Analysis Of Reading North Through The One Way Mirror By Alice Munro

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Alice Munro’s Take on Canadian Landscape in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage Robert Thacker’s article Reading North Through the One-Way Mirror: Canadian Literature, the Canadian Literary Institution, and Alice Munro presents an American reading on various subjects found Canadian literature. Amongst numerous subjects discussed in the article, Thacker mentioned Canadian landscapes numerous times. Using novels such as Timothy Findley’s The Wars, he described the importance put by Canadian authors on the landscape through their descriptions of sceneries. The author elucidates how this makes it harder for American reviewers to understand the Canadian point of view, “whether through ignorance or often, disdain or indifference” …show more content…

The novel’s author, although Ontarian to the core, makes a point of bringing the importance and significance of Natives’ presence in the prairies, thus bringing the readers through a geographical journey, from the prairies through the Canadian Shield and, to conclude, into the St. Lawrence Lowlands of Ontario. He does not only bring a focus to the geographic landscape of Canada but, by bringing natives into the story’s narrative, he brings forward a lesser known historical aspect of Canada into the limelight which is salient to understand the cultural background of the country in the narrative. By doing so, it is helping the readers get submerged into the story and appreciating it even further. Other stories stated in the article reflecting Canadian Landscapes are MacLennan’s Two Solitudes, capturing the city of Montreal, and copious of Alice Munro’s stories, which captures Ontario, alike Findley, but in a different light based on her own personal experience. Alice Munro’s presence in the article is, in part, due to where her stories are inspired from. She writes …show more content…

This could be based on where Alice Munro draws her inspiration from; where she lived as a child. For example, where a majority of the storyline happens the “[trade] was moving out to the highway, where there was a new discount store and a Canadian Tire and a motel with a lounge and topless dancers” (Munro 13). Large cities are not known for businesses losing their clientele over a Canadian Tire opening next to a highway. Gdynia, another significant town in the narrative, is a town in rural Saskatchewan. The municipality was described in Johanna’s narration has having “[no] sidewalk or paved streets, no imposing buildings except a big church like a brick barn” (40). Going back to the article, small towns comparable to Gdynia or prairie provinces such as Saskatchewan are not known by the international readership, yet they are an essential part of Canada’s literature. By using Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage as an example, it is easy to comprehend how someone with no knowledge of Canada’s geography would have trouble understanding this story with general

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