Throughout the Diviners a constant theme I found to be important was that of inheritance. The inheritance of culture and race, stories, and objects that hold significance yet sometimes different meanings. The Diviners, which is centered around Morag’s quest to find her identity and her voice as an author is coupled with stories and memories that are significant to her past. She begins believing that her identity is a product of her parents, and that the answer she is looking for is in their lineage, the Gunn clan. “It’s a deep land here, all right, But it’s not mine, except a long long way back. I always thought it was the land of my ancestors, but it is not.”…”Christie’s real country. Where I was born”(p.319). Morag is finally able to accept that she is a product of the land she was born in, that the identity she was searching for belongs to the meaning she has placed on the stories Christie and Jules have told her.
Morag inherits these stories and passes them on to Pique who also feels a disconnection with her past and her father. Morag finds Pique’s quest for identity hard to cope with and her final realization allows her to let go. “The inheritors. Was this, finally, and at last, what Morag had always sensed she had to learn from the old man? She had known it all along, but not really known. The gift, or portion of grace, or whatever it was, was finally withdrawn, to be given to someone else” (p. 369). Morag knows that it is time to let Pique reconnect with her roots, and also establish her own identity much like Morag did when she moved back home. Pique’s songs are the recreations of the stories she’s inherited from Morag and Jules and her versions of them give new meaning that is significant to her.
When the New World was settled cultures were no longer independent bodies and as they mixed with others and the land customs, myths, and traditions were appropriated and changed. As successive generations inherited these stories they retold them more in relation to the things they knew than in distant settings far from Canada. Stories are taken and changed as to fit different tellers (much like Jules’ story and the Cree legend) and this is okay because inheritance isn’t a sterile act. There is so much that is transferred in a simple story or object when it is passed down and the significance doesn’t so much lie in the thing itself but in the meaning each person derives from it. Laurence shows that heritage over time is not immune to change and Morag learns that she doesn’t need to leave Canada to retrace her roots.

DIVINING AS DISCOVERY: Discovery is my chosen theme. Morag's incessant search for 'who she was' in order to know 'who she is,' includes photographs. A picture of time frozen - not always remembered - but always there, back in time, back in her photographed past. "I keep the photographs," she says, "not for what they show but for what is hidden in them." Some arouse a memory, some don't, some remain, always waiting to be discovered and to be brought into this future - the future when she'll know who she really is.
Morag's adopted father, an early life humiliation and a scavenger, was also a beloved storyteller. His power of divination, as keeper of the Nuisance Grounds, created a biographical sketch of the town's inhabitants. "By their garbage shall you know them," Christie yells like a preacher. . . . Morag's Nuisance Ground is her collection of photos, her connection to all of life gone.
This is a story of her personal search - an orphaned child, a marriage ended, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, a career built from discovery of an idea and the written word (the story),for love, for peace, for her daughter - a woman alone searching the world. When, on his death bed Christie Logan says, "Well-I'm blessed" a piece of herself is unearthed - the father/daughter relationship is assured. The title baffled me (I thought it esoteric) until some research uncovered the explanation I needed. It is a book, written by two diviners and set in northern Vermont-THE DIVINERS MIND by Ross & Wright. "The art of divining, or dowsing, has for years been cloaked in mystery and superstition. Recognized by some as a means of finding water [Royland] and minerals, it is actually a method for anyone to develop intuitive skills. This thought-provoking book demystifies dowsing & presents this ancient science as a powerful tool for self-knowledge. Dowsing used for locating water, gold, and other minerals, buried artifacts, ancient ritual sites & in police work to help find missing persons." This is all about Morag.

