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Articles

Volume 01, Number 1 (1976)

David Canaan: The Failing Heart

  • Douglas Barbour
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1976-01-01

Abstract

Ernest Buckler's The Mountain and the Valley is more than just a flawed paean to the virtues of the rural family, as suggested by Claude Bissell in his introduction to the novel, and it is more than simply another example of the victim syndrome in Canadian literature, as Margaret Atwood claims in Survival. It is a far subtler achievement: the representation of a potentially great character, David Canaan, who fails to achieve his potential for the most human of reasons – willful self-love. This carefully structured study of human isolation undercuts the failure of David's life as a writer in that Buckler's artistic exploration of David's character actually succeeds where David does not, while showing, with precision and clarity, why David fails.