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Pew is a complex literary novel pressing into obviously one the most popular themes of contemporary literary fiction - the question of identity, surging on the basic postmodernist notion that the totality of the identity is not given - but constructed and unstable, arguing for the non-essential, transient self. As it is seen relatively often in literary fiction, especially and typically in the field of gender, as a lot of characters with ambiguous gender rise, Catherine Lacey in the character of Pew stretch that concept to the most extreme extent - Pew is a person that does not have any of the preconceived notions we use as determinate forces that inevitably shape our identity. Pew is a character whose gender, age, nationality, past, family, race and even name is indeterminate, making Pew the most ambiguous character in the history of literature, the embodiment of central philosophical question of postmodernism, that often strives to obliterate the objective realities of our identity looking at them as a caging elements that stifle the liberation of our more authentic self, that is negotiated, not given. The question the character of Pew poses for each and every person is, who would we be if we had to describe ourselves without any of those categories in which we traditionally view ourselves? Would you be able to describe yourself without talking about your gender, age, nationality, race, family relations and job? What if you, like Pew, had to talk about yourself without any knowledge of your past and any memories to cling to? Do you even have your identity without all that? Is your sense of self really only a social construct?

In light of that mental exercise, Pew's constant silence throughout the book becomes more understandable. Pew does not want to answer a question or - better described, Pew maybe does not even have a way to answer them. The branches of our identity give us a conceptual framework to express ourselves in this world in a way that is understandable to others, cutting off that branches maybe means falling off the tree of traditional society. Destroying categories of identity that could mean robbing the whole generation of the possibility of communicating their inner truth, as Pew is mostly mute.
Seeing Pew reminded me of working with modern teenagers, whose epidemic is their insecurity in their own identity, often based on gender, but reaching even far beyond it, often leaving them uncertain about how they should define who they are in this complex world where there is barely anything solid to cling to.

”What are you?... A horrible question��

Pew is a symbol of a postmodernist movement that often defies any given definition or preconceived determination of identity in categories in which we are used to it, which makes his mere existence subversive because he person who can not be defined by classification, and therefore is a threat to our stability and security that we put in viewing the world and other people through well-known lenses. Pew can make us question the whole nature of reality.

”We ask Pew where they’ve come from—nothing. What he needs—nothing. What happened to him—or her. Quite frankly we still don’t know if Pew is a boy or girl, we don’t know Pew’s age, we don’t know Pew’s real name, or if anyone out there might be missing Pew—and even if we ask any of these things, we get nothing. And there’s not even any agreement about Pew’s heritage, his nationality, her race—everyone’s in disagreement about where Pew might be from and it’s troubling, ain’t it?��

For other characters, Pew becomes a blank slate where all the projections come through - and is it interesting to observe other characters reaction to him/her, from frustration to connection. Interestingly, every single person views Pew differently - some see Pew as a teenage girl, some as an older boy, some as a white person, and some as being browner and better suited for the black community. Pew does not have a name, only a nickname brewed by the community from the only thing we do know about him, that he was found sleeping at the church pew. Interestingly, Pew appears in, at the surface idyllic, but rigid Christian community, that has unsettling atmosphere of eeriness and uncertainty, the cultish vibe of Stepford wives or sinister Omelas (Le Guin's story is quoted in a preface), outer politeness that seems to hide darker secretes, that are never explicitly exposed, but only hinted, culminating in the uncanny ceremony of forgiveness, the books great ambiguous climax. In the ceremony of Forgiveness, the members of society are blindfolded, saying the truth about their sins - there we see that the outer definitions of the identity that seem so firm to us, are used to give the hint of security, as loving husband, respected member of the church and community are not unyielding at all - as resident come clean about one atrocity after other. Lacey also makes a truly subversive statement - even solid identities do not tell us anything about the real truth of a person, of what is lurking beneth the surface, so what is the ultimate use of them? That is the ultimate core position of postmodernism - the reality is not represented in symbols we use, so signs do not have any inherent meaning and significance.

The book itself is very much like Pew, unfinished, somewhat undefined, and like Pew, it gives the reader silent resistance to giving answers. We never learn the truth about Pew, but also, the truth about other people is somewhat hidden, and Pew serves as a catalyzation as the somewhat outcasts of that society make confessions to him that reveal that society is far from ideal, it hides a lot of dark secrets and hypocrisy in heart of what can be viewed as a community with firm moral and religious values, one that is securely grounded and defined - one extreme of rigidity and hypocrisy of identity calling out for the other extreme of obliteration of all objective reality of one’s character.
Much of the book’s philosophy goes into that theoretical postmodernist sense that the self is created in the encounter, as the self awaits individuals in every situation and every situation, the multiple-situational fluctuating selves rather than a one, transsituational, core self as we only get glimpses of Pew from brief encounters he is in.

”Sometimes I think that nobody is just one person, that actually we’re a bunch of different people and we have to figure out how to get them all to cooperate and fool everyone else into thinking that we’re just one person, even though everybody else is doing the same thing.��

Both, the cultish community and the character of Pew, stroke in me some feeling of uneasiness and bleakness as if it was two extremes of horrific realities where there is no sense of stability or security. The only things that we get to know about Pew are situational, fragmented images that result in emotional flatness or deathlessness. There is no essence, only a snapshot of images, but there is also the question of how much of the presented essence of others is true.

”What are you? I was sometimes asked and I know it’s rude to answer a question with a question but I have sometimes allowed myself to be rude in this way. I used to ask those askers, What are you? And what a horrible question to say or hear. I regret ever asking it. Sometimes they answered me: I’m a Christian, an American, I’m black, white, not from here, I’m hungry, I’m tired, angry, a woman, a man, a gay man, a pastor, Republican, mother, son, I’m forty-three years old, I’m homeless, or sometimes they answered me with a laugh that rose and fell in their chests before it wandered away, leaving nothing behind.��

No matter what you think about the question of identity, Pew is a symbol of one that is decentered and completely fluid, the embodiment of the postmodern self, one of the most controversial philosophical stances about identity, that can have vast social and political consequences so it has to be thought through as precisely possible and Lacey gave us a quality literary tool for it.