An Imaginary Life: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Ovid and the Child move beyond the River Ister into an endless grassland. Although once the flat emptiness around Tomis bothered Ovid, now the wide expanse “feeds the spirit” and feels like freedom. Though Ovid is tired, he feels “lighter” and imagines he sees himself and the Child from a great distance overhead, where their physical fatigue seems only a minor discomfort. Evening falls and shadows stretch down from the hills. When the cold wind blows from the north, Ovid and the Child duck below the chest-high grass. When warm blows from the south, it feels like spring.

Ovid realizes they’ve entered “the Child’s world at last.” The Child runs excitedly about, digging roots, finding eggs, showing Ovid all the ways to forage and survive. Ovid stops keeping track of the days as they pass, since the river is “far behind” them. Sometimes they see horsemen in the far distance, but they never approach. Occasionally, Ovid wakes at night to the sound of nearby wolves, but the Child growls in such a way that wards them off. Ovid no longer considers what their destination will be, nor does he feel the need for one. He wonders if this is how the village shaman feels when he goes into a trance and wanders the earth without his body.

Ovid wonders who the Child truly is, whether he is the boy they found in the birchwoods or the same Child he knew during his own childhood. He wonders if the Child did not discover him in the midst of his exile, not the other way around. Ovid and the Child travel together in silence without using “formal” language, yet Ovid feels all the time they are constantly in dialogue, responding to the landscape around them as if their simple thoughts pass from one mind to the other. Ovid feels as if he is becoming “bodiless,” part of the landscape and the sky.

Ovid feels that the earth is closer to him than it has ever been, even though he will soon leave it behind. He lies on the ground and stares at the roots of grass. Ovid smells the soil and intuitively knows what it is composed of, as if it is an extension of himself. He wonders if he will take root in his sleep and join the earth. The thought comforts Ovid. It will be his way to continue existing. Between his body and the earth, he finds “unity and commerce.” He is entering his own metamorphosis.

The Child seems free in this wilderness, as if his being expands and he is “lighter.” He takes care of Ovid, foraging food and feeding him, just as Ovid once cared for the Child. Ovid no longer fears what damage he wrought on the Child by dragging him into the “world of men.” He can sense that the Child yearns to travel further, to press into the expanse of territory. Ovid wonders what gives the Child purpose. Despite the Child’s impatience, he exhibits a “tender kinship” that Ovid would never have thought possible. Looking at the Child, Ovid feels that the boy belongs to another world entirely—perhaps the villagers were right to believe the Child was a “foundling of the gods,” more than human.

Ovid grows so weak that the Child must chew his food for him, breaking down the tough roots before feeding it to the old man. Ovid realizes one day that he has taken his last steps, though the Child doesn’t yet see it, and simply leaves him to forage as usual. Ovid imagines that he both “ascend[s]” and “lowers [him]self” into the gods’ hands, in the place he’d often dreamt about. Looking back, he considers that every event in his life has led him to “this place and no other.”

Ovid looks back on his life and feels that he is simultaneously three years old and 60. In both places, the Child is present. Ovid watches him forage for snails in a stream, happy and content and “free.” Rather than call out to him, Ovid just watches the Child walk further and further away. He feels “unbearably happy,” three years old and 60 and six all at once. He states finally, “I am there.”