Lightness And Darkness In No Great Mischief By Alistair Macleod

Superior Essays
The book by Alistair Macleod, No Great Mischief, is a novel written in the first person, it talks about a man looking back over his life experiences that including many different topics ranging from why people cry when they see tomatoes being wasted to animals in families. The book also mentions the hardships that families in the regions must endure. Although this novel is not historically accurate, it still tells more history about the family back to the Highland MacDonald clan in Scotland whose leaders were loyal to Bonnie Prince Charlie, through to the new world where they fought the French for Quebec under General Wolfe. There exists a necessary dichotomy between lightness and darkness in life. The lightness is brightly shown with a …show more content…
Actually, it is easy to find out that Alexander has a close relationship with his brother Calum because of his drives to Toronto to visit him every weekend. This theme also weaves its way throughout the entire book in many other different ways. All of them show the comfortability of being home or family ties. “ Perhaps …74”, it illustrates a chasm growing between the younger siblings who lived with their grandparents, and the older siblings who lived on their own. Obviously, the twins are lucky enough to be brought up by their grandparents. Survive is another symbol when the author described the light side of life. Later of the book, Alexander provides a tradition set up with his family members: When he visits Grandma, they always have same routine that singing long Gaelic songs, like the ones that their ancestors would. Alexander, does not talk his present 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 his extened family is more of an organization than the …show more content…
Macleod has a description of the highway linking the two men, “ it will be true to you if you are true to it and you will never, ever, ever become lost”, emphasizes the relationship of the two brothers. The highway is the modern connection between the two, whose lives went separate ways after their parents and one brother died. This tragedy occurred when Alexander and his twin sister Catriona were a mere three years of age and Calum was just sixteen. Definitely, it is their loss to live apart as families because of the death. The theme should be focused on is the sea, which was strong enough to represent the death throughout the entire book in a completely obvious way. The passage talks about the death of the wife and then the on ship birth during the passage to North America. This is the first representation where the sea takes life away. Some more passages could be found where the narrator’s parents and brother are lost beneath the ice and the sea takes their lives. By now it is easily demonstrated how controlling the sea is in the lives of the people. Apart from, another passage discusses the whales the brothers see and are awed by, but then later after the storm they find one dead on shore. The last passage picked was at the very end of the story where the narrator is driving Calum home to the island and the sea is crashing with waves and then there is some calm in the midst of it and Calum passes. Through the

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