The Human Geometry of Deathscapes and Homes in Alice Munro’s The View from Castle Rock

Abstract

In her semi-autobiographical collection, The View from Castle Rock (2006), Alice Munro claims to portray the history of her ancestors by traveling through time and space and putting her fictional self at the centre of the narrative. This paper explores a set of complex relationships between space, place, and identity formation with the help of various spatial trajectories. At the thematic and structural centre of the narrative there are two recurring spatial trajectories that most commonly manifest themselves in the form of deathscapes and homes. This paper will map the different deathscapes and homes in relation to their physical locations in Scotland, the United States, and Canada, in the timeframe of the past 400 years, but more importantly in the context of their fictional meaning and the formative role they play in the protagonist’s self-quest.