Rough Draft

Matt Condron
English 112
Rough draft
Olivia and Clarissa: A Chip off the Old Block
Clarissa is unknowingly walking in her mother’s footsteps. Her actions mirror Olivia’s in many ways and it will ultimately make her life more difficult. Clarissa’s decision-making abilities are extremely twisted due to her mother’s actions. Her psyche is depressing and angering. Clarissa and her mother are perfect examples of the fight or flight response: they flee and never face their problems.
Olivia’s parenting seemed questionable from the start of the book. As Clarissa explains how her mother would not keep friends for more than a month or two, it was obvious that her relationship skills were not that of a normal woman’s. Everyone seemed to love Olivia, but she seemed to love no one but a cat. The parental detachment that I felt as a reader was simply pathetic. Clarissa was competing for her mother’s affection with a stray cat; and the cat won. I feel like this experience as a child led Clarissa to fail in her own relationships. Take for example her altercation with Pankaj. Did he really do anything wrong? I held on to a secret that was not his to tell. Other than that it seems that he was a loving and caring fiancée. It seems to me that her anger with him was not so much over the secret about her father, but more about the fact that when something goes wrong in her life, she blames someone and runs. Pankaj was just the most convenient scapegoat. I don’t think that it is her fault necessarily. From a young age, she watched her mother make friends and routinely dump them. Clarissa does not take much issue with fleeing from someone that loves her.
Throughout the book, we see that Clarissa’s inter-monologue is impatient and usually frustrated with the people around her. She is full of self-pity. I believe that she also gets this from her mother. Olivia left multiple lives behind because they were torturing her. She was raising a daughter of rape and a mentally challenged son with a man that we are left to assume she did not love. It sounds horrible, but the whole situation was under her control. She had no control over the rape or how her son turned out, but she did not HAVE to run off and marry a man that she did not love. But she did. She ran from her situation in Lapland only to be put in another situation in New York. And when things began to wear on her in New York, she picked up and left just as she had left so many friends. This is a cowardly move that I believe was instilled in Clarissa. They cannot stand and face their problems. Both mother and daughter have mistaken cowardice and inconsideration with manifest destiny.
Clarissa and her mother both ignore others for their own happiness. I feel that throughout the whole book there is an undercurrent of selfishness. Clarissa only focuses on her own feelings. She seeks the attention of her father when she believes that he is Ereo, and then her mother when she finds out her mother may still be alive. She really refuses to consider any of the collateral damage that she creates by leaving pankaj, messing around with Kari, creating relationships with anna Kristine and henrik. She basically just wreaked havoc on all of Lapland without any remorse. And what does she do at the the end? She runs. Leaves the country to start a new life. Some may find this as empowering but I find it cowardly.
Olivia did many hurtful things in her life as a mother. As a result her daughter, Clarissa, followed in her footsteps by breaking hearts, leaving town, and disappearing into foreign countries. Clarissa became her mother even though it was the one thing she strove not to do. We can only hope that Clarissa becomes a better mother than Olivia was. Unfortunately this book has proven that the old saying rings true: The apple does not fall far from the tree.