i thought that there was a lot going on in the Diviners about family and traits as well as culture. I agree that part of that is what is passed down from parent to child. I think that Morag is definitely a product of a semi lost childhood. Sure she had one, she was able to play and explore and was scrutinized for being a poor dresser and a good reader, at least in her own head. She was unable to produce memories that she fully knew were hers. She was a writer and therefore a creative mind of which she was able to pass down to her daughter Pique. At least pique had both parents for a significant amount of time to show her who she came from, but it seemed like neither her nor skinner were completely sure, Morag less then skinner.
pg 6 " i keep the snapshots not for what they show but for what is hidden in them." this is in reference to all of Morag's snapshots but she is currently looking at the one of Morag and her parents, who died at a very young age. The snapshots to Morag are memories that she is unsure of. She knows this is her family blood wise but its really all she remembers. Christie and Prinn the family that took her in are the people who basically taught her everything. They are her family and what they tell her of her blood family is what she knows as truth even if its not accurate. Pg 323 "Christie-i used to fight with you, Christie, but you've been my father to me." this is really how Morag realizes that even as she does fight with Christie she loves him as a father. He is the one who passed whatever she has except her looks down to her and she has passed that to pique.

Emerging from the first chapter of “The Diviners” is a key theme: the inadequacy of language. Morag’s self-deprecating thoughts about her writing surface on page 4: “wrong words, implying something unfluid like skin, something unenduring, prey to age”. The last section of the novel, also title “The Diviners”, brings this idea of the inadequacy of language full-circle. Her being beyond language to communicate mostly spawns Morag’s writer’s block. Her supraverbal experiences with the world leave written word as an inferior communicative device. Her relationship with language parallels her life: in the first chapter, her life is fragmented, leaving her documentation of ideas just as disjointed. The novel chronicles her inching toward a better place in her life, and in the end, language is able to satiate her because she has improved her life. Written word, in the end, is not inferior, but, rather, is adequate. Language no longer has such an impossibility for Morag, nor is it a pale imitation of reality for her. In this sense, I think that the novel deals with the deconstruction of language, thematically.

One major theme that I have come across a lot in this novel is family dysfunction. Most of the families in the book are not what one would call stereotypical, and Morag’s upbringing is far from the norm. This is evident when Morag is uncomfortable in Ella’s functional household. “Morag has never known anything like this kind of house before. Its warmth is sometimes very much harder to take than any harshness could be, because it breaks her up and she considers it a disgrace to cry in front of anybody” (150). Morag’s unconventional childhood makes her uncomfortable to cry in front of anyone and get too close to anyone. This comes up again when Christie is on his death bed and Morag says, “Christie-I used to fight a lot with you, Christie, but you’ve been my father to me” (323). Morag has come to realize that despite her unnatural upbringing that is quite different from Ella’s, she still has had a father figure in her life all along.

IDENTITY.
One of the themes that came up throughout the novel is that of identity. We talked about it a bit in class with the idea of myths and memories as a construction of Morag's identity. Throughout the novel she is trying to define herself- within her society, within her family (history), within her profession etc. She is constantly searching for herself.
It seemed to me that Morag would identify herself using the people around her. She declares that she is not like Eva who was quiet and did not stand up for herself, that she is not like Prin or Christie because she is educated and healthy, she is not like Skinner who is a drop out and a lone wolf. Even with Brooke, which I found to be the most interesting. She tries to be whoever/whatever he wants her to be: as a wife, a lover, a writer. (p160) I also think that throughout the book Morag is trying to search for herself using the memory bank movies and the snapshots. She is relying on her past to show her who she is/has become.(p319)

The theme that I have come across is related to identity, but more specifically, the search for ones-self. In countries like Canada and America, where the east was industrialized first, the west becomes a destination for young people to find themselves. Most easterners make the trip in their late teens or their twenties, looking for adventure, meaning to define themselves by their experiences. I was interested to learn that this sort of vision quest, this late adolescent rite of passage, was common in Canada too (I assume, as both Morag and Pique must do it). I think that moving west takes the place of going to war for many people, as moving to the city proves adulthood. In The Diviners, Morag cannot wait to leave Manawaka, can't wait to leave Prin and Christie's home. On the night before she leaves "the train whistle says Out There Out There Out There" (134).
After her time in college and later her married life with Brooke, Morag must again get away. Jules asks her where she will be going after they spend a night together, Morag says, "'Further west. To the coast.' 'Chrissake, why?' She doesn't know. Maybe it only ever occurs to prairie people, when they light out, to go yet further west. This is idiotic" (226). Pique herself feels the urge to take her trip west, be it with a boyfriend or alone. Perhaps this is something passed on from mother to daughter. I know that the west coast is important to me because of the stories my parents told.

