In the following excerpt, Cockburn provides an in-depth analysis of character, theme, and setting in Two Solitudes. Overall, he finds the first half of the novel aesthetically and intellectually superior to the second.

In the essay below, Arnason discusses MacLennan's formulation of a Canadian consciousness in Barometer Rising and Two Solitudes.

In the essay below, Stevenson argues that the idea of "individual self-awareness" is an important though neglected secondary theme that adds to the unity of Two Solitudes.

It has become almost a commonplace of criticism of Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes to say that the novel succeeds brilliantly up to the end of the twenty-ninth chapter, portraying the death of Athanase Tallard, but is less convincing in the last twenty-three chapters portraying the symbolic resolution of the theme in the education and maturation of the members of the second generation, Paul Tallard and Heather Methuen, and their eventual marriage…. I think the time has come for a reassessment o...