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

Jerome Martell started out from the New Brunswick woods, had been given an education in Halifax, lived many years in Montreal, then set out for Europe, has been to Asia and on getting back to Montreal, he decides to go West. To go West means in Canadian literature to start a new life, and that is what happens to each doctor protagonist at the end of the novels. Their life is bound to take a new turn which may result in the physical change of environment or a change of lifestyle as in the case of Daniel Ainslie, when he becomes a father by adopting Alan. As the characters grow in importance in the novels, so they scan more of Canada and the world. They themselves psychologically grow in the process. However the purpose of their existence reaches a conscious definition: to live in Canada, to devote their surgical skill, their medical knowledge to Canada. George Woodcock has been led to express this as follows: "... there is no doubt of the presence in MacLennan's novels of a strong but benign form of nationalism. Indeed, he is the first novelist in the history of his country who has been able to take the drama of development and survival of Canada and to use it effectively as the framework for his fiction. This nationalism which irradiates the novels is compound of a deep love of the physical land and a sence of belonging to a group of peoples which, dispite geographical anomalies and historic divisions, has plunged into the primeaval wilderness the roots of a unique human community."

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5 George Woodcock, Hugh MacLennan (Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Company 1969), p. 34 60