Dorotea Shipbuilder Analysis

In “So Many Chances” Duerr presents Dorotea as an imaginative person. The first sense we get of Dorotea’s imagination comes after her father tells her they are moving to Maine so he can be a shipbuilder. Instantly, Dorotea pulls out her world atlas and locates Maine and, “Imagines herself transformed into Maine Dorotea, barefoot girl with a coconut necklace.” (Duerr 74) Here, in her room in Ohio, Dorotea imagines her life transforming and her becoming a new person. No longer be a girl who will, “...blend in, look down, be nobody.” (Duerr 73) The second sense we get Dorotea’s imagination comes when she is standing on rocky point, looking out towards the ocean, “For a terrifying moment she can imagine herself the only organism on the planet.”