CANADIAN LITERATURE

Mavis Gallant: The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street (1963)

Montreal 1922 French speaking convent school University of Toronto Until 1980 still invisible…not personal attachment to

CanLit

The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street

Conflicts between:

Native vs non native

Aliened characters

Cyclical narrative structures

Realistic detail to create multiple layers of

meaning

Summary

Peter Frazer Sheilah returning from Europe and Far EastVariety of unsatisfactory jobs „do well in the international thing”

The use of present tense entrapment of a series of Sunday morning

The end of the story returns to the departure

Depth of memory (memories abroad not coherent)

Move from Paris to Geneva

Another Canadian Agnes Brusen (invited Burleugh)

Transferential epiphany It is the sharing of this memory that strikes her and Peter as ultimately more significant than any sexual affair they might or might not have

Image of the ice wagon

„two different uses of memory in this allegory of grieving:

distorting and disabling memory as symbol of the past

Fraziers’ model of escape vs memory as truthful fiction

A story about memory: impact of the remote upon more recent past

the present shape, and reshape, one’s memories of the past

Frequent intrusions not of the past upon the present but of the present upon the past

Memory is a topic among characters

„nothing happened” „You’d remember if it had „anyway nothing happened”

Peter vs. Peter in LukeAgnes – lamb Jesus

Agnes: inferior girl of poor quality I d be like Agnes, if I din’ t have Sheilah

Ice wagon = home

Lucky vs unlucky (Peter is able to at least to know what has been lost)

Canadianess

Two daughters who were young returning home start speaking

with the kind of voice that seems to be identified as quintessentially Canadian „nasal and flat”

Agnes has the same voice

First generation immigrants

Peter is a fourth generation immigrant

Kind of aura (French Canadian COMBINE )

Peter was born central urban Canada

Agnes from the West first given education

Peter and Sheilah’s marriage, unable to appreciate the importance of first snow

They had been put together because they were Canadians

Number of things? Or no real meaning?

Gallant’s realism

Not just a lice if realism but naming things in order not to name

their ultimate meaning

Self reflexive (last sentence) quality inner and outer selves

Watching over Agnes in the mirror over the fireplace

Animals

Animals are most instances in the story Peter Sheilah = peacock Their daughters Peter’s sister= wren Agnes= mole

Wrens and moles are different but similar color

Small and brown similar size

Peter and Agnes’s families having similarities

„the peacocks love no one. They wander about the parked cars Looking elderly…”

Meegwich!