Content Warning: This section of the guide references extreme classism and the violent nature of colonialism and imperialism.

The girl struggles with her sense of self during her journey. Alone for the first time in her life, she has to develop an understanding of her place in the world that is unrelated to the responsibilities and expectations that she has long been accustomed to fulfilling. Her past continues to rear its head in various flashbacks, visions, and memories, making her survival a further struggle as she is unused to focusing on herself. This habitual negation of self becomes immediately apparent during her first morning away from the fort, for she has trouble adapting to focus only on her own needs. As the narrative states, “All her life, she had awoken thinking first of the child Bess, of her hunger, her need, her happiness. Now that there was no child Bess to think of, she was struck to stone, for she did not know how to think first of herself” (29).

Her treatment as a pet rather than as a human being also has a profound effect upon her sense of herself, and the solitude of her travels allows her the time she needs to confront and overcome this deleterious treatment.