Ovid's Imaginary Life

Wow. An Imaginary Life was quite the book. At first I thought the first-person, poetical dialogue would grow old. There wasn't a single sentence of dialogue in the entire book, and it's somewhat amazing that I became attached to the characters at all. But I did, and I liked it. Especially near the end. One of the closest attachments to Ovid's Metamorphesis would have to be the theme of change. In An Imaginary Life, everything is always changing. The seasons, Ovid himself as he lives with the natives progressively longer, and especially the Child as he transforms into some sort of animal-human chimera. An animal caged inside mankind's world. There was a particular quote that I really enjoyed. It went something to effect of death is just giving up on the constant change of life.

There also seemed to be an overarching theme of destiny. Ovid, even though he didn't know it when he was young, was always marching to the ends of the known world. It was his destiny, and the universe was always nudging him toward whether he knew it or not. Reminds me of the television show LOST. Anyway, you could go on for hours about how this relates to class. Another obvious example would be the relationship between men and women. Women being the mysterious gender, and men the less mysterious. I don't know if this view comes from the author being a man. Perhaps if the author was a woman it would be the reverse.

Fictional Ovid discusses the Child like he had met him before in Salma (that word is very wrong, but I know it begins with an "s"). I am a little confused still on the context of this statement. Does it have to do with the Child being a metaphor for his own youth and innocence before he entered the world of men? Ovid looked on the Child nostalgically, reminding him of his own childhood. I have to wonder if the whole entire story wasn't just a metaphor for lost innocence, and the need to return to that innocence (afterall, it is called the Imaginary Life). The Child also appears to represent nature and is ONE with it. Does this relates to man's desire to be at peace with oneself? Is this story trying to reconcile man's desire to be free of nature and also be ONE with it? What is the relationship between childhood and nature? What the hell did I really just read?