Where the Lost Wander

Names and the act of naming have symbolic significance in the novel, representing destiny. What one is named, one must become.

John Lowry must grow into his name. He is called by his full name by people like his stepmother, Jennie, who don’t quite accept him as a white man. His own mother called him the Pawnee name for “Two Feet” because he had one foot in each culture. Over the course of the novel, he becomes comfortable and confident in his own skin and finds a place “straddling” both cultures. Naomi, who helps him on this emotional journey, is thus able to call him both “John Lowry” and, playfully, “Two Feet.”

Naomi is the only May sibling whose name doesn’t begin with “W,” as their parents’ names do. She is instead named for Naomi from the Hebrew Bible, who struggles to survive after she is widowed. Her survival depends on her embrace of her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who is not a Judean but a Moabite. It is Ruth who declares, “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge” (Ruth 1:16). Similarly, Naomi’s survival will depend on her love for the mixed-race John and his for her.