Son

Throughout the novel, Claire and Gabe must both contend with the problems associated with a lack of knowledge concerning their own personal histories. When Gabe contemplates his own history at the beginning of Book 3, he finds it difficult to share because there are so many gaps in his knowledge: “All of the boys had a history to tell. Gabe did too, but he didn’t enjoy the telling; there were too many I-don’t-knows to it” (273). Gabe finds the lack of knowledge concerning his own past to be painful, not wanting to share any of his history because he himself does not understand it. However, this should allow Gabe to empathize or at the very least find common ground with most of the people in the village, who “had found their way to the village [and] had little memory of their own past” (302). The people in the village possess a desire to record history—as evidenced by the Museum of History that all schoolchildren visit—and yet, that history is often already lost. In this way, the author explicitly relates history to memory, implicitly identifying both as almost tangible items that can be misplaced. The author does not attempt to identify the memory of history as something which is forgotten; in fact, the presence of the Museum of History identifies memory as something which people strive to remember.