You might say this story is ultimately about forgiveness. Are you able to find all the major characters redeemable in some way, or are there any you cannot forgive?
Honestly, I have a hard time forgiving Norma’s parents. I know they were hurting for a child but they took away the most precious thing to a family
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I cannot forgive Norma’s mother, father and aunt. Why did not one of them think about the grieving family whose child was stolen by them. Plus taking Ruthie this Indigenous child away from her heritage.
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I felt no forgiveness for the mother, father, or her aunt. I think what they did was almost as bad as it gets. I was relieved to find out that Alice didn’t know. Ruthie seemed to think she shouldn’t act angry, but this was brutal, lifelong betrayal. Every morning the betrayal started again.
Yeah, I agree it’s hard to forgive these characters’ actions. As I posted elsewhere, I think had we heard their side of the story perhaps we might have been able to forgive them, at least a little bit. But as it stands it’s very hard to understand why these characters acted as they did, other than sheer selfishness.
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I cannot seem to find sympathy, empathy or forgiveness for Lenore or her husband. She was very selfish and he was a wimp.
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It’s difficult to forgive Norma’s mother and father. Even viewed from the context of the times, where some might say Lenore was saving Norma by rescuing her from a life of poverty, it’s inexcusable. She didn’t rescue a child she kidnapped her.
I also had difficulty with Joe. Some of his actions were inexcusable, and yet he got away with them (or rather ran away from them). I was frustrated by his inability to move beyond his trauma, but then again that’s what trauma can do to someone.
Like others in this forum, I can’t find forgiveness for Norma’s parents. I was surprised that June, who seems to be a compassionate person, could have gone along with the crime and hid the truth even from Alice. Both Cora and Leah could forgive Joe, along with his mother and remaining siblings. I can understand the empathy they extended him, and he’d done a pretty good job of punishing himself for most of his life.
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I cannot forgive Norma’s mother, father or her Aunt June. They felt no remorse for the pain they had to assume they caused another family whose child was stolen. Ruthie’s family had no idea whether she was alive or dead, and to me it’s inexcusable for those people to have caused such pain to another family.
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I tend to agree with other views that is is difficult to find grace for the parents and Aunt June. To me the father and Aunt June seem the least likely to be forgiven. It was obvious that Lenore was not well, and needed mental health assistance; but for the husband and sister to go along with her lie is non forgivable.
I could not forgive the actions of Norma’s parents and to a lesser extent, her aunt. To watch their child pay the price for their deception was cruel and selfish. Aunt Jane had a chance to redeem herself in Boston but did not have the courage. Their actions derailed Norma’s life and robbed her of so much.
I do agree with most people on this forum that it is hard to forgive the actions of Mark and Lenore. It is cruel to take a child from its family for selfish reasons.
As someone pointed out, Lenore had been traumatized by her miscarriages & given the time period, wouldn’t have had any treatments available to her, but what she did was inexcusable. The same goes for her husband & sister, who were complicit in her crime but at least Alice came around to help Norma become Ruthie again. Yes, Joe had much to regret but again, he was suffereing from PTSD & very little was known at that time as to how to treat it (or addiction). I think his family, if they didn’t actually forgive him, certainly understood why he did what he did & accepted him for who he was. I think having Ruthie show up gave him the peace he so craved.
I could not forgive Norma’s parents and aunt. What they did was very selfish.
Like the others, I found it hard to sympathize with Norma’s “parents” for kidnapping her. I was able to understand why they didn’t, but I can’t justify them doing so and keeping mum about it for so long, especially as we are privy to seeing how it affects her actual family for years to come.
All the other characters I had no problem justifying their actions and forgiving them for what they had to do.
Ruthie’s Mi’kmaq mother says, “Maybe some day I can forgive them,” after saying that the day Ruthie went missing was “one of the worst days” of her life.
If Mom wants to forgive them, we should try too.
Joe says, “Back then, no one thought anything of it. Prejudice runs deep and offers no apologies in small towns.” Given this cultural attitude toward indigenous people, it would have been easy for Lenore to believe that Ruthie wasn’t being taken care of and that her mother wouldn’t feel the same pain that a white woman would.
Aunt June had her own selfish but real reason to keep Lenore’s secret – Lenore was keeping June’s secret that she was a lesbian. It wasn’t until 2003 that the Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting same-sex sexual relations were unconstitutional.
I’m not saying it’s okay! Just that it’s easy for us to judge people in the past.
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I guess it depends on how people interpret the word “forgive.” To me, it means to recognize the circumstances behind a wrongdoing —whether it was a conscious if flawed attempt at doing good, or an unconscious, impulsive attemptc to mitigate pain. As opposed to knowingly causing pain, and taking pleasure in it, or seeking profit from it:
Sadism.
I don’t see any of the major characters here who did wrong as sadistic, and therefore undeserving of forgiveness. Those they harmed—Ruthie/Norma, Joe, their parents and siblings, Joe’s wife and daughter—forgave them. The theme of “be kind, you never know when you might need kindness” is relevant here. We are all human and mess up.
It helps to forgive when the wrongdoer acknowledges the harm—but Lenore was too messed up to do that. Alice and June tried to atone by their presence in Norma’s life; the one person we didn’t ever hear from was the judge. So I struggle with him—I think he represents the “establishment” of white power that historically did so much to break up Native families, to erase their culture, to ignore the harm they caused and blame the victims.
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Probably the two people harder to forgive will be the judge and aunt June. Lenore was emotionally broken.
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I could not forgive Lenore or the judge. I was disappointed in aunt June but she was stuck in the middle. She did not know what action her sister would take if she told Norma the truth.
I tried to understand Lenore’s actions and the desperation she must have felt at the time she took Ruthie but I still struggled with forgiving Lenore and Frank.