margaret laurence
...er first son, Ewen, further explains her feelings: "the house is still the same, so she thinks other things should be, too. It hurts her when she finds they aren't." If our lives are uncontrollable, do we only see our life's sorrows? Similarly to Grandmother MacLeod, Ewen's life is also affected by his brother, Roderick's, death. Ewen believes that he is to blame for Roderick's death in war because of an accident which caused Roderick to become half-blind. As a result, Ewen sacrificed his dream of being a "merchant marine" (327). Instead, he succeeds his father and becomes a doctor. Only after experiencing this struggle, does he understand his father's suffering: "maybe he would have liked to be a classical scholar." (327) Ewen says, "sometimes a thing only hits you a long time afterwards." (326) While he struggles with taking a different direction, he gains an insight into the intimate feeling of others, which probably he may not have obtained previous to the incident. In contrast with Grandmother MacLeod and Ewen, the ten-year-old Vanessa's point of view provides us with a more positive insight about life. While her mother is experiencing a difficult delivery, Vanessa feels fear about unseen forces threatening her mother's and the baby's lives. After a...