America
At the time of writing, Agnes settled in America, where she is widely known. She admits, "This is one good thing about living in America. I am too far away to be her concern. But long before my marriage I stopped being her [Agnes' Mother's] concern." Agnes leads an autonomous life in America. Therefore, her mother cannot pressure her to bear kids like her siblings. America is far away for her mother to intrude in her life personally.
Names
Agnes underscores that names are insignificant labels. She argues, "You can go into an orchard with a list of names and write them on the oranges, Francoise and Pierre and Diane and Louis, but what difference does it make? What matters to an orange is its orange-ness." Agnes' philosophical argument means that the essence of things, such as orange-ness, is independent of their names. An orange can be labeled with any name, and it would not change the reality that it is an orange.
Orange
An orange is a predominant motif in Agnes’ story. She divulges, “One half orange plus another half orange do not make a full orange again. And that is where my story begins. An orange that did not think itself good enough for a knife, and an orange that never dreamed of turning itself into a knife.” Reading through the novel, a reader views the lives of Agnes and Fabienne as an orange. Fabienne and Agnes are a full orange when they are children. Fabienne's death is akin to cutting an orange into two.
