Imagination and Reality

Fuller’s characters rely on imagination to escape and ignore reality. Flora’s behavior, art, and memories communicate her preference for imagination. When Nan telephones Flora to inform her of Gil’s accident, Nan asks Flora whether she has been drinking or doing drugs. Nan’s assumption that Flora is drunk or high suggests that she uses substances regularly. Flora’s frequent use of mood altering substances indicates that she enjoys escaping reality. Flora’s drawings disfigure humans, so they are barely recognizable. Flora allows imagination to infiltrate her renderings of real people. For example, when she draws Cooper leaning against the hornbeam tree, his face blends into the tree’s bark. Flora’s art demonstrates how she blurs the line between imagination and reality. Flora misremembers events from her past, reimagining reality. When Flora remembers finding the plastic whale head, she imagines Gil...