External Reflection of the Internal: The Usage of the Canadian Landscape in as for Me and My House and Who has seen the Wind
A number of similarities exist between the novels of William Ormond Mitchell and Sinclair Ross, who wrote Who has seen the
External Reflection of the Internal: The Usage of the Canadian Landscape in as for Me and My House and Who has seen the Wind
A number of similarities exist between the novels of William Ormond Mitchell and Sinclair Ross, who wrote Who has seen the Wind, and As For Me And My House, respectively. Both works deal with theological issues of religion and faith, and contain a fair amount of skepticism for these concepts. The novels also mirror one another in their usage of the environment and the surrounding landscape as a tool with which to illustrate a variety of feelings experienced by their respective characters. The tendency to utilize the outer surroundings of the natural world to explicate the inner thought processes and emotions of human nature is one which is indicative in a fair amount of Canadian literature (Bordessa 58). As such, both Mitchell and Ross have used the impact of the landscape and the environment on the characters in their respective works to demonstrate a definite focus on the Canadian prairies which illustrates how the beauty and loneliness of the environment creates a feeling for the reader.
In many instances, the novelists render the surrounding environment in a way which magnifies the internalizations which their principles characters deal with. This tendency certainly applies to Who has seen the Wind, in which the outer manifestations of the natural world frequently symbolize and mirror the thoughts and emotions of Brian O'Connal, a young child who learns much about the power of God. In the following quotation, in which Brian is disappointed at the fact that he has to give his new puppy to a friend to live, Mitchell uses the rain to magnify the heart-rending emotions which the child feels. "Brian watched the drops gather and slide, slowly at first, then faster, down the pane. The sky over Sherry's low house was the color of lead; the sodden leaves of the hedge were dripping. He felt inexplicably sad... He had not seen his dog for three days."
Mitchell deliberately employs imagery of a melancholy nature to show the reader that Brian is in a sad state. The references to the sky's color and to the water-soaked leaves (described as "dripping") portray images commonly associated with sadness, and provide a tangible quality to the sentiments and the subsequent thoughts which Brian is enduring at the present loss of his puppy. Such imagery provides an adequate example of Mitchell's inherent capability to show sentiment rather than explain it, while the fact that he uses nature -- which is commonly employed in the book as a motif for the sublime nature of the divine -- as the principle means of doing so in this passage and throughout the work as a whole, indicates the importance he attaches to the ability of the environment to depict loneliness.
Another fundamental similarity between the works of Mitchell and Ross in the Who has seen the Wind and As For Me And My House is the landscape itself which the authors choose to render in their works. Canada's dry, wind swept plains play an important role in each story, and can almost be considered a crucial, unspoken character. Whereas Mitchell fundamentally employs such scenery to represent the potential and beauty of a divine being, Ross uses it for a decidedly different purpose -- that of emphasizing the dreary, enduring existence of small town life which his protagonists, Mr. And Mrs. Bentley, continually feel oppressed by in their recent move to the provincial town Horizon. The greater duration of Ross's story is characterized by a relentless, overbearing wind that blows dust and drought throughout much of the town, which the author uses to symbolize the useless, unconquerable nature of small town life which both protagonists dislike and long to escape. The following quotation, in which Mrs. Bentley is writing in her journal about the day's events and the potency of the wind in particular, certainly indicates this point.
"The wind keeps on. When you step outside its strong hot push it is like something solid pressed against the face. The sun through the dust looks big and red and close. Bigger, redder, closer every day. You begin to glance at it with a doomed feeling, that there's no escape (p. 73)." Although Mrs. Bentley is literally describing the wind and its powerful effects on the dust in the plains, she could very easily be describing the draining effect of Horizon's small town mentality (and even smaller ambitions) on both herself and her husband. The reference to the "doomed feeling" with which there is no escape from certainly applies to this interpretation since one of the principle themes of the novel is the despair that both Mr. And Mrs. Bentley feel at having forfeited their own cosmopolitan desires for such a parochial existence. Yet Ross chooses to emphasize this motif through the oppressive, overbearing manifestation of weather patterns so common to