Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - Judit Kádár: Hugh MacLennan's Complex Narrative Technique in His Last Novel

history is pessimistically treated on the surface. The constant reoccurance of the dehumanizing elements, pain and suffering would mean that it is difficult to find a sense for human life or a chance to improve human nature. On the other hand MacLennan suggests in all his writings that there must be evolution of some kind in our life. As a writer he feels the responsibility of searching for the creative, beneficial forces in human nature and society. However, he is pessimistic towards most of the intellectuals of Third Reich Germany for being concerned more with self-expression than common interests. This is also true for the post-war historians and scientists in his novel: those who were more interested in what destroyed the civilizations than what created them. The always reoccuring patterns of the past, which create a permanent up-and-down movement of the historical cycle reinforces the imprinted memory-traces of the collective subconscious

—as it is explained in his essays (e.g. "Roman History and To-Day"). Patterns of war, for example, strategies, tactics don't change, just weapons do (VT 277), such as in the case of Genghis Kahn and Hitler: the methods to keep the mobs oppressed are similar. 'Great Fears' are folk legends that exist as myths in the common knowledge as well as on the level of the individuals. The revolutions come up always against the dull correctness of a strict social order; the wars come after and with the uprootedness and collapse of these systems and are often followed by the explosion of intellectual energy. The sequence of the extremely authoritarian patrist periods (eg. Hitler's time, or the Bureaucracies), and the excessive libertarianism in the matrist eras (such as modern Quebec) create the course of human history. Both authoritarian and libertarian forces can mean the previously mentioned notion of the misused human energy which is the 'evil' of history. MacLennan considers bureaucracies, governments and any kind of leadership to be only for controlling the masses, which leads to extremities. He studies the possible ways of revolt against any form of aggression like the one in his book; individuals who more and more grow accustomed to violence and try to escape (like Einstein did when he left Germany for America)

, they try to accept their determined common fate (like the Jews, eg. Hanna Earlich or the old Polish Jew, who commits suicide after shooting Conrad instead of Heinrich); but most people should pretend to be blind in 65