“Father is strict. He has to be strict. That doesn’t mean he knows everything I do or think. There are all kinds of things he’s taught me and ways I’ve taught myself and things I’ve learned.”
In this statement, Caroline begins asserting her individuality aside from her father’s nurture and strict rules. As she is growing up Caroline starts learning things on her own and having a self-made perception of the world. Her mentally ill father tries to mold her in his image despite her being an individual of her own as she comes of age. She is in the threshold of young adulthood thus her rebellious inclinations are apposite. She introspectively affirms her independence which would later create a basis of her setting her own path in the future.
“Every problem I have comes from believing something to be true that is not true.”
Nurtured by a paranoid father whom Caroline is not certain she should trust, she undergoes an existential confusion regarding her place in the world. Moreover, her uncertainty regarding her abduction and whether to believe it or not further fosters her issues. Thus the assertion refers to the fact that all her life problems stem from trusting details about her life that might or are not true. It expresses her trust issues and her creeping paranoia concerning her identity or her true family.
“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”
The assertion by Caroline’s father, a quotation from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden reflects the his philosophy of life. In that, the philosophy entails the notion of simple living in natural surroundings. The father aims to convey this notion to Caroline in order for her to view the world as he does. Moreover, teaching the idea of blending only to avoid suspicion in the cities but revert back to their concepts once they are back in the woods. An attitude that molds Caroline in childhood and remains subtly ingrained in mindset even in her adulthood.
