Animal Dreams Analysis

Setting is central in Animal Dreams, and it's also pretty centralized. Though Tucson, Nicaragua, and the reservations of the American Southwest all play major roles in the plot, it's Grace, Arizona...

Animal Dreams switches betweentwo narrators, Homer "Doc" Noline, and Cosima "Codi" Noline—although you could make the case that Hallie's letters up the number of narrators to three. Codi is the m...

There are no cowboys, ghosts, or dragons in them there mines, and the only "Indian" in Animal Dreams drives an Amtrak and drinks Coke. Animal Dreams is a sometimes painfully realistic novel. It ref...

The main characters in Animal Dreams are all stuck in the painful losses of their past. Codi is hung up on the death of her mother, her miscarriage, her faraway sister, and her rejection by the tow...

"I am the sister who didn't go to war," saysCodi in her opening line—but it's almost the last time in the novel she uses language so formal. More often, the novel is like a long conversation with...

The title Animal Dreams is a reference to a specific conversation about the dreams Jack the dog is having as Codi and Loyd lie around having some post-sex snuggles in the middle of an archeological...

Like a lot of novels, Animal Dreams ends where it began—but only sort of. It's the Day of the Dead again, that celebration when the people of Grace decorate and picnic on their family graves. Ins...

Mixing straightforward language and narrative structures with complex symbolism and unfamiliar historical situations, Animal Dreams is a pleasant if challenging hike in the tree-line. In addition t...

Life's not looking too good for Codi Noline. She's a med school dropout who works at a 7-Eleven; she's broken up with her boyfriend; her estranged father has Alzheimer's; and her sister and Hallie...

A Young Hero or Heroine Falls under the Shadow of the Dark Power.Codi Noline is trapped under the shadow of directionlessness, hopelessness, and low self-esteem. Her little sister has left the coun...

From the beginning of the book until roughly Chapter 25, Codi is still basically planning to run off at any minute. She hated growing up in Grace, and she doesn't want to get stuck there, so no amo...

Kingsolver wrote Animal Dreams one-handed. She had to learn to type that way because her first child was nursing the whole time. (Source) Like Codi, Kingsolver was trained as a biologist. We guess...

Codi, with her gladiator sandals and her Billy Idol haircut, is a liberated woman with a healthy libido. She likes muscles, she likes decisiveness, she likes dudes who took anatomy in college, she...

Literary and Philosophical References Henry David Thoreau, Walden (8.70)Robert Frost, "Death of a Hired Hand" (16.86)Spider Woman and the War Twins (19)Pueblo Dances (20)Gertrude Stein (18)The Sand...