Wendigo Sparknotes

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Firstly, it is important to understand the original Indigenous interpretation of the wendigo. Atwood defines it as, “... a giant spirit-creature with a heart and sometimes an entire body of ice, and prodigious strength; and that it can travel as fast as the wind... its prevailing characteristic seems to be its ravenous hunger for human flesh” (Atwood 66). In this sense, the wendigo is a monster that threatens the community through its physical might. However, the wendigo in the traditional Indigenous sense is more than just a physical foe. He is also a cautionary tale against greed and self-centeredness. In reference to Johnston’s wendigo stories, Howard writes that: “[He] also stresses the fact that the wendigo is an embodiment of human weaknesses, in particular overindulgence and selfishness” …show more content…

The original concept of the wendigo begins to change with growing European contact. French voyageurs interpret Indigenous stories of the wendigo through their European understanding of the werewolf, leading to an enmeshment of some of their beastly qualities. Podruchny writes: “...the French-Canadian belief in werewolves provided voyageurs with a framework to understand windigos in French-Canadian terms, and in the narratives about cannibal monsters, the motifs of windigo and werewolf intermingled” (Podruchny 678). There are some similarities between the two beasts; both werewolves and wendigos are marked by their physical transformation and cannibalistic nature, however, the werewolf lacks the moral implication that the wendigo possesses. Wendigos are created through greed and selfishness, while werewolves are more commonly created through dark magic and Satanism. If the wendigo represents human weakness, then the werewolf represents supernatural influence which dampens the moral imperative against greed on the

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