Essay on Novel: In to the forest

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Essay on Novel: In to the forest
Introduction
In to the Forest is a fictional story by Hegland Jean which was published by Random House publishing in 1989 and its set in the near future where a disaster has struck the world and electricity has failed, services dependent on technology have also collapsed and there is violence everywhere with an outbreak of viral disease that threatens to wipe human out of existence. Thirty miles away from northern California are two juvenile sisters who have lost their mother to cancer and their father to an accident and their running out supplies fast. They are forced to combine their strengths to survive in the forest by all means at least until the disaster has ends. They go through hell to survive, they ration everything they have and also have to supplement them by utilizing anything that is around them in the forest. One of them is raped and she finds consolation in her sister. Finally the disaster ends and the girls are ready to get back to normal life in the nearby town.
In the end of the end of the story in the forest, the two sisters Eva and Nell see it necessary to burn the house they had been living all their lives in the forest as a sign of and end to their suffering and survival in the forest. The burning of the house signifies that their problems have come to an end and they live them behind as they venture into the new world with great optimism of a better life where finding food, water, electricity, gas and other basic amenities is guaranteed as compared to the forest life they had been living after they lost their parents. She signified the problems they had when the author wrote "Once our Father quit going to work, we were so isolated from even Redwood that it was sometimes hard to remember anything unusual was happening in the world beyond our forest" (Hegland, 18)
Another reason why they opt to burn their house is symbolic of destruction of bad memories that both held due to the incident of Eva`s rape, it meant that the guilt that she held about herself regarding the abuse are forgotten and that she is ready to forge ahead in her life without blaming herself for her past misfortunes.
The sisters burnt their house as means of starting afresh their lives especially when they were to join the rest of the world which they had been isolated from their childhood. The house represented their life of isolation and burning it symbolized that they were not moving into the new world...