65 pages • 2 hours read
No Great Mischief
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
The Moon
As a recurring image, the moon is present in many of the most important scenes in the novel. So much so, in fact, that it is given a special Gaelic name: Lochran àigh nam bochd, “the lamp of the poor.” This phrase appears repeatedly throughout the novel and is also featured in several songs which the characters sing. The moon is a unifying and constant presence in the lives of the characters, its presence and its memory serving to remind them of the constant nature of family.
The first time the moon is mentioned, along with its Gaelic nickname, is when Alex is remembering his brothers’ life out in the cabin, all alone but for one another. They live a strange, ramshackle existence, which their lack of parents defines. But the moon, when it is at its brightest, provides them with sport and satiates their hunger. They use the light of the moon to sit in their bedroom and hunt deer with a rifle. The “lamp of the poor” shines down on them, providing them with sustenance in the form of both entertainment and food. Without their mother and father, the boys are still being watched over and cared for, giving the moon an almost supernatural quality.
The same moon and “lamp of the poor” present in another memory. While returning from Alex’s graduation, his uncle tells Alex a story about the time he and Alex’s father worked at a logging camp. They must walk 12 miles at night, through the snow and the darkness, but there is always the moon above them, guiding them along the right path. The fact that different characters refer to the “lamp of the poor” without prompting gives the sense that this is the exact same moon, watching over the family during their most difficult moments. Just like Alex’s brothers, the presence of the moon saves his uncle and father. Decades apart, the distant celestial body helps different members of the family. The presence of the moon in these memories unites the family across generations, always helping them in difficult circumstances.
The next time the moon appears, it is Alex himself who has the memory. He is working in the mines, buried deep beneath the ground where the passage of day is irrelevant. But then he comes to the surface each day and says that “sometimes the moon would gleam whitely above us and my brothers would say, ‘Coimhead, lochran aigh nam bochd,’ ‘Look, the lamp of the poor’” (116). Calum then addresses the moon directly, singing it a song. After the miners rise above ground, it is as though the moon guides them toward safety. When Calum sings to the “lamp of the poor,” it mirrors the songs he sings to his horse. In both circumstances, the song represents genuine affection and a loving relationship. The moon is an ever-present feature in Calum and Alex’s lives, and they are happy to show their gratitude toward it.
However, the moon has a dark side. Although it is not explicitly stated in the text at the time, the moon is partially responsible for the death of Alex’s parents. They are swept away by the changing tides (a force of nature the moon influences), and Alex is left an orphan. Alex himself becomes aware of this in later life, remembering: “Within the circle of the sun the tides are rising and falling, thrusting and pulling and bringing to bear their quiet but relentless force under the guidance of the moon” (117). However, he never attributes malicious intent to the moon. He does not blame the moon for changing the tides and dooming his parents and brother, but he does acknowledge its awesome power.
In the present day, the moon as a guiding force is notably absent. Alex notes that “the ‘lamp of the poor’ is hardly visible in urban [areas], although there are many poor who move disjointedly beneath it. And the stars are seldom clearly seen above the pollution of prosperity” (157). This suggests that the unifying, almost benevolent force that watched over the family is absent from the modern world. The urban environment, so different from the Cape Breton of Alex’s youth, is polluted yet prosperous, and it lacks the same night sky he once envisaged. There is no longer a lamp above for the poor people—such as Calum—who must now find their own way through a difficult, threatening world.
The Sea
Like the moon, the sea is a motif that repeatedly appears throughout the text. It symbolizes many things throughout, from a threat to a means of sustenance to a canvas on which Calum can try to recreate his father’s art. It also represents the division between the family members’ current location and their ancestral home in Scotland.
With such immense power, the sea is always to be feared and respected. One of the first mentions of the sea comes when Alex and Calum discuss the memorial to Calum Ruadh. A stone at the top of the cliff is carved with the man’s initials and is still cared; the family commemorates the man who brought them to Canada from Scotland. However, the grave will not last forever. It’s position on the cliff means that the sea is a looming threat. Eventually, the cliff will erode, and the stone will fall into the sea, disappearing forever. The subtext here indicates the limits of memory on mortality; despite the fame Calum Ruadh possesses, even he cannot hold back the inevitable, and one day, he will disappear forever.
The sea is never simple, and during the discussion, Calum remarks that “when the gales would blow, the spray from the sea would drench the boulder until it glistened” (18). The sea has the power to destroy the memory of their ancestor, but for now, it only serves to embolden his name and make it appear all the more beautiful. This increased aesthetic quality will eventually lead to the full erosion of the cliff, but for the moment, it allows Calum and his family to appreciate the memory of their ancestor even more.
The most significant action of the sea is its role in the death of Alex’s parents. They vanish while walking across the ice, swallowed up by “the open water” (47). When the search party is unable to find the bodies, “there was nothing for the men to do but wonder” (48), which reinforces the power of the sea as a force of nature. It leaves men without any recourse should something go wrong, and when Colin’s body appears a few days later, it is presented as a quirk of the water, rather than something expected. The sea is an awesome power, but it has an almost mystic quality; it functions as an abyss that can swallow up unsuspecting people, though does so without maliciousness. The deaths of Alex’s parents and brother are accidents, almost unavoidable ones. But the sea remains powerful, present, and a fact of life for those who live in Cape Breton.
