Change is a prominent theme throughout the novel, Where'd You Go Bernadette, and is a key part of the book. Throughout the book, characters change, and are affected by massive shifts, and events in their lives. Bernadette changes when the Twenty Mile House is destroyed, and Bee changes when her mom disappears. Change is a prominent theme in the book, and affects Bee and Bernadette very heavily. Bee changes as a person when Bernadette disappears. After her mother's disappearance days before Christmas, Bee becomes hostile, and mean. The once quiet, shy girl who loved to learn and help transforms into angry recluse, whose only concern is finding her mother. When Bee attends Choate, she does not fit in with the other students there who used to be similar to her. She is consumed in her research over her lost mother, and fails to learn, or even make friends at…show more content… Bernadette also changes when the Twenty Mile House is destroyed. Before the Twenty Mile House, Bernadette is a passionate woman, who loves her work as an architect. She is one of the most promising young architects in LA, landing many jobs and offers. As her career progresses, she builds the Twenty Mile House, a house built only from materials within twenty miles. This is her greatest and proudest achievement. Bernadette soon changes when the millionaire next door to the Twenty Mile House, buys the house, and knocks it to the ground. Bernadette is enraged and leaves LA forever. She is consumed by hatred and sadness, self pity and anger, to the point where she becomes a misanthrope, who hates all others than her husband and daughter. This one event changes her forever, and drives her to a place of failure and despair, “Bernadette Fox— Twenty Mile House destroyed— I deserved it— I’m a failure. Failure has got its teeth in me, and it won’t stop shaking” (Semple 122). Bernadette is traumatized by the destruction of her work, and hates everyone around her for
