Alistar Macleod’s “No Great Mischief” is a novel full of constant recollections of the Clann Calum Ruadh’s past and genealogy and relating it to the history of Canada; everything that happened in the family’s past effected the life they live currently. This is evident in the characters Alexander McDonald, his brother Calum, the different groups of people and all the connections they have with their family’s past and connections they have with the Clann Calum Ruadh. Alexander is the main character and is the one explaining the story of the past in a very short time period in the present and he connects the family lines throughout history. Calum, the older brother, was left to take care of himself and his siblings at a young age, which results in his drunkenness at the present. Included in the story, at many different time periods, are various groups of people, such as the French Canadians, the English, and the Migrant workers who make an impact on the characters of the story. The reoccurring phrase “Always look after your own blood” (14) was passed down the family line and is questioned and demonstrated by the characters.
Alexander MacDonald, the narrator of the story, was the youngest with his twin sister, Catherine, and grew up on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He was also known as the “gille beag Ruadh” meaning “the little red-haired boy”(18), a nickname given to him as a young boy. When he was three, the tragic happening of the death of his parents occurred, which changed the course of his life. That was the day where the visit to his grandparents’ house ended up being a permanent visitation of his youth. As young Alexander grew up, his grandparents would always be telling his family stories of their clan’s past and how they cam...
... middle of paper ...
...raising them. One example of how she displayed this was when she wrote
“Indeed, as the novel traces the progeny of the originary Calum Ruadh over subsequent generation, the clan are made emblematic founders of Canadian settlement. ‘I think of them as winning Canada for us’ retorts Grandpa to the other grandfather’s skeptical account of General Wolfe’s abuse of the Scottish Highlanders in Quebec (108)”. (134)
Overall, I agree with the arguments she presents in her article and find some of them correspond very well with the conclusion I had written about.
Works Cited
Sugars, Cynthia. "Repetition with a Difference: The Paradox of Origins in Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief.” Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne [Online], (2008), Web. 20 Nov. 2013
MacLeod, Alistair. No Great Mischief. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999.
Print.
Upon arrival to Cape Breton, Alexander’s great-great-great-grandfather broke down and wept for two days when landing on the coast of Cape Breton Island. His family, including the dog, who left Scotland with him, surrounded him and had no idea what to do, “After they landed on the shores of Pictou, Calum Ruadh broke down and wept and he cried for two whole days and I guess they were all around him, including the dog, and no one knew what to do. … He was crying for his history. He had left his country and lost his wife and spoke a foreign language.” (Macleod, page 24). On the day he left Scotland with his family to Canada, Calum left his dog behind on the coast of the ocean, and while the boat was leaving the coast, the dog ran and swam to catch the boat. Calum caught the dog from the water and said, “Little dog, you have been with us all these years and we will not forsake you now. You will come with us.” (Macleod, page 23). His decision to bring his dog with
“Tracing a single Native American family from the 1780’s through the 1920’s posed a number of challenges,” for Claudio Saunt, author of Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. (pg. 217) A family tree is comprised of genealogical data that has many branches that take form by twisting, turning, and attempting to accurately represent descendants from the oldest to the youngest. “The Grayson family of the Creek Nation traces its origins to the late 1700’s, when Robert Grierson, a Scotsman, and Sinnugee, a Creek woman, settled down together in what is now north-central Alabama. Today, their descendants number in the thousands and have scores of surnames.” (pg. 3)
...h and the French and Indians, but shows some of the ironic nature of this conflict: that due to kidnapping and tribal adoption, some Abenaki Indians were likely to have almost as many English ancestors as the frontiersmen they opposed. The English frontiersmen could be as "savage" as the Indians. Brumwell does very well dispelling the clichés and stereotypes that many have become accustomed to. He uses records of the Abenaki Indian oral tradition to give a voice to both sides. It is a great book from start to finish. This is a true history buffs companion and a great addition to any library. The book is as complex in its knowledge as it is simplistic and detailed in its imagery. As a result, this book can be read by both specialists and general readers alike and can be pared with almost any text giving light to the French and Indian War or the aftermath thereof.
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
To start off, I’ll be writing about the life of people in British North America and its significance towards unifying Canada, as well as background knowledge of conflicts that existed. Life in British North America was changing at an alarming rate. New technology and services were being introduced such as railways and steamships. Industries such as building, producing and farming were being introduced. This was in part due to the many immigrants from Britain and France who’d settled. This was dreadful for the First Nations as their land had been taken away even more so than before. More resources were needed for the growing crowd so trade agreements were made. As more people came, the First Nations were even more distanced from the Europeans. Meanwhile, the French and the British wanted the other’s culture to be erased from the
Alistair Macleod’s No Great Mischief is powerful in its art of storytelling, and provides a clear and concise, yet artistic view into a story told mostly from the first –person point of view of Alexander MacDonald, an orthodontist and member of the Chalum Ruaidh clan. The story centers on two brothers, Alexander more so than Calum. The story takes place during Alexander’s weekly visit to his brother’s, Calum, apartment, where memories of his childhood are provoked. However, tales told to him by his grandparents about his family lineage become entangled with the memories provoked by the visit with his brother. The novel ultimately mixes past with present as it seamlessly switches back and forward between the two, highlighting parts and scenes
The main character, Alexander MacDonald is referred to as, “the red-haired boy.” He refers to his maternal grandfather as, “Trimming his neat reddish moustache.” These are all elements of identity.
Despite the uncomfortable circumstances, Alexander is hardly phased and shows his brother tender affection. Because he is loved by Alexander, Calum is portrayed as better person than say, Fern Picard, who is given no allowances under the critical eye of our narrator. Calum’s back story is tragic and develops Calum as a sympathetic character. He was a boy thrust into adulthood too soon by the shocking death of his parents, an orphan forced to live in poverty and quickly hardened by the cruel realities of life and loss. Due to this, Calum is generally detached from other people, and his deepest connections are with animals: first with Christie the horse and later with Piseag the stray kitten. Like a puzzle, Calum is not pieced together until later in the novel when he and Alexander begin working together. The many sad fragments of his past come together to form an image of a man who is unable to let go of all that has happened to him. While the two are driving to Sudbury, Calum reveals his regret over not being there when his parents died, and that he is still struggling to come to terms with the death of their cousin. Alexander later describes Calum as “...the man who, in his youthful despair, went looking for a rainbow, while others thought he was just wasting gas” (MacLeod 282-283). This image of Calum as a hopeless dreamer searching for closure and a meaning for his parent’s death humanizes
The Red River Colony was changing, but it wasn’t the only one, all of Canada were changing, because in the late 1860s Canada entered a new era and the changes and events that occurred in the Red River was only the beginning of many more conflicts and circumstances to come that would help shape and define this age Canada has entered. Although the Red River Rebellion had ostensibly achieved most of its major objectives, the Metis would soon find themselves at a disadvantage. They would rise yet again for another rebellion called The North-West Rebellion of 1885 to assert their nationality once more.
Thompson, John Herd, and Mark Paul Richard. "Canadian History in North American Context." In Canadian studies in the new millennium. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 37-64.
MacDougall, Brenda. One of the Family: Metis Culture in Nineteenth-Century Northwestern Saskatchewan. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010.
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.
On the whole, the article is well-organized, and logical. Despite the abundance of unconfirmed statements, the alleged consequences of many of the events listed are believable. The article would be significantly more believable if there was a balance of arguments, of if the arguments listed were less disputable. The article should be considered a working, even persuasive, theory, rather absolute
113- The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. of the book. Vol.
Abrams, M. H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol I. Fifth ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.