Rudy Wiebe Critical Essay | Critical Essay by George Woodcock

Critical Essay by George Woodcock

I thought of War and Peace when I read … Rudy Wiebe's The Scorched-Wood People, which too, on a very different scale, is about war and defeat in a vast country. Rudy Wiebe, whose ancestors lived many generations in Russia, has always struck me as being similar in many ways to Tolstoy, not in any way the equivalent in stature or in sheer artistry, but on his own smaller scale irradiated with the same kind of rather primitive religious concerns, and just as prone as the great Leo Nicholaevich to subordinate his innate sense of form to a compelling didactic motive. (p. 98)

The scorched-wood people are, of course, the bois brulés, as the Métis were originally called. In his novel Wiebe is not concerned, except for a few reminiscent references to the pre-1869 past that are necessary for background, with the entire span of Métis history. He has written...
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