A theme that I have noticed a lot in The Diviners is one of the importance of appearance
to Morag. This novel serves as a kind of biography for Morag, and like it or not growing
up appearances are important to young women. One place this theme comes up is on page 180
when she writes, "where to buy clothes that Brooke will like on her, and how to do
verbal battle with hairdressers in order to achieve (even if only partially) the style she wants, without submitting to the outlandish creations which they always seem to
want." Morag is 24 and in a relationship with an older guy and she obviously cares what
he thinks about her. Her appearance is important because she is living in a city and
extremely interested in how she is perceived. On the same page she writes, ?She feels
slightly peculiar each time she gets her hair done, but Brooke likes her this way, and
she has to admit it does look more feminine. She watches her diet carefully and is
slender. She wears lightly tailored suits in the daytime, with pastel blouses, sometimes
frilled. In the heat of summer, cotton dresses with flared skirts. Her shows have what is
know n as illusion heels, so that she will appear to be wearing high heels without adding
too much to her height. In the evenings, meeting academic friends, she goes in heavily
for the little black cocktail dress, not necessarily black, of course. She looks smart."
Great lengths are taken to describe Morag's looks and everything she does to maintain
them. These things range from diet to hairstyling to dressing appropriately. Words like
feminine and smart instruct the reader how to view Morag's carefully constructed image.
Another spot in The Diviners where appearances are very important to Morag is when she
has a job at the dress shop. She spends a long time saving up for a dress that she thinks
she will look very nice in and someone else comes in and buys it at once who doesn't fit
into it well. Morag feels jealous and disgusted by this woman who in Morag's opinion too
large for such a colorful print. The woman who buys it tells Morag that she is spoiling
herself.
Morag has been working at this store for a while and has been called a quick learner by one of her managers and this makes her feel good and important because she understands what styles of clothing are in fashion and what pieces will look best on certain body types.

Another theme that dominated the Diviners is that of personal identity and relationship. In other words, an exploration of the very nature of identity, and how we come to realize who we are through our relationships with people, with stories, and with our histories.

After finishing the Diviners I looked back at the epithet to the book. It is a quotation from the Canadian poet, Al Purdy. It says, “but they had their being once/ and left a place to stand on”. While I am unfamiliar with the poem that these lines came from, its place within the context of the novel seems important. It gives the reader a place from which to view Morag’s journey. In a sense, the ambiguous “they” in these lines allow that the past at one point was its own present and that that present is no longer valid. However, they recognize that the past is still important because of what it provides for the present: a grounding. Whether speaking of time, or of memory, or of familial identity these lines represent Morag’s eventual understanding of relationship.

Morag’s search for understanding stems from her seeming lack of a history, lack of a place to stand on. In the lines of Al Purdy a similar emptiness is felt. An emptiness of loss, perhaps loss felt looking at death, or perhaps loss of one’s own life. Through her journey for personal truth and identity, Morag eventually finds it to be a false emptiness - she learns to see the past in the present. This is evident in the scene of Christie’s death. Morag has returned to Manawaka and is in the hospital with Christie. He, the story teller, is unable to speak. In a sense, even though he is still alive, he has lost his affective life. It is only when Christie is “dead” in this way that Morag is able to come to terms with their relationship. It reads, “There is something she must say. She wonders if she can discover the words. ‘Christie - I used to fight a lot with you, Christie, but you’ve been my father to me” (323). Realizing the truth about her relationship with Christie represents Morag’s final acceptance of her history. An acceptance that began when she visited Scotland only to find that her real place was Canada. (319) She could not just stand on the history of the stories and the myths, but also needed to recognize the history of her experiences and the people in them to fully understand herself.

