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To many people pride in ones country is an important thing. The characters in the novel The Whirlpool show their pride in and love for Canada in different ways, many of the characters have their own way of seeing Canada. In an article on The Whirlpool and Canada, Dr. Kelly Hewson discusses the ways in which the characters see Canada and each other. The characters in The Whirlpool have different views and ideas about Canada and what it means to be and think Canadian.
In order to be a member of a group one must think like the group. Canadians have their own ideas and ways of thinking Canadian. Canadians feel that they have to keep Canada safe; they feel the need to claim ownership and to protect something (Hewson 380). Canadians act as if Canada is something that needs to be protected from the Americans that would come in and try to steal it or take over. The novel, written from a Canadian viewpoint, shows Americans in a different light than they would be viewed in an American novel.
In Davids point of view all Americans are not only alike but they all want to take want ever they can from the Canadians. Any American was bred to take over things your water supply, your mineral deposits, your entire country, your wife (205). According to David, Americans are savages that need to conquer and destroy. When Patrick cant find the flower hes looking for David accuses the Americans of taking all of them. David said the Americans probably stole every example (133). Even had the flowers been growing there in the first place it is still likely that some Canadians may have picked some if not all before an American even happened upon them.
David feels that Canada needs a common enemy, namely the Americans, to unite Canada. There are many ways of thinking Canadian, the biggest of which see Canadas history as either an accomplishment or a process. David McDougal looks back on history as the accomplishment of establishing Canada as Canadian. He thinks that Canada needs thinkers that think Canadian (62).
He wants the Canadian people to focus on Canadas history, religion, and landscape. David wants to unite Canada to create pride in the country they fought for; that General Brock and Laura Second fought and died for. However, David is too obsessed with the past accomplishments that his history stops there that everything after is only living up to the events in the war of 1812. Emptied of drama and emotion these artifacts would not be making any further statements, any further journeys (208). These things are of the past, they measure the accomplishments of the past, their story ends there. He isnt necessarily wrong in his way of thinking, just limited.
To him the important past happened years ago therefore nothing that happened yesterday, no matter how great, can measure up to the history he records. To Fleda the glory isnt in the out come but in the steps taken to get there. In this way, history is on going and continuously being written. This theory is unlike Davids, who only stops to look to one glorious past event to shape his history and life. She followed Laura Secord's route but she carried with her no deep message (211). To Fleda, Laura's journey was more important than where she ended up.
Fleda is in the process of making her own history. The surroundings of a story often shape the mood and setting of the story and can help to differentiate one place from another. Fleda lives in nature, which makes her view of nature throughout the novel important. She describes the view of her ride out of town with tough old rocks with jagged edges. The hill country of England, as Fleda imagined it, or gentle undulations of the Tuscan countryside, had nothing to do with this nothing to do with this river side of the road. (24). Fleda knows that where she lives is drastically different from the place she reads about but her English books are the only comparison she has.
When she looks around and sees harsh rocks and steep mountains she longs to see what the gentle rolling hills of England really look like. Patrick and Fleda have both been raised on English writings. Unfortunately for them they are not in England and therefore none of the classic English poetic subjects are present in the Canadian landscape. He has learned the wrong language, the language of the British Romanticists, and hence his real problem is understanding where he actually is (Hewson 383).
Although his heart is in the right place when he goes looking for wild orchids had Patrick been thinking logically he would have realized that he would never find this England native flower in the harsh Canadian landscape. In addition, had he been paying attention to his surroundings he may have noticed the beautiful native flowers that he was stepping on in his hopeless search. The purpose of the obsession with English literature is to prove that Canada is not England: to prove that it is a country with an entirely different geography, climate, and landscape. People and objects in history often affect and change the present.
Laura Second and General Brock are important members of Canadian history. Laura Second was a young woman who delivered a message of an American attack plan. David is obsessed with Laura; he admits to Patrick that he married Fleda because she looked like Laura. Imagine it, McDougal continued, the young, slim woman alone, walking through the enemy-infested, beast ridden woods, and she had the presence of mind to bring a cow along to fool the enemy sentries. Twelve miles over rough terrain (73). To David, Laura is a perfect patriotic woman.
He is truly in love with his image of Laura and is never willing to believe she is anything other than his vision of her. He believes that Laura came to him in a dream telling him to: Remind them, remind them (72). In fact, David has been working to remind people of the history of Canada by recording it. Unfortunately, David is so wrapped up in what had happened in history that he doesnt notice the history that is being written around him. The historical room is a small third-story room above the courthouse.
Its filled with any object of significant that had been collected over the years. Among the assorted objects is General Brock's hat. The only real significance this hat has is that it didnt arrive on time for Brock to die in it. Urquhart points out that his act may have been foolish but as far as David is concerned, it was heroic.
The room was filled with buttons, weapons, quilts, and many other things that had been collected and preserved over time. This room is like Maud's cupboard. She keeps the belongings of the unidentified bodies together in bags. Being grouped together in this way gives these things meaning, it isnt until her son rearranges them that Maud realizes that they are just things of the past and she has to move on. She realized that life is about people; they live, they die, and everyone else moves on.
Maud, like Fleda comes to the realization that you cant stop and look back on the past because history is an on going process. Maud is able to get rid of the objects but David is not. When David finds out that Patrick is dead and he cannot find Fleda he goes to the historical room. McDougal was comforted by the sight of these objects looking over his shoulder once or twice when he thought he might have heard the rustle of a womens skirt on the oak floor (208).
David still clings to the past even after he loses his wife. A sense of pride in ones country is important to many people. In the novel The Whirlpool, the characters have many different ways of thinking about their country which effects the way they see Canada. Dr. Kelly Hewson's lecture on The Whirlpool and Canada discusses the different ways in which the characters see each other and Canada. There are many different ideas on what it is to be and think Canadian that are brought about by the characters in the novel The Whirlpool.
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Research essay sample on Examples Of Canadian Thinking In The Whirlpool
