The duality in all things is the novel’s most prominent theme. It circulates through each character, key plot moment, and Ellie’s thoughts as she learns about herself and the mountain she lives on, “wobbling on the tightrope between yesterday and tomorrow” (71). Ellie defines herself as a girl divided in two and expresses it metaphorically by comparing herself to the animals around her:

I myself was two opposite things at the same time. One: I was now an excellent woods-girl who could hunt and trap and fish and harvest as if I’d been born into it. Two: I was an echo-girl. When I clubbed a fish to death, my own head ached and shuddered. When I snared a rabbit, I knew what it meant to be trapped. And when I pulled a carrot from the sheath of its earth, I, too, missed the darkness. There were times when this two-ness made me feel as if I were being stretched east and west, my bones creaking and crying as they strained back toward one (16-17).

Ellie knows that she must survive on the mountain and help her family, and she knows that to do so she must hunt animals, collect honey from bees who also need it, catch fish, “and more besides” (39).