Even as Morag reaches a kind of peace, the search to discover the relationship skips to the next generation as Pique tries to determine how Morag’s life, and how Jules’s life affect her sense of self and identity.

Margaret Laurence's "The Diviners" is a Kunstlerroman; a novel of the development and growth of an artist. The protagonist's, Morag, life is in disarray at the beginning of the novel and the reader gets the sense that she is unhappy and lost as an individual. Morag's daughter just left her and she is unable to begin a new novel. "I've got too much damn work in hand to fret over Pique. Lucky me. I've got my work to take my mind of life. At forty-seven thats not such a terrible state of affairs. If I hadn't been a writer, I might've been a first rate mess at this point. Don't knock the trade" (4). Morag is some-what sarcastic about her life here which causes the reader to believe that she resents it. Morag is completely alone in the first chapter and does not like it. "Until recently the house was full, not only Pique, but A-Okay Smith and Maudie and their shifting, but ever large tribe... Now of course, she wished some of them were here again" (5).
However, Morag is able to mature as not only a mother and daughter, but as a writer as well. Morag's development occurs through chronologically arranged flashbacks and events in her present. This flashbacks are sparked by various photographs that never seemed to get lost throughout her life. Through the memories that these photos initiate, Morag desires to learn the real truth of her past, rather than a false identity that she has made-up for herself. Morag finally accepts that she is part of the land that she was born into and she recognizes Pique's need to leave and lets her go. At the end of "The Diviners", Morag has improved her life, marking her development.

I found that one potential theme in "The Diviners" is expressing one's self, in particular through writing. Description be it through written words, stories, photographs, etc. plays an important part in the book. One section that really stood out to me discussing the importance of writing was in the very first chapter. As we talked about in class this is when we discover that Morag is a writer due to the desk and typewriter that are mentioned. This sets an important tone for the novel reflecting on the subsequent theme of metafiction as well. The value of expression is crucial throughout the book and her manipulation of words corresponds with the manipulation of memories and stories about these memories that occur later in the novel. I also found the theme of nature to be interesting. Writing is linked with nature when she says, "The river flowed both ways," this powerful phrase proves to be a metaphor for the direction the book will take as well as the sheer importance of nature/place throughout the novel.

I know it seems rather "used" at this point but I've also noticed the theme of identity throughout this book. I think a major part of who Morag is comes through in her struggle to uphold that she is a full grown woman and this seems to be a major point of argument when it comes to her relationship with Brooke. Like, when he affectionately names her "Child" and she takes offense and draws back, stating "Brooke, I am not your child. I am your wife." (183) This is a constant fight she has, as if she realizes that the childhood that was taken away from her when her parents died is over, but no one else seems to realize it.
She also wants to identify herself as a serious author, but this constant reminder from Brooke of "Child" seems to negatively affect her ability to prove that she is competent enough to write, or to even to participate in his discussions with his higher level college students. When he comes home one night, and the dinner isn't ready, she is so wrapped up in her novel, she becomes defensive that it isn't ready. She realizes her feelings and says "It's--no, I'm all right. It's just that I've reached a kind of crucial point. I mean, with the novel. Brooke laughs, relieved. Is that it? Heavens, I thought you'd been suddenly stricken with something serious." (188) She seems to constantly struggle with her identity as an adult and an author when confronted by such an intellectual as Brooke, because he seems to have assumed that she isn't capable of this, and that he doesn't respect what she tries to do. She wants to be identified as this by Brooke because he's an important person in her life, but struggles to make that known to him.

