“The Return” - A Short Story by Alistair MacLeod - 1971- included in The Collected Stories of Alistair MacLeod
Join in iwith Buried in Print for A read along through The Short Stories of Alistair MacLeod.
Schedule for the Alistair MacLeod Read along
My post on his story, “The Boat”
For almost four years i read along with Buried in Print through The Short Stories of Mavis Gallant. I was able to read and post on about half of her two hundred or so stories. It was a great Reading Life experience which also gave me a sense of accomplishment. Plus it was a lot of fun to folllow along with Buried in Print. Now we begin a new read along on a writer new to me, Alistair MacLeod. This Will be my fourth post on his work.
Alastair MacLeod
July 26, 1936 - North Battleford, Canada
April 20, 2014 - Windsor, Canada
As the story opens Alex, age ten when it happens, is on his way back to Cape Breton with his parents. Cape Breton was then a rough place to live, with most men working as fishermen, a dangerous occupation. Residents looked down on outsiders who come as tourists to see the beautiful coast. His father left the family home there a long time ago to become an attorney in Montreal.His in laws paid for his schooling. The mother regards Cape Breton people with contempt,seeing them as drunken and uneducated. We can see her angst in this:
“When we are seated on the new train I see that my mother is very angry. “Ten years,” she snaps at my father, “ten years I’ve raised this child in the city of Montreal and he has never seen an adult drink liquor out of a bottle, nor heard that kind of language. We have not been here five minutes and that is the first thing he sees and hears.” She is on the verge of tears.”
Of course now her husband is dreading the face to face encounters when he arrives.
For an affluent woman from Montreal Cape Breton seems like a very squalid place.
We are quick to see the bad blood between father and oldest son:
““You have been a long time coming home,” he says to my father. “If you had come through that door as often as I’ve thought of you, I’d’ve replaced the hinges a good many times.” “I know, I’ve tried, I’ve wanted to, but it’s different in Montreal, you know.”
The father picks up his attack:
““Yes, I guess so. I just never figured it would be like this. It seems so far away and we get old so quickly and a man always feels a certain way about his oldest son. I guess in some ways it is a good thing that we do not all go to school. I could never see myself being owned by my woman’s family.” “Please don’t start that already,” says my father a little angrily. “I am not owned by anybody and you know it. I am a lawyer and I am in partnership with another lawyer who just happens to be my father-in-law. That’s all.” “Yes, that’s all,” says my grandfather and gives me another sip from his glass. “Well, to change the subject, is this the only one you have after being married eleven years?”
The Young man is taken out by his cousins. He is exposed to things way rougher than Life in Montréal. To me this seemed almost like his Grandfather’s revenge on his son. The older man works as a miner,hard dangerous work at 76.
To me this is the grandfather’s revenge
““And did you have a good day today, Alex?” asks my grandfather as we stop before his locker. And then unexpectedly and before I can reply he places his two big hands on either side of my head and turns it back and forth very powerfully upon my shoulders. I can feel the pressure of his calloused fingers squeezing hard against my cheeks and pressing my ears into my head and I can feel the fine, fine, coal dust which I know is covering my face and I can taste it from his thumbs which are close against my lips. It is not gritty as I had expected but is more like smoke than sand and almost like my mother’s powder. And now he presses my face into his waist and holds me there for a long, long time with my nose bent over against the blackened buckle of his belt. Unable to see or hear or feel or taste or smell anything that is not black; holding me there engulfed and drowning in blackness until I am unable to breathe. And my father is saying from a great distance: “What are you doing? Let him go! He’ll suffocate.” And then the big hands come away from my ears and my father’s voice is louder and he sounds like my mother. Now I am so black that I am almost afraid to move and the two men are standing over me looking into one another’s eyes. “Oh, well,” says my grandfather turning reluctantly toward his locker and beginning to open his shirt.”
To me this seems shameful and cruel, hurting the grandson for revenge.
MacLeod brought out well the emotions of the different parties. The grandson is clearly confused.
Mel u
2 comments:
This really made me think about the story from a different perspective. I'm copying my response to your question from BIP here: " I think you’ve rightly observed that sense of things from the narrator’s perspective, the idea of his being smothered and of his viewing his son’s potential claustrophobia as an echo of that, as the grandfather pulls the boy into his chest. For me, I was struck by the grandfather’s desire to somehow pull the boy closer to his own lived experience and to the tangibility of the work in the mine that had fed and clothed the family (as problematic as that work is/was) which seems un-explainable to the younger generations. I viewed it as an act of love and connection, but now I wonder that I didn’t weigh the other side of it into the equation. Also, the quotations about the marriage (both marriages, actually) that you’ve pulled out are very revealing and cast further light on the question of resentments that have built up over the years and how easily one judges another’s concessions/compromises/devotions."
Buried in Print
Consider The father denigrates his son for having only one child,the suggestion is either there is little feeling in the family or the son lacks manhood.
To me the grandfather knew the grandson was at his mercy, he knew his daughter in law would be very upset over coal dust on her son. The very last thing she wants is him to identify as a child of coal mining family. The father goes to bed almost as soon as his son, who he has not seen in years,arrives. Stating he is a working man. The idea being his daughter in law and son look down on him and he in turns not very interested in them. There is more showing the attitude of the grand mother toward her marriage
The father resents the lost of three sons, one to suicide, he was a doctor, one to drowning while fishing, and the son in this story to rich in laws in Montreal.
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