However the buried memories and the violent selves of the three protagonists are not permanently forgotten. With the continuous appearance of Zenia, Tony, Charis, and Roz are always haunted by them, and their dark sides of the self are gradually stimulated until they finally come out coexisting with their outer selves, which leads to the construction of a hybrid identity of the three characters. In accordance with Bouson’s notion, Zenia, a demon-like character with no definite background, could be perceived as the trigger for the past memories of each character on the one hand because while encountering Zenia, each of the three characters is willing to remind her past that she is reluctant to refer to others; and on the other hand, as the embodiment …show more content…
Apparently, Zenia has taken her away from the side which Tony once struggled to blend into because of the sense of safety. Losing this safe place where her inner self is controlled, Tony feels like she is entering into “perilous waters” (134), cannot stop telling about her mother, her buried pasts—that she never told before to others—to Zenia “if anything it spurser on” (135). Gradually, they become too close to leave room for West, especially after Zenia tells her own story to Tony, which lets Tony recall her inner self, Tnomerf Ynot: “Tony looks at her, looks into her blue-black eyes, and sees her own reflection: herself, as she would like to be. Tnomerf Ynot. Herself turned inside out” (166). The eager of turning herself “inside out” even prompts her to stride over “a line she respects” (168)—ghostwriting Zenia’s paper, which deviates from what she has been educated as right. Therefore, it is angrier and more unacceptable for Tony while knowing Zenia’s deception and treachery for the reason that she feels that she has lost both sides to stay—either the girls in McClung or Zenia—which in turn accelerates the appearance of her violent self. When Zenia one night came back to blackmail for money by threatening to report Tony’s ghostwriting, Tony’s vicious self deep buried in her heart partly showed up although it was just her imagination: she associated “a brick” that Zenia originally means kind-hearted with a brick as a weapon—“hard, foursquare, a potential murder weapon” with which “you could bash in quite a few skulls” (173). It seems that Tony who is married West lives peacefully after Zenia’s leaving, which, however, is not the case. Her inner self that has been inspired is actually hard