Social Status:

In this story, there is an implication that controlling one's social status is a struggle and in some instances, one's status is forced upon them. One way that this status is measured is through longevity. For example, Morag brags, "My family's been around here for longer than anybody" and Skinner replies, "Not longer than mine" (59). This begs the question, "Who cares?" Well, the point is relevant, because people certainly act like they are a greater part of a region, or any sort of group, for that matter, if they have been there for a longer time. It seems, though, that status may be more appropriately associated more with the level of contribution one has made rather than the longevity of one's involvement. One could be a social nuisance or a social aide for a very long time.
Later on in the story, we see that one's age is an additional factor that has an effect on their status. Skinner playfully yet jeeringly chants a crude rhyme about sexuality, which vexes Morag's emotions. Morag interjects that she is not yet sixteen, as the song implied, and Skinner replies, "Guess you're safe for a while, then, eh?" (104). Skinner suggests that there is an impending societal role that Morag will be forced into, which makes Morag uncomfortable because it subtracts her will from the equation.
It seems that time is working both for and against Morag. On one hand, she becomes a more official member of the community the longer that she is there, but on the other, she acquires new responsibilities as she ages. Morag's largest conflict seems to be with the factors that are out of her control, suggesting that free will (specifically with regards to choosing one's social status) is a pressing issue for her.

One of the major themes that I found in the novel was the fluidity of time.

There’s a lot to say when examining the theme you mentioned in the prompt: memory. Psychological theories tell us that memories are created and re-created as we imagine the moment again and again. No two people can have the same exact memory since memories themselves are inherently subjective (we form them ourselves and therefore cannot make them objective). The application of this belief is seen in Morag as she holds on to the pictures and memories she has gathered over the years. The last italicized bit in the novel is Morag saying to herself, “Look ahead into the past, and back into the future, until the silence” (370). Here, she is saying that the past and present work simultaneously with one another:. The use of “look ahead” when talking about the past and “back into” when talking about the future hints that the past and future are inevitably related and that one cannot look so much into one without looking at another. The application of this to memory is present throughout the novel as Morag recalls her own past and ponders Pique’s future. Thus, there is fluidity of time: Morag’s past (and those who are a part of her past) is directly related to her future. They exist in harmoniously together. Another passage suggesting the fluidity of time is found in the very beginning of the text, when Morag is describing a picture of herself behind a farm gate. She says of the memory she has attached to the photograph, “I don’t recall when I invented that one. I can remember it, though, very clearly” (8). Here, the fluidity of time is again demonstrated very nicely. Morag tells us that she cannot remember when she created the memory surrounding that particular photograph, but she can remember the actual photograph being taken. It would seem that the opposite would be true: she can’t remember the photograph being taken, but she can remember the creation of the memory being formed around that photograph. Yet, this isn’t the case, and so the order in which things should happen is being played with. She is remembering a later date in time (when she was only 3 years old), yet is failing to remember a more recent date in time, which seems out of order. Again, the idea that time is a constantly changing entity that is fluid and “runs both ways” (as Morag says about the river on p. 3) is present. These are only two of many, many passages that suggest that time is flexible. In fact, one could argue that it is this exact idea that makes “The Diviners” the book that it is, since the formation of memories depends on this principle.

The theme i saw to be prevalent, although it feels so obvious, I don't know if you could call it a theme, is the idea of Divining. Granted, it is the title of both the book, and one of the sections, but it still feels like saying the words over and over doesn't always explain the idea, whereas within the text, it is an important underlying force, driving not only the text but Morag herself. Our first encounter with the physical concept of Divining is on page 23 when Royland asks Morag is she'd like to come see him divine. He is curious to her enthusiasm for it. "'Why're you so interested in Divining, Morag?'...'I guess with one part of my mind I find it hard to believe in, but with the other part I believe in it totally.'...'I don't reckon I really need to understand it' Royland said.'I just gotta do it.' Here we see the importance of Divining, whether it be the physical act of finding water beneath the ground, or what it is that act represents, especially to Morag. Divining is about finding something, and it is through her writing that Morag is able to do so. In this novel, it seems that for Morag, she is finding out something about herself. Outwardly, we see her trying to separate the fact in her life from the fiction of it. She wants to move away from the stories she has been told, and tells herself, and find out the truth. But, through searching for the truth, Morag discovers that the truth isn't what she thought, that there is more truth to the stories that she knows than the facts she is given. But this journey was something she had to do. Like actual divining for Royland, Morag was compelled to search for the answers to the question of her identity. Morag needed to ask the question, not because it needed to be answered, but divining is something you "gotta do" and it is about finding what you are without. Morag finds that her source of life is through her writing and asking and struggling to find the truth, even though that truth may not be what will set her free. It is the process of discovery, of divining that revealed what was important. "At least Royland knew he had been a true diviner...Morag's magic tricks were of a different order. She would never know whether they actually worked or not, or to what extent. That wasn't given to her to know. In a sense, it did not matter. The necessary doing of the thing-that mattered." (369)

