The Bear Came Over The Mountain Analysis

Life tends to progress in a linear fashion, from start to finish, infancy to old age, birth to death. Within a lifetime there is the progression, accumulation of experience, understanding, knowledge, memory, and relationships all shaping one’s identity, understanding of one’s self and one’s place in the world thus giving meaning to life. Alzheimer’s disease impedes that linear process; when memories are lost or when the capacity to form new memories vanishes an important link to the content of one’s own identity can be lost too. The story by Alice Munro ‘‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’’ and the film Away From Her directed by Sara Polley both depicted the poignant aspect of Alzheimer’s disease, concurrently exploring the ways in which one’s life is affixed by love and relationships and how the unmooring such as the loss of shared memories which accompanies Alzheimer’s disease as seen in both works affects not just those who have lost their memories but also those whose memories are very much intact and stable. This essay evaluates the film Away From Her and the story ‘‘The Bear Came over the Mountain’’, and how it fulfills the expectations of Munro’s story which depicts a husband unable to cope to with the loss of his wife …show more content…
Though they were some minor additions to the plot, Polley’s film portrayed the exact same empathetic feel Munro instilled in her readers without necessarily changing the originality of the story. Polley ensured that Grant maintained the same spark of life and the virtue along with his failings his creator (Munro) infused in him. Its title clearly shows him to be a deeply loving husband willing to endure daily humiliations and stay with a deteriorating wife. Empathy was certainly the underpinning of both works, they both had tremendous empathy for the characters thus encouraging its viewers/ readers to be more