Family Bond and Traumatic Pathology in Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”

Abstract

Alice Munro (1931), Canadian author and winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2009, has written a number of short stories. The Bear Came Over the Mountain is a story of love, romantic affairs, family relationship, enigma of romance and psychological disorientation. The story reveals family bond through mental depression and physical inability, which, to a large extent, are traumatic. Munros presentation of human relationship and family bond gets a new dimension from psychopathological point of view. The story reveals a bizarre relationship between two unacquainted families, members of which suffer from two different types of trauma: psychic hysteria and physical immobility. Munro shows the effect of such frenzy on individuals as well as on societal connection. This paper attempts to illustrate, from psychoanalytic point of view, the nature of traumatic pathology and its testimony in the lives of individuals and how its outcome can be a major device in understanding human relationship.

Stamford Journal of English; Volume 6; Page 103-113

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/sje.v6i0.13906