The girl who forgets and the girl who can't remember.

     So the title is a self-confession, I have a very bad short term memory and great tuning-things-out skills (one of the reasons this blog is soooooo late). In a way I can relate to Allie, although I've never undergone shock therapy (not intentionally anyways), I can connect to her character.  Allie finds herself in the middle of an adventure and perfectly free. She reminds of a character in a story I wrote when I was in high school, my character found herself on the street with no real memory of who she was or where she was all she had was a note left to her by herself. Allie is pretty much in the same position, through her memory loss she finds freedom and choice.
    The first place one sees her power of choice is while she is shopping at the army surplus store. Then she follows her own vague direction to her aunt's ruined homestead and finds the greenhouse. While reading about Allie's discoveries and progressions you see that she is very aware of a search, she is looking for 'it'. This search may have be what drove her insane in the first place, but now she is free to search for it. There reason she flunked at life was because she realized her material life had to be connected to something more. Humans had to have some deeper purpose than just living and dying. We journey on a quest with Allie which brings us across Will Barrett.
    Will Barrett is also a character on the search for 'it'. His quest is a little different though, will is on the quest because he remembers the event which awakened him to the quest, much like Percy's character Binx. They both encountered near death experiences which lead the on the search. Will is driven by memory and his quest is free like Allie's. He is tangled and weighed down, much like Binx, both men try to break from the everydayness and search for it. Where Allie is hopefully that 'it' exists, Will is more skeptical thinking everything happens for biological reasons.
   Yet the two come together and need each other. Allie needs Will to help her communicate and remember language. Will needs Allie to teach him freedom and meaning through words. Will falls and Allie hoists. They make a perfect match, plus who wouldn't want a slightly loony lover who says things like, "The arrangement is the derangement, when the arrangement is arranged then you what the ensuement is?".