2. Left alone by her Aunt Sylvie on the site of the abandoned homestead, Ruth thinks about the connection between human bonds and the idea of being "housed": "Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house," she says. "Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them." Later she resumes this line of thought when she observes, "When one looks from inside at a lighted window, or looks from above at the lake, one sees the image of oneself in a lighted room, the image of oneself among trees and sky--the deception is obvious, but flattering all the same." What is the "deception" she refers to here, and how is it "flattering"? How is the view from inside the house different from the one outside looking in? What exactly might be "the difference between here and there, this and that"?
3. Many of Ruth’s thoughts in this excerpt focus on the closeness of apparent contraries--on the fragility of structures both material (houses, bodies) and conceptual (particularly binary oppositions such as inside and outside, craving and having, need and compensation, etc.). What does Ruth mean when she says, "And here again is a foreshadowing--the world will be made whole"? Or, when referring to her mother, she says, "She was a music I no longer heard, that rang in my mind, itself and nothing else, lost to all sense, but not perished, not perished"? How might these be related to Ruth’s earlier thoughts about Sylvie--"We are the same. She could as well be my mother"?