[In "Le Torrent" Anne Hébert deals with a protagonist who is] seeking the joy or freedom which … is, at the same time, apart from and part of [his] existence…. Hébert, through the image of the rapids, [articulates] the dilemma of a fragmented personality in search of some healing reconciliation, and in dealing with this search, the [work assumes a symbolic dimension which takes it] from the particulars of presentation into universal considerations of man's relationship to himself and others….

["Le Torrent" deals] with attempts to come to necessary and violent terms with the past which is associated with the dominant figure of a mother who shuts off the protagonist from the community. [The world of "la grande Claudine" is an oppressive, static world] whose very strength lies in unchangeability and in the maintenance of the rational status quo, and it is in the protagonist's violent challenge...