The Diviners is a story which is threaded through and through with uncertainty, loss of memory, trying to segment strings of the past together into a single mold. Yet memories are fabricated, stories are elaborations, and no matter how precise one may be certain facts always escape the mind. One theme that may be touched upon this novel is ambivalence, in meaning, memory, and action. "A popular misconception is that we can't change the past...a meaningless question. But one I keep trying to answer, knowing there is no answer" (pg. 49). The author perpetually questions her past, what her memories mean, the cause of her remembrance, yet finds no pattern or sense of it all. Ambiguity.

"No way of talking to him differently, now, than she ever had. No way of saying everything she would like to say, either. Maybe none of it really needed saying, after all" (pg. 363). Here again the author seems uncertain, unable to choose the right words, nor to understand even what she wished to portray. Morag throughout the story seems as only a spectator of her own experiences and memories, being somewhat distanced from her surroundings, her past. She finds herself crying, worried and annoyed by certain events, not knowing the line between truth and fabrication. Just as the river it seemed that her mind flowed both ways as well, always posing impossible contradictions on reality.

One of the most obvious themes of the book would have to be Identity. Throughout the novel, Morag is always questioning who she is as a person as well as whom the influential people in her life have been that have helped shape her identity. For the longest time the only answer that she could come up with is that she is a product of her parents and they have shaped her identity. She realizes later in the novel though that she is more a product of Christie and Prin. “I remember their deaths, but not their lives. Yet they’re inside me flowing unknown in my blood and moving unrecognized in my skull.” (Page 15) As this quote proves, Morag really has no idea what her parents were like and only knew them for a few early years of her childhood. Morag spends the rest of her childhood and teenage age under the supervision of Christie and Prin and although she doesn’t realize this until much later, she became who she became through them as well as where she grew up. “Why does she want to hear? She doesn’t know. But the times when she was a kid and Christie would tell those stories, everything used to seem all right then.” (Page 105) This quote is showing how as Morag gets older her greatest childhood memories involve Christie. At this point in the novel she still uncertain of whom she is as a person and what has shaped her in life. It is hard for Morag to give Christie and Prin the credit of how her identity was formed but eventually in her older, wiser years it finally becomes clear to Morag that what she was looking for for so long was always sitting right in front of her.

The theme that resonates through out this book other than the ones stated already is that of limited perspective. I notice it through out the book constantly. A lot of that is through the characters memories. What someone remembers is only a fragment of the reality a lot of times. Over time your perspective can changes or be altered. One can also forget things they remember over time which will also limit perspective. This is seen through Morag in the beginning of The Diviners on page eleven when she is looking back on her photographs. She says, "Somewhat ironically, it is the first memory of actual people that I can trust, although I cant trust it completely, either partly because I recognize anomolies in it, ways of expressing remembering, was which arent those of a five-year-old, as though I was older in that memory (and the words bigger) than in some subsequent ones when I wassix or seven, and partly because it was only what was happening to me." You can sense the Morags acknowledgment of her limited perspective. There is also a part on page 117 when there are two different accounts of the same story and this shows how both stories were limited in perspective based on different peoples momory of them.

