Analytical Essay
Gabrielle Roy was a Canadian writer, born in St. Boniface, Manitoba, in 1909. Her parents were part of the large Quebec emigration to western Canada in the late nineteenth century (Staines). During her carrier, Roy has explored diverse genres, such as autobiographies, letters, or essays. Among them, Roy's 1966 fiction The Road Past Altamont compiled four short stories. In a context where Quebec women writers, " have a commitment to feminine causes" ( Fisher) , Roy's fiction retraces the life of three feminine characters: Christine, her mother and her grandmother. As she grows up in the vast Manitoban landscape, Christine, the narrator, learns, little by little, how to reunify the three generations and the two cultural heritages - Manitoban and Quebecer - throughout encounters and compromises. The Road Past Altamont approaches, throughout symbols and an incessant dialogue between the three generations, themes such as the nature, the souvenirs, the creation, the migration and so on.
With the parallel analysis of the critics R. Dillman, A. Sechin and P.G. Lewis, this essay will focus on the signification of two symbols in ''My Almighty Grandmother'' and ''The Road Past Altamont'': the doll and the landscape. Therefore, this paper will show how those symbols affect the characters and the relationship between them. It will emphasize the meaning of those two symbols for the characters and in their relationship .
In "My Almighty Grandmother", the doll symbolizes, first, the family. In fact, the material the doll is made of has belonged to many people of the family: "I recognized the remains of a dress that had belonged to one of my sisters, of a blouse of Maman's, of one of my own dresses" (Roy 8). Although she does not always remember all the names of the members of her family, as she...