Jean Auel Earth's Children Themes

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Bringing the past to life Jean Auel, the author of the Earth’s Children, displays an amazing ability to bring to life two species of our recent past. The setting for her series is in Europe around twenty-five thousand years ago. Her dedication to understand the human element during this time in our past is remarkable. Given this knowledge, she adds a real sense of compassion and empathy that brings her readers along with her to this magical time. In the series Auel addresses several issues that have been with humanity for a long time, yet still continue today. One of the main themes she writes about concerns prejudice at its core. There would certainly be extreme prejudice between two entirely different species. Some of Auel’s characters have been with her from the start, while others came along later on in the series. As Jean tells us in her Character page “attempting to characterize the culture of the early humans was a problem which presented several difficult decisions. The archeological record can only hint at activities and behaviors of humans”. Ayla, the heroine of the series was …show more content…

One downfall about the series is the length of time it has taken to write it. The series started with Clan of the Cave Bear in 1980 and was finally completed in 2011. When addressing this in 2001 Auel states in the letter to the readers, that it took much longer than she anticipated and that there was not one single reason. She admits to enjoying the research for these books but processing this knowledge and traveling to the various sites takes an enormous amount of time” She also gives us, “And, when I started these books, I had children in high school and college; now I’m a grandmother. Life sometimes interferes with writing”

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