Hunger is a thread that runs throughout Yonnondio. Olsen uses physical and emotional hunger interchangeably. The children’s need for maternal nourishment cannot consistently be met by Anna. In one scene, Anna has withdrawn into a state of unconciousness where she fell “asleep right in her chair […] with her mouth open, and cryin as if somebody was hitting her, turnin her head and cryin.” Ben, stifling his pain, calls out to her “Ma,”... “ma”… “ma.” She “moans” and “her hands twitch at him.” Ben is left angry and hollow as he “feels so empty inside, like when he was hungry, but the idea of food made him shudder.” Ben rejects his need for maternal nurturing and recoils from the idea of seeking it from Anna. John Lennon’s song Mother expresses the ambivalent feelings of an emotionally abandoned son who needed his mother and has been left mourning his loss.
Although Anna’s path sometimes took her to a place of retreat where her children were left without a mother, the spirit of poverty certainly had her held in its sway.
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