One of the important and pertinent themes of The Diviners is that of stories and how these reflect the human experience. Morag connects very strongly with the stories of her ancestors in Scotland, the stories that comprise her own life, and the stories she writes for and about herself. Morag is also intently interested in the inaccuracy of experience and stories to reflect what really happened. Towards the end, she concludes that stories, while inaccurate and slanted, are all we really have. What I have been thinking about recently is: is there anything more? Is there a way for humans to connect to one another outside of and beyond language and personal experience? People relate to one another based on the similarity or dissimilarity of experiences. To my way of thinking, this is a valiant attempt at understanding, but ultimately self-referential. Do we really learn anything by listening to other peoples' stories and relating it to our own experiences, or do we only learn about ourselves? Is there a medium more intimate in which people can really trade experiences and outlooks, or are we doomed to think of ourselves first? This conundrum seems to be part of humanity's basic and fundamental flaw: true, genuine compassion is not possible if everything someone else tells you runs through the filter of your own experience. Thus, people find it difficult to relate to one another and keep each other alone. This of course reverts to the existential position that every being in the universe lives alone and conscious of its own mortality. I wonder if there is some way to transcend this paradigm and truly share each others' experiences.

I think that some of the important themes that reoccur throughout The Diviners are memory and identity. In a book in which Morag is trying to find out who she is, she uses photographs to help illustrate who she is. Another important theme to consider in the book is the past vs. present. The book opens up with the words "the river flowed both ways" this is important because it basically sets up the entire novel by discussing how the past and present are important but its also important when considering Morags identity, she lives her entire life by trying to revisit the past attempting to figure out what her true identity is. Its important to question the accuracy of Morags memory, one could argue that when she remembers these things through her photographs to shape her identiy, they may not be in fact real, or 100% accurate. I took the last line of the book to question the accuracy of these memories. "Morag returned to the house, to write the remaining private and fictional words, and to set down her title" This passage is important because of the word "fictional words" because it puts into question Morags identity. As readers we go through the whole book questioning whether or not her memories that formed her identity were real or not, the book ends with us wondering the same thing since she ends by stating she is going to write down fictional words. We can successfully question whether or not Morags identity is real or not.

I found one of the themes that was as significant as those listed if not more so was identity. Although it ties in with memory, as memory helps to shape our identity, I believe it also stands alone as its own unique theme in the text. It has been an underlying theme in each of the texts we've read so far. All of our protagonists have struggled throughout their lives to define themselves and struggle to create experiences and find a way to cope with their memories in order to find themselves to be something they can be satisfied with and that carries on the tradition of their roots and heritage.
On page 322 of "The Diviners," Laurence writes a dialogue between Morag and Pique. Morag is commenting on how Eskimos know twenty-five words for snow but only one for flower despite a large variety of flowers in their region. Knowing snow is crucial to survival. Morag is pouring over a book that details a number of different types of weeds. Weeds are not important at all to survival, but still there the information is in front of her. Is the culture in which her identity has been shaped not one based on necessity but rather on frivilous facts that relate to frivilous tasks. When Maudie says she thinks it is very nice to learn about all of them Pique comments that her mother does not actually care about these weeds at all, but instead is interested in the names. Morag thinks, "This girl knows me." Having an identity can be validated by having people that know us very well, often family members. In this case Pique is helping to define Morag's identity by expressing her knowledge of what is really going on inside her mother's head, proving that Morag has a real identity that is recognized by those around her.
Another passage regarding Morag's identity relates to her efforts to shape that identity by reshaping her own memory and perception of the past. The bottom paragraph, the first after the verses, expresses how Morag's actions have affected Pique over the years. While Morag realizes that she has done much to hurt Pique, she has hoped that by thinking about them enough and reimagining them over and over that she could send them straight into imagination and "they would prove to have been unreal after all." She knows this is a fruitless task though, and despite her efforts she knows the truth and what that means about who she is. Her identity is shaped by her actions and efforts to change her memory cannot change what has happened and ultimately are ineffective in reshaping the perception of her own identity that she has.