An Imaginary Life shows Ovid slowly “breaking out of” the “laws” that have kept him from reaching true “freedom.” Malouf uses the seasons to illustrate the cycle in which nature is “bound.” The infinite loop always ready to repeat over “again,” each season governing how the people of Tomis must survive “within the village walls.” Malouf presents the dichotomy of winter and summer as the harshness of winter “darkens around” them traps everyone inside forcing them to endure their uncomfortable quarters without escape, whereas in summer Ovid’s “garden flourishes” bringing with it the childlike notion of “play” and a sense of freedom. Much alike autumn and spring are used as binary oppositions, autumn as it is “moving into winter” is the time when they can “go to take” the Child, “catching” him from his world and trapping him in theirs for the duration of the winter months. Spring brings at last “open freedom” leading into the …show more content…
Similarly, the second passage contrasts the “play” of the garden against the work on the “good strong seams” of “the women of the house,” who are “happy enough” to “humour [Ovid] as they would a child.” Malouf clearly shows that “childhood” is what the people of Tomis believe “play” is a part of and that Ovid’s idea of play whilst freeing is part of what keeps him trapped in his “old life” in Rome. In the final passage, Malouf expresses that the “longing” for a purpose keeps one from “[glimpsing] the largeness, the emptiness of one’s own soul” and being able to glory “in its open