Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)
STUDIES - Anna Jakabfi: Regionalism and the Surgeon Figure in Hugh MacLennan's Fiction
from the farm, to Dalhousie College. The faces of classmates crossed his memory; some were successful in the upper provinces or the States; one was famous; few were left in Nova Scotia. Even as he watched, the mist was dissolving, and glancing down to the harbour, he saw the British cruiser coasting in to her anchorage. The incisive outline of the ship seemed to emphasize and sharpen the essential helplessness of all small places in the world to resist the impact of the outer world. Murray sighed. The town throbbed with the war and the people in their hearts were not sorry. They welcomed it the way a doctor welcomes a prospect of a dangerous operation which he alone can perform, for England could not fight the war without this town. The great cities which made the wars and sought to circumvent the nature of things could not do without Halifax now. He took hold of his injured hand and began to manipulate the fingers. They were stiff with the morning cold, but it was obvious they were recovering and soon would be fit for work. He would still have his trade. That would have been enough from now on." Daniel Ainslie's mind undergoes the same process when he wanders outside the town of Broughton to the sea and watches the night at the shore. Into his thinking comes the contemplation on God and man's existence, and on going home he is relaxed. He cured himself, he set his mind in peace. He contemplates: "If there was no God, then there was nothing. If there was no love, then existence was an emptiness enclosed within nothing. He felt as though his spirit had hurled itself against the window of his life like a wounded bat and broken the glass. It has been caught in a prison and now it was free. But its freedom was the freedom of not caring, and the things it witnessed now were different from those it had seen before... a world where there were no gods, no devils, no laws, no certainties, no beginning, and no end. A world without purpose, without meaning, without intelligence; dependent upon nothing, out of nothing, within nothing; moving into an eternity which itself was nothing." 2 1 2 1 Cf. op. cit. pp. 5, 44, 21&— 222. 57
