The Jewish Week 03-22-2002 Not long ago, in better times, Passover became in many ways a feel-good universalist holiday, the stuff of ecumenical model seders and a search for larger themes beyond the story at hand. This year, the Haggadah is stark; the...

Portland , Maine At midnight on the Martin Point Bridge, it's pour-ing rain, muggy, and foggy. The weather hasn't deterred Chico Nguyn of Portland, who is huddled under a plastic tarp, smoking cigarettes and baiting striper hooks with chunks of greasy mackerel. Under this...

In the following essay, Pell examines religious and spiritual themes in The Watch That Ends the Night, arguing that the novel's primary subject is a "search for religious peace—a truce between man's spirit and his fate."

Over the years, through a steadily deepening analysis of the national scene, Hugh MacLennan has been exploring the meaning of Canadianism; each of his novels, in some manner, has been a variation on this theme. His long study of all aspects of the Canadian character has peculiarly fitted him for the writing of The Watch that Ends the Night in which he traces Canada's coming-of-age. More important, in this novel he has gone back to examine what he feels are the character-shaping protoforms of the Cana...