Faith and Fiction: A Theological Critique of the Narrative Strategies of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan

3. Two Solitudes

Hugh MacLennan 25 characters in an undifferentiated voice and at times that are emotionally inappropriate. This defect in characterization seems to be a result of MacLennan's privileging of the Word as truth. For the minor figures who are untroubled by thematic speeches, for example, Uncle Alfred, Roddie, and especially Aunt Maria, are delightfully realistic. Aunt Maria's voice rings throughout the novel: "I ran into Mrs. Taylor this evening as we came out, that woman I was telling you about in the Red Cross. She's dreadful. People like that shouldn't be allowed to take part in the war" (BR 35). The plot of Barometer Rising also suffers from thematic determinism. The characters' conflicts are never resolved dramatically in accordance with the logic of action or personality. Rather, after a series of contrived coincidences, the explosion operates as a dens ex machina to dispose of all the obstacles to Neil and Penny's happiness together. On the other hand, the plot is usually interesting, suspenseful, and full of documentary detail. The events leading up to the explosion are carefully structured and marked by dates and times, the movement of men and ships, so as to increase our suspense and foreshadow the cataclysm. The description of the actual explosion and subsequent rescue work is one of the most powerful action narratives in our literature. Indeed, the action and atmosphere of Halifax in 1917 are vividly conveyed throughout the book, and the city, as MacLennan wished, is the most fully realized character. 3. Two Solitudes In Two Solitudes (1945) MacLennan continues the thematic pattern of a movement from Calvinism to a spiritual humanism in a denunciation of the old puritanical religions which he believes have sown the racial hatreds in this country, and in a quest for a meaningful faith for the individual in this scientific age. At the beginning of this novel, the country that was to have united the world is having serious problems with its own unity and the rift is largely religious: "You see the Methodists in Toronto and the Presbyterians in the best streets of Montreal and the Catholics all over Quebec, and nobody understands one damn thing except that he's better than everyone else" (TS 28). The conflict for the future of Quebec, and symbolically of Canada, is dramatically centred on the small parish of Saint­Marc­des­Erables. The opposing forces are puritanical Catholicism (Jansenism) and materialistic Calvinism, and the first protagonist is eventually trapped and tragically destroyed in the middle. Father Beaubien, the parish priest, represents the paternalistic authority of the Church, jealously guarding the piety of an insular, pre­ industrial, agrarian existence: His mind moving slowly, cautiously as always, the priest visioned the whole of French­Canada as a seed­bed for God, a seminary of French parishes 26 Faith and Fiction speaking the plain old French of their Norman forefathers, continuing the battle of the Counter­Reformation. . .. Let the rest of the world murder itself through war, cheat itself in business,destroy its peace with new inventions and the frantic American rush after money. Quebec remembered God and her own soul, and these were all she needed.(TS 7­8) Representing Anglo­American big business, an English war, and an alien religion, Huntly McQueen is his natural adversary: "an Ontario Presbyterian [a minister's son] he had been raised with the notion that French Canadians were an inferior people, first because they were Roman Catholic, second because they were French" (TS 14). He is a discreet member of the Montreal financial elect, "Presbyterians to a man," who control the economy and technology of modern industrial Canada from their offices on Saint James Street and their massive stone houses on the slopes of Mount Royal (TS 92). Athanase Tallard, the protagonist of the first half of this novel, is caught between the forces of the past and the future. As a Member of Parliament he has tried to bring Quebec into the mainstream of twentieth­ century North America, even supporting conscription and earning the enmity of his fellow Quebecois. Then, having failed politically to achieve unity, he decides to ally himself with McQueen in using science "to crack the shell of Quebec." In this he deliberately identifies himself "on the side of the future": "Science was sucking prestige from the old age of faith and the soil. And prestige was a matter of power." A factory in Saint­Marc­des­Erables would raise its standard of living and give it...