I Heard The Owl Call My Name

From his first moments in Kingcome, Mark Brian is confronted with the physicality of death. When he enters his new home for the first time, he finds that the decomposing body of a drowned boy is being stored there until burial. There is a steady stream of deaths throughout the novel, but they are often easy-to-miss, at times even marginal events. For example, three children in a neighboring village die in a fire in Chapter 7, but Craven summarizes this fact in a few lines and quickly moves on to the next event, i.e. the boat engine dying on the way back from the funeral. Even the deaths of people from the village are rendered flatly and quickly. When Gordon’s mother dies in Chapter 11, there is little emotional fanfare in the text. The death itself occurs in a single sentence: “He held her hand until she died, and she died quietly and quickly” (82). Craven immediately moves on to the practicalities of the aftermath: “Then Marta cleared the front room of relatives, and gathered the woman’s children to the bedside where Mark said the Lord’s Prayer” (82). Marta and Mark must prepare the body, and Craven omits any reflection or display of emotions, instead detailing their actions: “Mark closed the eyes, straightened the limbs and packed the orifices of the body against further seepage.