The path to self-realization can take many routes and come in many different forms. Both Larry's Party by Carol Shields and Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood deal with this central idea. Both novels revolve around one main character, Rennie in Bodily Harm , Larry in Larry's Party and their individual paths through life. Both authors use similar character relationships and methods of symbolism to show the two very different paths of their character's lives towards self-realization. Rennie is a headstrong young woman who refuses to categorize herself in anything she does. She always tries to do the opposite of what she is feeling, doing exactly the contrary to what is expected of her. Larry however is a statistic, he goes with the flow and does exactly what is expected of him in life. He takes what he is given. In comparing their two lives to pendulum, normalcy being at the apex of its swing and the nodes being just the opposite, Rennie constantly tries to push against the pendulum while Larry swings with it. Although their paths are both very different, their lives come to two very similar yet dissimilar conclusions. Two incredibly diverse events, a dinner party for Larry and a revolution imprisonment for Rennie, allow the characters to step back from their lives and view them from the outside.
             Larry Weller was born a very normal baby to two very normal parents, Stu and Dot, in the very normal city of Winnipeg. When he gets his hair cut it's "Just a regular cut."(Shields 17). He has normal clothes; one grey suit, blue stonewashed jeans, and normal jockey shorts, "he would have never imagined anything but white touching his lower body"(Shields 235). He was a "C" average student in highschool. Larry is the epitome of normalcy. He has no initiative in life nor aspirations or goals. This is not to say that Larry is going nowhere, he is just the kind of man that takes what lif...