Red Dog a Modern Application

Red Dog A Modern Application of Gothic Themes: Towards a Post-Colonial Reading of Patrick Lane's Red Dog, Red Dog Genre classification has been a persistent problem for literary critics ever since the concept of literary criticism emerged, and arguably even before then.

When the forms of literary expression were more regular and more limited in number -- due in part, no doubt, to the limited number of individuals who could write and even read such works of literature -- the problem was somewhat simpler, but in the modern era of multi-faceted works from a diverse array of personages it can be all but impossible to say what type or genre a given work belongs to.

A coming of age novel or "bildungsroman" might also contain elements of magical realism, and a Romantic novel might include elements of mystery and suspense. The endless variations on form have been liberated in an age of relatively cheap and easy publication, and thus discussing works of any particular type becomes somewhat limiting at best.

To complicate matters still further, genres previously typified by period as much as by content have begun to make a resurgence amongst critics seeking out labels and lenses with which to view and discuss new works. The idea of a modern Gothic novel would have seemed oxymoronic a few decades ago, yet now the term is being applied by certain critics seeking an explanation for the darkness and the passions reappearing in many novels.

Patrick Lane's Red Dog, Red Dog is one recently published Canadian novel that can be read as a modernized Gothic, of sorts, which yields considerable insight when paired with a postcolonial critical perspective. Centering on two brothers, Eddy and Tom Stark, Red Dog, Red Dog weaves the tragic and violent tales of love, loss, and despair as reported by a very strange narrator, the dead six-month-old girl of Eddy Stark.

Gender, sexuality, and issues of cultural divide or difference all play important roles in what is ultimately a tale of personal destruction and potential (though likely failed) redemption, which leads to the possibility of a multitude of critical perspectives being brought meaningfully to bear on this work.

The following pages present a brief postcolonial reading of the novel, and more specifically a "feminist postcolonial Gothic" reading of the text, as defined by critic Shelley Kulperger in her essay, "Feminine Ghosts: Feminist Postcolonial Gothic in Canada." through this reading it will be demonstrated that Red Dog, Red Dog puts both women and the First Nations inhabitants of the novel's setting in the position of "the other," exoticizing and even festishizing these groups of individuals -- and individual representatives of these native and feminine groups -- in a multitude of unusual and complex ways that contribute to the distance, separation, and need for self-destruction felt by one of the novel's central characters, Eddy Stark.

Feminist Postcolonial Gothic Kulperger opens her essay on feminist postcolonial Gothic readings of Canadian novels with an acknowledgement of the difficulty of concretely and singularly defining this genre/critical perspective, demonstrating quite clearly the lack of coherency and consistency that exists in the act of assigning genre. Most succinctly, however, she asserts that the, "feminist postcolonial gothic surfaces in the intertwined personal, national, and regional histories through a precise materializing and familiarizing of haunting, trauma, monstrosity, and fear" (Kulperger, pp. 97-8, emphasis original).

Though Red Dog, Red Dog is not specifically discussed in this critical essay, the description and exploration of themes that Kulperger sees in other recent Canadian works of literature that are assessed and analyzed through the lens she has created make it clear that this novel is also of the same type, or at least contains the same themes and other elements to be appropriately discussed using the same lens.

This particular perspective as demonstrated both in original works and works of criticism, according to Kulperger, tries to make sense of past horrors, acts of violence, and inabilities to understand -- the distances and isolations of the colonial age -- in a manner that is haunting and often outright macabre (bringing in the Gothic elements), and also recognizes the position of the feminine in regard to these past distances and horrors (thus the feminine aspect of the critical lens).

All of this clearly and directly applies to Red Dog, Red Dog. Eddy Stark is a man explicitly haunted by his past, unable to avoid the implications of his past violence and rashness as it continues to work its way into his life via drug addiction and more violence.

The fact that the story is narrated by his dead six-month-old girl, whose body he buried in the back of the family home, is itself instantly and irrevocably evocative of the gothic nature of the novel and the feminist distance that exists throughout the work.

Eddy cannot hold onto his girls -- another dead daughter is buried beside the narrator -- anymore than he can hold onto himself, and it is such separations that drive him towards his attempts to destroy himself -- to break down the barriers within, it would seem. Alice, the dead girl who tells the story in a voice and with words she never achieved in real life, is indicative of many types of distance and separation that are typical of postcolonial works and sought out by postcolonial critics.

One reviewer of the novel was particularly alienated by the use of this particular narrator, insisting, "the ghostly neonate narrator is faintly confusing and an unnecessary device" (Segal, par. 2). Rather than seeing the "device" as a necessity, however, one can simply accept the fact that this narrator is and attempt to determine the implications this has for the novel as a whole.

The perspective form which the story is told is one that is intimately connected to the characters and action, but also one that can do nothing to fix the perceived problems or resolve any conflicts. At once aware of and innocent to the anger and self-destruction at Eddy Stark's core, little Alice cannot cross to the other side through a simple lack of coherence, much like cultures separated by a postcolonial divide.

Turning to the actual culture interactions and divisions seen in the novel, however, reveals another part of Eddy Stark that provides an interesting twist to the novel. At one point it is noted that Eddy "lived a short year in an abandoned sod hut with a Metis woman and her baby," and when he finally leaves it is noted that "the border meant nothing to him, Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Washington, they were all one country in his mind" (Lane, p. 148).

Eddy is almost pre-colonial as described in this passage, not alienated form the native woman or by any of the political divisions of land in his area, but rather equally alienated from everyone due to his own personal struggle. Eddy has perhaps made himself the other. Still, the treatment of the native cultures throughout the novel is indicative of a more traditional postcolonial reading, with such groups given relatively short shrift and also somewhat exoticized.

Maureen, the Okanagan Indian that Tom befriends, is both a source of comfort and of wisdom to this Stark brother, but at the same time there is a definite sense of distance and unknowability when it comes to a fully realized description of her character.

Her children are "halfbreeds" as Maureen herself calls them, having married a white man to bear these children, and there is an implicit recognition of the passing away of her people and their ways in the passage that introduces her and these grown children to the reader (Lane, p. 223).

Even her own name, quite clearly of European rather than First Nations origin, demonstrates the shifting of the cultural tide that has taken place in the region, though Tom reflects that Maureen and "Indians" in general have a way of forgiving and accepting that is beyond his own people's capabilities or understanding (Lane, p. 224).

This reflection again signifies the exoticized way in which the characters of the novel and perhaps the author if the novel views First Nation peoples, as cut from a cloth wholly different from the "white man's." At the same time, it is another example of how the other does the reaching out -- attempts connection -- in this novel.

Alice reaches out from her unrealized femininity and from beyond (or rather within) the grave, Maureen reaches out from behind a cultural divide, yet the Stark brothers and many other characters are unable to reach back. In a complex yet subtle way, the.