves Fern best.” (94).When Fern was getting all the attention, Rosemary was not very pleased with the fact that she was being ignored and not getting the same attention that Fern was getting from her parents. She saw Fern as a threat to her childhood, a factor that led to her tattling to her mother just so she could get rid of her competition once and for all. Rosemary fears that since Fern is getting a lot of mom’s attention, there will not be any more time for Rosemary, a factor leading to the sabotage. She fears that Fern is taking over Rosemary’s role as the better daughter, and Rosemary finds that to be a big threat to her. Our society always has a fear that stranger groups will take over and change the way of life and mentality of what the society has built, eventually wiping out what the dominant group has worked to establish and leading to the total annihilation of their culture and way of life. (fix) When they see the minority as a threat to their success, there is a motive to blame the group and use them as a scapegoat for an incident in order to make it seem like they are a bad figure and an exaggerate the fact that they are an actual threat to everyone around them to make it seem like the dominant groups is actually the group that has the best intentions for progressing the society. Exploit them of their