Propitiation

“My inability to change the course of her life, to fix this awful flow of events, tangles confusedly with my inability to redress our past” (157).

As Meredith returns home to help her mother for the remaining part of her life after being diagnosed with MS, they find simple things to talk about but nothing meaningful or personal. Any memory of their past is something trivial such as her mother’s sewing but the way she treated Meredith is never brought into light. Both of them know that she doesn't have much more time to live and Meredith wants her to talk about their relationship since the day she was sent home from school. Meredith waits for it to be brought up but it never is. Her mother on the other hand has no plans of owning up to her mistakes and her poor parenting, she may find it unnecessary because she hasn't had to live with it the same way that Meredith has. Her decision to send her off didn't affect her the way it affected Meredith; she could also be seeing Meredith as okay now that she seems to have to life together. Meredith still loves her mother regardless of their past but talking about it and coming clean about their mistakes wouldn't be detrimental to their mother-daughter relationship.

A River of Light

“I am not welcome. I will stay at my mother’s, imagining Christmas with my father. No one speaks of any of this; my troubles are an intrusion on family peace. I am stunned by the grief of loss, by the injustice. By the terrible, aching missing of my father” (117).

Again

“But my father’s inability to imagine our loss and grief is what will pull me back to this little scene years later from now” (71).

Meredith's father returns home after a long absence and proudly boasts that he had gotten married to Catherine in the meantime. Meredith and her siblings looked to their mother and began to cry while her father remained shocked that they were not happy for him. At the time, the problem was not that he had gotten remarried but following his disappearance, he feels none of the emotions they were feeling. He had no compassion whatsoever. After abandoning them, he practically told them he had moved on. For young kids, they wouldn't be able to comprehend it in any other way, especially as their mother is clearly upset as well.

Stronghold

“I don’t want to do any of this anymore, Mummy!  I can’t do any of this anymore.  I just don’t want to do this anymore” (41).
At High Mowing, Meredith has moments of happiness, when being there is helping her but at the end of it all, she's still struggling emotionally, she's still lonely. She calls her mother again, begging her for help and her mother barely provides her any emotional support. She tells Meredith that she has to keep going. She commands, “You need to pull yourself together. You are going to make it through this because you are a survivor” (Hall 41). Sometimes there is. a time and place for tough love or “mother love” as in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, but this is not what Meredith needs, especially at this point.

Waiting

“I turn back to the stove and slowly stir the thickening syrup.  I put down the spoon. The filthy steam drips from the ceiling on to my hair, my arms, my belly, the floor.  My fingertips hold the edge of the stove lightly.  The crying comes, silent, the kettle shushing on the stove” (31).
Meredith is breaking down as she is alone without her father or Catherine at their house. She has tried to contact her mother, but every time she tried to reach out it seemed as though she didn't want to talk. Her mother doesn't appear to understand how difficult it is to deal with the emotions that accompany a pregnancy, let alone a pregnancy at sistema years old; obviously she has gone through more than one pregnancy but doesn't want to open up to her daughter nor allow her daughter to open up to her. Meredith is doing something, anything to stay productive but it's not enough to make maple syrup. She's still constantly thinking about her child, what her life will be like from that point on and the mistake she made trusting Anthony.

The Lonely Hunter

“I wait, wanting her to draw me, to draw us, back to the safety of our other life, the life in which a father and mother hold ground” (Hall 7).

Once Meredith’s mother met Peter, she became more liberal and seemingly the complete opposite of how she had raised Meredith. Meredith is about sixteen years old and meeting Anthony for the first time on the beach as well as stepping out of her comfort zone and buying the bikini. When she got into the car with her mother, she expected for her mother to comment on the fact that she was showing too much skin but she never did. A change occurred in her mother from being the common conservative of the 1950s to more liberal and understanding of the younger generation, going from wearing the skirts she made to slacks and turtlenecks. Her mom had changed into a different person entirely and with her mother’s sudden change, she feels as though her entire life has changed as well. Meredith begins rebelling as well as she gets older; she starts wanting the stares from strangers as she walks on the beach, coming home later than her unenforced curfew and sneaking around with Anthony. Her mother stops noticing her daughter. Meredith started off her summer reading all alone on the beach and ended the summer pregnant from a man who didn’t want anything to do with her after the summer.

Without a Map

“Shunning is supposed to keep bad things from happening in a community.  But it doesn’t correct the life gone wrong.  It can only expose the transgression to a very raw light, use it as a measure, a warn to others…” (xi-xii).

By Hall’s town rejecting her, they wanted to deny that they were ever connected to a girl who would disrespect herself and her family so blatantly.  Within the town, where everyone knew everyone, Hall was kicked out of school and told that she would not come back. In gym class, Hall told her friends that she was pregnant and they stepped back, repulsed from her, without even trying to make an effort of consoling her or telling her that they would help her through the situation. She was then hidden away, not allowed to go out or attend church, until she went to live with her father, where she was still confined to within his home. When they were away and it snowed, she thought they would appreciate her shoveling the driveway, yet upon their return, they got mad at her. When people visited, she couldn't come downstairs, make a noise or go to the bathroom because the guests may hear her. When she went back home for a birthday dinner her mom invited her over for, she had to duck down in the car so people wouldn't see that she was back.
The parents of Hall’s classmates feared that any of their children could have veered off into the same direction she did. They had all grown up the same, together with the majority of their experiences pretty similar. They couldn't differ greatly because of this, so the parents had a constant fear of their own children rebelling against what they were taught and how they had been raised. By shunning her and rejecting her from the entire society, people made sure that they would never end up like her. She was always held to a high standard because she had done so well in school, but once the mistake was made, she would always be known as the lowlife who got pregnant. Her entire past was ripped away from her, neighbors knew that the family was respectable and were what they considered to be good people. Even Hall believed that she was lesser because she was tricked into trusting a boy that she hadn't known would not stick around for her.