Steven Kaspar

I felt like a major theme, that maybe does not come full circle till the last page, is the idea of finding your place or finding your way in the world. The creatures are trying to find a new better way to live their life and then there are the few who are comfortable with the safety and familiarity of their life as it is. Qfwfq is searching for something newer and wanting to change and be a land animal; he most likely wants this because that is what is expected of him and that is the only goal he has ever really entertained in his mind. Qfwfq has never even truly considered actually choosing the life that his Uncle N’ba N’ga lives even though in a practical thinking it makes much more sense than living on the ground and trying to become a fully land, air-breathing animal. I believe this theme is the symbolic connection that Calvino is trying to make. Calvino does not make attempts to try and make any way of life seem better than another. He simply points out that the creatures have choices of how they are going to live their lives and points out that people have the ability to choose what they will believe about life. The ending took me by surprise. I thought that Lll was just being nice to N’ba N’ga because she had better social skills than Qfwfq, but she was actually very interested and ended up changing her whole life and beliefs based on her interactions with N’ba N’ga.

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