Alistair MacLeod's "No Great Mischief"
In No Great Mischief, Alistair MacLeod proves to the reader that it is impossible to talk about the Scottish-Canadian heritage without mentioning tradition, family and loyalty. MacLeod wrote this book about loyalty to family tradition. It is common to talk about these three things when one describes his family or his past in general, but in this book, MacLeod has included every single intricate detail about each one of the three aspects.
Family plays the biggest role in this novel. Anything that the characters say or do usually has to do with family. The first time Alexander MacDonald, the narrator of the story, mentions family it is not his own. It is one of the immigrant families picking berries along the road that he is driving on (MacLeod 1). This point takes him directly into a slight mention of his own family: the grandmother (3). Since there is no main character in the book, it is thought to be the narrator. However, I wish to disagree with this fact and say that the real main character in this book is Alexander’s brother, Calum, who lives in Toronto. The first time Calum is introduced, one of the first things to come out of his mouth is of family: “I have been thinking the last few days of Calum Ruadh,” (11). We find out that Alexander has a close relationship with his brother and he drives to Toronto to visit him every weekend. This has become almost a tradition because he does not visit him to actually have a constructive conversation or to resolve a problem, although Calum has many of them, the most serious of which is drinking, but instead he visits him only for the sake of visiting him. It is also a tradition in that they do the same thing every time: they drink, not so much Alexander as Calum. We later find out that Alexander has a similar tradition set up with other family members. The most distinct of which is his relationship with his grandmother: Grandma. When he visits Grandma, it is always the same routine: they sing long Gaelic songs, like the ones that their ancestors would. Alexander, for most of the first half of the book, does not talk about his present day family as much as his ancestors. He provides the reader with the information about how he wound up in Canada and what his ancestors had to go through to get here. Throughout this part of the book, Alexander makes it seem as...
... middle of paper ...
...xample, the way that grandfather dies is probably one of the best ways to go: he was relaxed, not in pain, and he was doing what he loved most: reading his history textbooks. In the latter part of the book, whenever there is any mention of grandfather anywhere he is always either reading a book or sleeping (228, 264). Everyone in the family is always content, no matter what kind of trouble they go through or how much they have enjoyed; they have always had enough to satisfy them.
Towards the end of the novel, the reader is more and more convinced that the MacDonalds have serious problems. Regardless of how attached you are to your past it is way too much to still live on the same piece of land that someone from your family, your ancestor, has lived on in 1497. The MacDonalds live there not because they cannot afford something better but because they truly cherish the land that their ancestors cultivated and took care of. At the very end of the book, when Calum wishes for Alexander to take him back out to the East Coast to die there, it seems to be almost apologetic and gives the reader the impression that the brothers have to keep reminding themselves of their heritage.
Hero or villain? In Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief, Calum commits violent crimes and by all accounts should be considered the antagonist. However, this is not the case. To outsiders he appears violent and rough, but within his clan he is the compass that guides all its members. An intrepid leader who falls victim to his own history, Calum lacked guidance as a young man and this contributed to his later struggles with the law. In fact, Calum’s greatest downfall comes from his goodness. He is stabbed in the back after blindly trusting a stranger on account of their shared lineage. Through anecdotes and flashbacks Calum is revealed to be a sympathetic and multifaceted character. In a novel where bloodlines are revered and respected and devotion
Erdrich paints this transitory approach to identity and naming as a conclusive insult to traditional Ojibwe practices. Indeed, Nanapush observes earlier in Tracks that his name “loses power every time that it is written and stored in a government file” (Erdrich 32). Shortly thereafter, Nanapush indicates his father’s rationale for bestowing upon him the name “Nanapush”: “That’s what you’ll be called. Because it’s got to do with trickery and living in the bush […] something a girl can’t resist […] the first Nanapush stole fire. You will steal hearts” (Erdrich 33). This passage evidences a strong correlation between naming, identity, and tradition in Ojibwe culture, establishing these relationships as elements of a distinct, shared lifestyle. Given that Pauline reaches so contrary an opinion after a long process of Catholicization, it is clear that much of her Ojibwe heritage has disappeared amid the erosion and reconstruction of her identity. Although such a conclusion is evident even before this passage, Pauline’s concluding discourse conveys the permanent loss of her Ojibwe identity and isolates Catholicism as its logical
The funeral was supposed to be a family affair. She had not wanted to invite so many people, most of them strangers to her, to be there at the moment she said goodbye. Yet, she was not the only person who had a right to his last moments above the earth, it seemed. Everyone, from the family who knew nothing of the anguish he had suffered in his last years, to the colleagues who saw him every day but hadn’t actually seen him, to the long-lost friends and passing acquaintances who were surprised to find that he was married, let alone dead, wanted to have a last chance to gaze upon him in his open coffin and say goodbye.
