Comparison of Lives of the Saints and Medicine River
... live in the same house, it is as if they are strangers. After she becomes pregnant from her lover, there is a void between them. “Not a word passed between her and my grandfather: it was as if they simply did not see each other, moving through the same house, the same room, as if they only sensed each other’s alien presence lurking like a shadow nearby, and kept clear of it” (Ricci, pg. 129). Vitto also begins to feel a loss of family when his relationship with his mother fades. We first see the signs of separation of Vitto and his mother when they were eating at Luciano’s restaurant (the ‘Hostaria del Cacciatore’), and Vitto used foul language towards her. “What’s the matter with you? Oh! Basta!” “It tastes like shit”. After Vitto’s response to his mother’s question, she slapped him, and there was silence between them after that. After the incidence at the restaurant Vitto begins to notice the sense of loss and separation from his mother. “My mother, too, had withdrawn into a shadowy silence. Since the day at the restaurant a veil seemed to have fallen between us…but the passing days brought only a growing awkwardness, as if my mother and I had suddenly become strangers” (Ricci, pg. 74). Vitto realizes that his live is suddenly changing and that his mother is changing as well. “I spent my time alone now, waiting for something to happen that would restore the normalcy of things, for the festival, for school to begin in October” (Ricci, pg. 75). He begins to notice the differences in his mother and the way she has withdrawn herself. As a young boy Vitto doesn’t fully understand what is happening around him and why his mother has withdrawn from him. Because Vitto is so attached to his mother, the sense of separation from her has made him feel a sense of loss and loneliness. “I spent my time instead closed up in my room, pretending to look over my schoolbooks in the hope that my mother would come up to check on me”. Because he is a child, Vitto longs for the love of his mother. “I’d watch her sometimes through my balcony doors…her hair pulled by now in a scarf…” (Ricci, pg. 77). Although things were different between Vitto and his mother, he still longed for her love and comfort as many young children do. When his mother became ill, Vitto was very scared for her, as he did not want to lose her. He wanted to do whatever he could to help her. Vitto preformed a ritual that he heard someone tell his mother would save her soul. “I had already decided by then what needed to be done, had begun to go over in my mind the visit that Giuseppina had paid my mother just after her snake bite” (Ricci, pg. 111). “I returned again and again to my balcony to stare into the ravine as if expecting a sign from there, some sure proof that the spirits would be willing to accept my offering” (Ricci, pg. 113). In the end Vitto and his mother were on their way to Canada and she gives birth on the boat. As a result she dies from complications and Vitto is left all alone in a strange new world. The funeral was held on the boat and Vitto did not want to believe that his mother was really gone. He kept hoping that it was all a big mistake and that his mother would get up any moment. “There had been a mistake, the kind of thing where dead people were not dead or where they could sometimes come back to life again…in a moment, I was sure, my mother’s head would pop out of her sack” (Ricci, pg. 235). After the funeral Vitto contracted pneumonia and ended up in the hospital when they arrived. When he awoke his father was there. “It was the second visitor, who came after the first, that I had not expected to see: a stranger who was my father” (Ricci, pg. 234). After the death of his mother Vitto is left to figure things out for himself and start a new life with the father he never knew in a country that was foreign to him. The novel by Thomas King, “Medicine River” also deals greatly with separation and loss of family. As the story unfolds the main character Will, is living in a state of limbo. Will’s mother, a Native Indian (Blackfoot) had married a white man. Will grew up with his mother and younger brother James. Will’s father had abandoned them when he was very young. As a result, Will and his brother James have no memory of their father. As a young child Will secretly longed for his father and would make up stories about what he did to strangers. Even after Will gets older he would still make up stories about what his father did for a living to stranger. “Maybe it was the way she asked the question, smiling, expecting that I had a father and that what he did was worth talking about…my father is a senior engineer with Petro Canada” (King, pg. 78). “I was at least twenty-five when I told that woman on the plane that my father was a senior engine. And there was no reason to do that. I didn’t miss him. I didn’t even think about him. I had never known the man. So, I began to invent him” (King pg, 79-80). We can clearly see that subconsciously Will did miss his father and though about him all the time. “Sometimes I’d sit in my apartment and try to think up new professions for my father” (King, pg. 80). Will was very young when he found out that his father had died. “My father died the week before my mother dressed James and me up in new blue wool pants and white shirts and hauled us down to the photo studio” (King, pg. 213). Will loves his younger brother James and takes on a fatherly role of protector. After the boys lose their mother, they also start to drift apart. Will moved from the reserve to Toronto to become a photographer. However, he does not feel a sense of belonging there. Will does not even know who he is and feels lost and alone at times. When his mother dies, Will returns to Medicine River for the funeral and meets Harlen Bigbear. Harlen Bigbear quickly becomes a key figure in Will’s life and takes on the role of both is mother and father. Harlen vows to help will overcome the barriers that isolate him and keep him from finding himself. He convinces Will to move back to Medicine River and open a studio. “James says you take pictures…we got a lot of people out here…you could start your own business, you know” (King, pg. 93). Harlen also encourages Will to settle down and have a family. “A man’s not complete until he has a woman by his side…a son of yours would probably be a sports star of some sort” (King, pg. 27). Harlen didn’t want to see Will end up alone. “Seeing a man live alone is sad, Will. You get all drawn out and gray and wrinkled” (King, pg. 27). Harlen desperately tries to drag will out into the community to a have a sense of belonging. Will on the other hand, tries to stay in his own self-absorbed world of private existence. Louise is also a major figure in Will’s life and he feels a sense of family when he is with her. Harlen knows that Will likes her and encourages him to make a move. However, Harlen tries to be sudden and discrete about it. He doesn’t directly want to tell Will to ask her out. “Even in boarding school, she was real smart. Has a great sense of humour. Good personality, too. What do you think?” (King, pg. 26). “I like Louise, and I told Harlen I liked her, but that wasn’t what Harlen meant”. Harlen would always try and drop hints to Will that he needs to settle down and start a family. “You must be forty or so, Will. Don’t look it, though. You’re a handsome man, good job. Good teeth. Good personality, too. You ever think about getting married?” (King, pg. 27). In some ways it seems as though because Will never experienced having a father in his life, he doesn’t want to settle down. He is afraid of ending up in a divorce. “You know, Harlen, I was reading an article on marriages, and it said that at least fifty p...