While Douglas Barbour's recent article on Ernest Buckler's The Mountain and the Valley (SCL 1.1) stresses the isolation of an individual character, David Canaan, and Claude Bissell's introduction to the novel focuses on its study of human community, the novel can be seen to embody a combination of the two views, in that it expresses a personal and cosmic sense of isolation through the experiences of all the characters. While initially, the separation of the characters is a sign of strength and individuality, as the novel progresses, this separation takes on the qualities of being cut off and adrift, qualities that characterize the isolation typical of much Canadian writing. Characters' relationships to language, emotions and time are considered in order to expose Buckler's expression of a universal condition of isolation.
