with her torments during her second trip out on the lake. Up to this point, she had always connected the lake with the near drowning of her brother. However, after diving deep into the abyss of the water she emerges with a new perception. She realizes that she has seen something that is representative of death. Laying in the canoe she says the shape of what she saw “formed again in my head: at first I thought it was my drowned brother . . . Then I recognized it: it wasn’t even my brother I’d been remembering, that had been a disguise.” It was the image of her aborted baby. She discovers that up to this point her life had been nothing more than a fiction. In a moment of truth, she reveals to us that she had pieced her life together. “A faked album, the memories as fraudulent as passports; but a paper house was better than none and I could almost live in it, I’d lived in it until now.” The narrator returns to the house feeling enlightened. She has sunk to the deepest depths of the lake and her sanity in order to rise again refreshed. She goes through an animal-like transformation and sheds her clothes, sleeps outdoors, and refuses to eat food from the house or garden. She allows Joe to impregnate her so that she may produce a baby that is pure, and exempt from the evil nature of man. After days of purifying herself she regains her sanity and realizes that at some point she must return to civilization. Although this time she will live under her own will. She will no longer be a victim of a dominating society, nor will she hide behind the fake collages she had created since she was a little girl. She says “This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing. I have to recant, give up the old belief that I am powerless and because of it nothing I can do will ever hurt anyone.” She has broken free from the rein of man and become one again with nature. She is now...
