llegory of being lost. Aunt Bertha tries very hard to be American and that is seen not only throughout these two passages but also throughout the entire book. What is comical is that the harder that Aunt Bertha tries to become American, the more distant she becomes from reaching that goal. This is marvelously illustrated in the scene where she is just amazed at the exhibit of the stone wolf suckling two infants. To Aunt Bertha, the wolf is a dog and the infants are just normal babies. To the reader however, the wolf with the two infants represents the Mythological characters, Romulus and Remus.What I found worthy of note is that the Roman mythology of Romulus, the founder of Rome, has very interesting similarities to both the passages. Foster parents raised Romulus and Remus, which parallels the Albert and David paradigm. In the legend, Amulius has Romulus and Remus thrown in a basket into the Tiber River where they were rescued and raised by a she-wolf on the slopes of the Palatine Hill. David, at a very young age, was in a ship that was set to sail to a new and unknown land to him, which resembles Romulus and Remus’ early voyage. Romulus and Remus were rescued on the slopes of the Palatine Hill. In Passage 1, before David is lost, he is up on a hill contemplating whether or not he would like to assimilate to this new culture. The hill in both scenes represents the ability to see the city or the land. The ability of observing everything is said to contribute to better decision-making because you can see all your options before making a choice. This is what Romulus, Remus, and David are facing at a young age and unlike Romulus, who becomes the first king of Rome, David lacks in leadership potential and therefore remains lost. David’s lack of leadership is the chief trait of his uncertainty with salvation and assimilation.These two passages have showed us that David cannot overcome the difficulty of belonging to...
