55 pages • 1 hour read
Ann PancakeStrange as this Weather Has Been
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Connection Between Identity and Place
The connection between identity and place is a key theme. In her youth, Lace fought against identifying herself by her surroundings. While she was raised in Yellowroot hollow by a mother who venerated the verdant woods and hills, Lace never saw herself as part of it. Instead, she looked to magazines and movies, and she identified with what she saw in them. Since she didn’t see anyone in the media that looked like the West Virginians she knew, she began to see West Virginia as a prison that separated her from who she was truly meant to be.
Only after leaving Yellowroot does Lace realize that the mountains are an indelible part of her. After going away to college in Morgantown, Lace suddenly felt the absence of home: “[Y]eah, they had hills in Morgantown, but not backhome hills, and not the same feel backhome hills wrap you in. I’d never understood that before, had never even known the feel was there. Until I left out and knew it by its absence” (4). That was the first time that Lace realized that she identified with the landscape of her home state. From then on, every time she is away from Yellowroot, this feeling returns. When Lace and Jimmy move their family to Raleigh, she misses “backhome woods so bad [she]’d feel land in [her] throat” (193). She also can’t identify with people outside of West Virginia, who seem “as flat as the land, no up and down to them, and it was like everybody walked around with a door in front of their faces, no, two doors, this thick screen door, and behind that, a heavy storm one” (193).
Mogey, Bant, and Avery are other characters who find their identity in the mountain landscape. For Mogey, the woods are an extension of his body, and conversely he sees himself as an extension of the woods. Bant has a similar thought in Chapter 11: “I never saw myself, never felt myself, as separate from [the land]” (100). Mogey worries that the destruction of the land is close to murder since there is no line between nature and people. Avery also sees this kind of connection, convinced that the end of the world will be a direct result of the clearing of the woods and mountains.
Loss in Rural Mining Communities
Much of the novel deals with various kinds of loss: loss of the land, loss of self, and loss of relationships. While each loss functions individually, each deeply interweaves with the others. Loss of the land is the most obvious and visible. The mining companies are destroying vast portions of the woods and mountains, and this, in turn, causes flooding that washes away people’s homes and yards. For people like Lace, Mogey, and Mrs. Taylor, this loss of the physical place they identify with becomes inseparable from feeling like they’ve lost a piece of themselves. This is because, as explored in the above section, each of these characters finds their identity in their surroundings.
While loss of place and self are the most connected and obvious, loss of relationships is just as prevalent, and is a direct result of the landscape. Throughout the novel, Lace and Jimmy’s relationship is in crisis. While their initial attraction and children keep them together for most of their young life, their opposing views about the mining and its environmental impact tear them apart. Lace feels like she must choose between fighting for her home or for Jimmy, and she chooses the land. However, it’s clear that she will ultimately lose everything: She loses her husband when Jimmy moves away with Dane and Tommy; she loses her family when her son Corey dies; and she will inevitably lose her land as the mining company destroys Yellowroot.
Bant’s relationship to R.L. is similar to the dynamic between Lace and Jimmy in the sense that Bant is attracted to him physically, but she hates what he represents. In the end, it’s not her severed relationship with him that creates the deepest sense of loss in Bant—it’s her lost virginity. She was willing to give R.L. her virginity in exchange for information about the mining practices on Yellowroot, but when she finds out afterwards that he didn’t know anything, she feels like she gave away part of herself for nothing.
Environmentalism, Religion, and Spirituality
The idea that environmentalism and religion are in opposition is a constant undertone throughout the novel. Specifically, Christianity attempts to explain the environmental disasters associated with strip mining one way, while the environmentalists take another approach. The Christian view is exemplified by Mrs. Taylor, who frequently talks about the End Times in the Bible. Her pamphlet proclaims: “The world teetering right on the brink […] get out your Bibles, please, and read: 2 Timothy for the personality traits people will exhibit during these ‘critical times.’ Matthew and Luke for the ‘last days’” (73). For Mrs. Taylor, because the Bible explains that the earth will be in ruin in the End Times, it seems like the coal mining devastation is preordained and therefore unstoppable.
However, the town’s environmentalists, like Lace’s friends Loretta and Charlie, have a much different view. They are armed with scientific research, news articles uncovering the mining companies’ depredations, and the knowledge that there is still time to save the mountain. Instead of simply giving up in the face of what seem like insurmountable odds, the environmentalists feel they have the power and the agency to fight against the problem.
Attempting to blend the two viewpoints is Mogey, a character who is both religious but also an environmentalist. He attends church regularly, calls himself a Christian, and respects the views of the leaders in the church. However, he feels most spiritual in the woods and views them as a sacred place where God is really present. His pastor disagrees with the idea that people should feel kinship with nature since “God gave man the earth and its natural resources for our own use. We are its caretakers, and we have dominion over it” (168). Mogey doesn’t accept this argument. Instead, he thinks of church as a way to explain morality, “the part of [him] that knows right from wrong” (176). Alternatively, he gets his sense of spirituality from nature and tries to hope for the best when he considers what will happen with the flooding.
