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The Exiles


The author of Orphan Train returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant ...
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Mathinna thinks to herself 'She was tired of feeling as if she lived between worlds. This was the world she lived in now.' How do you see Van Diemen's Land acting as a "between world" for the different characters?

Created: 10/14/20

Replies: 4

Posted Oct. 14, 2020 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
davinamw

Join Date: 10/15/10

Posts: 3442

Mathinna thinks to herself "She was tired of feeling as if she lived between worlds. This was the world she lived in now." How do you see Van Diemen's Land acting as a "between world" for the different characters?

At one point, Mathinna thinks to herself "She was tired of feeling as if she lived between worlds. This was the world she lived in now." How do you see Van Diemen's Land acting as a "between world" for the different characters? How do they each struggle with leaving behind their old lives and adapting to new ones?


Posted Oct. 15, 2020 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
barbettet

Join Date: 10/01/20

Posts: 25

RE: Mathinna thinks to herself 'She was tired of feeling as if she lived between worlds. This was the world she lived in now.' How do you see Van Diemen's Land acting as a "between world" for the different characters?

I saw a constant motif of being erased throughout the novel. Mathinna, Evangeline and Hazel "vanish" from their homelands, never to be seen again. Their old lives are erased. In order to survive, they must adapt to new surroundings. Evangeline is physically erased when she goes overboard. Mathinna's past being erased is manifested by forgetting her language. Hazel's crime is "erased" in that she creates a new life for herself, but the author states, "In time Hazel had come to feel...not invisible, exactly, but not quite seen." They all bear the scars of their past. So is it possible to erase past?


Posted Oct. 18, 2020 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
Alaskareader

Join Date: 10/18/20

Posts: 10

RE: Mathinna thinks to herself 'She was tired of feeling as if she lived between worlds. This was the world she lived in now.' How do you see Van Diemen's Land acting as a "between world" for the different characters?

I agree with Barbettet about the theme of being erased. I don't think it is possible to erase your past totally. You can certainly reinvent yourself to a degree - but your past is always part of you. It depends on time, and the depth of the scars of past events, that will determine how much influence these scars have on the present and future.


Posted Oct. 20, 2020 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
gracew

Join Date: 06/13/11

Posts: 24

RE: Mathinna thinks to herself 'She was tired of feeling as if she lived between worlds. This was the world she lived in now.' How do you see Van Diemen's Land acting as a "between world" for the different characters?

Mathinna's birth world was being taken away by the English gentrification of Van Diemen's Land. To attempt to survive in Van Diemen, Mathinna had to conform to the British way of speaking, eating, dressing. She had to learn French and gradually lost her native tongue. Most of the other characters in the book were transplants to Van Diemen, and few were able to return to the land of their birth.


Posted Nov. 08, 2020 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
dianaps

Join Date: 05/29/15

Posts: 460

RE: Mathinna thinks to herself 'She was tired of feeling as if she lived between worlds. This was the world she lived in now.' How do you see Van Diemen's Land acting as a "between world" for the different characters?

This is much like immigrants who move to a different country where they do not speak nor understand the new language. They loose what is familiar if they do not have relatives and friends around to maintain it. It would definitely feel like living between two worlds.


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