The current generation of native people in Canada are greatly impacted by efforts made by the Canadian government that forced previous generations to assimilate and give up their culture. Most of the fifth generation of native people are not directly impacted by the atrocities that forced their people to give up their culture for the benefit of others; however, their diminished cultural identity is a result of it. Parents who are raising the fifth generation have difficulty passing on their Indian identity to their children (Deiter-McArthur 381). The parents and grandparents of the fifth generation were raised in the residential school system, where they were stopped from showing affection or love for one another even if it was their own brother or sister. This results in a lack of ability for some of them to show love toward their children (Maniitok). Another e...
The Irish Canadian community has repaid their debt to Canada by proving themselves to be productive and showing to us that the hardship many Canadians took on in order to accommodate emigrants was worthwhile. Their gratefulness is evident in the reputations they have established as Irish Canadian citizens.
Henderson, Ailsa. Hierarchies of belonging: National identity and political culture in Scotland and Quebec. McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP, 2007.
Imagine that the person you love most in the world dies. How would you cope with the loss? Death and grieving is an agonizing and inevitable part of life. No one is immune from death’s insidious and frigid grip. Individuals vary in their emotional reactions to loss. There is no right or wrong way to grieve (Huffman, 2012, p.183), it is a melancholy ordeal, but a necessary one (Johnson, 2007). In the following: the five stages of grief, the symptoms of grief, coping with grief, and unusual customs of mourning with particular emphasis on mourning at its most extravagant, during the Victorian era, will all be discussed in this essay (Smith, 2014).
No Great Mischief by Alistair Macleod is powerful in its art of storytelling, and provides a clear and concise, yet artistic view into a story told from the view point of Alexander MacDonald, an orthodontist and member of the Chalum Ruaidh clan. Alexander travels regularly to see one of his older brothers, Calum MacDonald, in his apartment in Toronto, Ontario in Canada, where most of the story takes place. The story centers on Alexander more so than Calum’s interactions and memories of childhood. However, tales told to Alexander by his grandparents about his family lineage become entangled with the memories provoked by the visit with his brother. These various tales involve stories of his great-great-great-grandfather, Calum MacDonald, and aspects of his life after coming to the United States as well as other members of the clan, and basically the history of the clan itself. The novel ultimately fuses the past with the present as it seamlessly switches back and forward between the two, highlighting select scenes of the MacDonald family history and its current state. Lineage defines the close-knit relationship held by the members of the Chalum Ruaidh clan in No Great Mischief; this is seen in the interactions between the members of the clan, in the family values held by
The long parade to the graveyard! Father, Mother. Margaret, that is a dreadful way! You just came home in time for the funeral, Stella. And funerals are pretty much compared to deaths.
In the story Dubliners by James Joyce, he writes about a few different themes, some of these being autonomy, responsibility, light, and dark. The most important of the themes though must be the individual character in the story against the community and the way they see it. I have chosen to take a closer look at “Araby,” “Eveline,” and “The Dead” because the great display of these themes I feel is fascinating. Many things affect the way the individual characters see the community, for example their family, friends, fellow citizens, or even new places. In Dubliners, the way the characters see the community affects them and other people around them.
Most people are trapped into believing that Canada is a very diverse place to live as it welcomes many cultures, but do not realize what happens to their culture when they have lived in Canada after time. Throughout the stories Simple Recipes by Madeleine Thien and A Short History of Indians in Canada by Thomas King, the authors tell the actions of what is happening in the characters lives to show the stripping of other cultures when they come to Canada. These two stories reveal how difficult it can be to be a person with a different culture existing in Canadian society.
Throughout the text Keating connects with people on a personal level through his word choice and tone. This connection with his audience allows him to further develop belonging, and evoke a greater emotional response in his audience. This word choice and tone can be seen in the lines, “We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We practiced discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice.”
The books intent is to challenge written histories and to reinterpret early Mi’kmaq-French relations, particularly religious history among the Mi’kmaq. Using both Mi’kmaq and Euro history/knowledge to do so. Through the revitalization of Mi’kmaq histories, culture, and spirituality the text both bridges non-Aboriginal peoples to new understandings of Canadian history, as well as bridging Mi’kmaq youth to their elders and culture (11).
MacDougall, Brenda. One of the Family: Metis Culture in Nineteenth-Century Northwestern Saskatchewan. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010.
Death is depicted as an individual’s affair, in which, neither one’s closest friends or closest blood relatives can give a hand in. Upon receiving the tragic news Everyman first approaches his friend Fellowship. At first he is hesitant to reveal his sorrow to Fellowship for he considers it too tragic a plight. After cajoling and assurances by Fellowship to stand by him in whatever situation, Everyman finally pours out his sorrow to Fellowship. Upon realizing that Everyman has been summoned by death, fellowship turns his back on Everyman ...