However, the sea can provide as well as take. Following the deaths, Alex’s brothers live alone and fish and catch lobsters. The fish they catch in their little boat feeds them, providing them with the sustenance that their parents can no longer provide. Just as the sea has taken their parents, it provides them with a means of sustaining themselves after the loss.
But even then, the sea is presented as a confusing, strange force. One day, a dead whale washes ashore. It is neither a gift from the sea, nor an attack. The next day, a storm rages, and when they search for the whale, it is gone. The whale has appeared from nothing and then disappeared without any fanfare. When they search for the whale, they find the sea’s rolling waves have carried the carcass far inland where it rots away “until only its bones were visible to the eye” (87). There is an almost magical quality to this episode, as though the sea is reminding the fishermen of its massive power by encroaching on the land and imposing such an alien feature on their landscape.
The sea is an objective, ambivalent force. It is capable of providing everything the brothers need and taking it away at the same time. This creates a special relationship between Alex’s older brothers and the sea. Later, Calum tells Alex of a time when he took the boat out and tried to create rainbows over of the engine wake, just as he had seen his father do years before. In this instance, the sea becomes a means by which Calum can reconnect with his dead father and try to replicate what he sees as an artistic creation. Although he fails, Calum succeeds in portraying the sea as a canvas on which artistic works can be etched, as well as a terrifying force of nature.
In historical terms, the importance of the sea is an ever-present feature in the lineage of the family. The Atlantic Ocean separates clann Chalum Ruaidh from their ancestral homeland. It is a physical division, a divorce from the past that encourages the Canadian branch of the family to consider themselves both the same and different from their ancestors across the water. The nostalgia demonstrated by clann Chalum Ruaidh ferments and grows throughout the book, affected by the separation of the sea from their detailed history. However, this is not an impassable division. At least two members of Alex’s family travel to Scotland, where they are well received. Again, the importance of the sea is its power, rather than its aggression. It may separate, but it does not erase these family ties. When Catherine finally crosses the sea, for example, she is told by the Scottish locals that she is “really from here. [She has] just been away for a while” (132). The sea is a barrier, but one that can be crossed by preserving a memory of the past.
Dogs
Dogs function as a microcosm of the travails of the family. On his journey to Canada, Calum Ruadh brought with him a single dog, bred from the local stock. The generations of this dog’s descendants are common in every era of the family’s existence from that moment on. Just as the family members are recognized by their familiar features, the presence of these dogs helps to demarcate members of clann Chalum Ruaidh.
The first dog, the one brought over to Canada by the family, is not meant to make the journey. As Alex recounts in a story that has been passed down across the generations, Calum Ruadh decided to leave the dog behind. But as the ship departed, the dog leapt into the sea and chased after the boat, “sensing that something was wrong” (26). At first, the owners try to stop the dog swimming out to its death. But, after a certain point, they encourage the dog closer and eventually drag it on to the boat. Calum Ruadh tells the dog that “you have been with us all these years and we will not forsake you now. You will come with us” (26); he accepts the dog into the family, and this dedication to helping one another applies as much to the dog as it does to the other members of the family. When relating this story, it is this section which Alex’s grandfather likes the most; it emphasizes the importance of family and belonging, both important emotions lacking in Alex’s grandfather’s life following the death of his wife.
This use of dogs as an emotional signifier for the traditions and the habits of clann Chalum Ruaidh continues with the death of Alex’s parents. The family dog “walked ashore across the ice” (43) on March 28, making the same fateful journey home later that night. The dog is the one only who survives the encounter, leaping from the water and rushing toward Alex’s Grandpa, before leading the search party to the point where the ice opened up. As the lone survivor, the dog begins to pine for the missing people. In the days after the deaths, it begins to wander down to the old lighthouse and wait for their arrival. Alex’s Grandma describes this dedication as being within this breed of dog’s nature, saying that “it was in those dogs to care too much and to try too hard” (52), part of a repeated mantra she echoes throughout the book. In this respect, the specific breed of dog is folded into the wider family law. The dogs become just as much a part of the history of clann Chalum Ruaidh as speaking Gaelic. They become a lesson to be passed down to future generations and an example to be used to educate new family members on the importance of tradition.
However, this same dog meets a tragic end. During its pining, the dog meets the new lighthouse keeper as he disembarks from his boat. As the man is not a member of clann Chalum Ruaidh, he does not share in the same romanticism of this particular dog, nor does he know the history and traditions associated with the breed. When he arrives and the dog growls at him, he wastes no time in reaching for his rifle and shooting “four bullets into her loyal waiting heart” (52). He then throws the dog’s body into the sea, conflating together the two motifs, while also reuniting the dog with its dead owners. All Alex’s Grandma can say is to repeat the idea that the dog tried too hard and cared too much.
Even in future generations and other parts of the world, the same dogs are apparent. Catherine keeps several dogs in her “modernistic house” (81), where the old breed seems almost anachronistic. Likewise, Alex’s Grandma, when she retires to a nursing home, remains surrounded by the same breed of dog, almost as though they gravitate toward her. When Catherine visits Scotland and encounters members of clann Chalum Ruaidh, one of the things she notices is the presence of the dogs. The distant relatives even ask about the fate of the dog that followed Calum Ruadh, noting the different perspectives they hold of the same anecdote. Catherine tells them of the dog’s nature, and they agree; the dog becomes a symbol for the enduring clann Chalum Ruaidh spirit, even after centuries apart.
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