Previous
Allusions
Flashbacks
Explanation and Analysis—Narrative Chronology:
Time is not straightforward in “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” The chronological sequence of events within the world of the story is very different from the chronology of events as they are presented to the reader.
The narrative oscillates between memories of the past and events of the present, and even the story's "present" skips ahead several times as it travels from scene to scene. Small flashbacks saturate the narrative:
They had gone over to Meadowlake a few times several years ago, to visit Mr. Farquar, the old bachelor farmer who had been their neighbor.
The first years that they had lived here Grant and Fiona had stayed through the winter. A country winter was a new experience, and they had plenty to do, fixing up the house.
Teenagers at the baseball game, sitting at the top of the bleachers out of the way of the boy’s friends. A couple of inches of bare wood between them, darkness falling, quick chill of the evening late in the summer. The skittering of their hands, the shift of haunches, eyes never lifted from the field.
The continual motion between past and present is characteristic of Munro's writing. Thematically, it is typical of the Gothic genre with which she is associated, showing how the past intrudes on the present.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—University Scandals:
Grant and Fiona's life stories are unfurled gradually throughout the narrative. The story initially delves into Grant’s history through an extended flashback to his days as a university lecturer. The flashback begins as a dream, in which the events of an era of university sexual scandals are dramatized, before Grant wakes up and gives the real story:
He hauled himself out of the dream and set about separating what was real from what was not. There had been a letter, and the word “RAT” had appeared in black paint on his office door, and Fiona, on being told that a girl had suffered from a bad crush on him, had said pretty much what she said in the dream.
The memories of Grant receiving a letter from the roommate of one of his young mistresses, a student, informing him that she had threatened to kill herself after he ended the relationship, are accurate. In the dream, he remembers showing the letter to a colleague (who himself had a habit of sleeping with students) and being rebuffed. In reality, Grant never showed anyone the letter or confessed to the affair, not even to Fiona. Instead he was haunted by rumor and socially ostracized, leading to his early retirement with Fiona in Georgian Bay.
The dream-flashback accomplishes multiple purposes. Firstly, it highlights the fallibility of memory in age, even without the exacerbating factor of dementia. Past and present are porous and a wealth of accumulated memories takes conscious effort to sort through. Secondly, the dream shows how much Grant's past still haunts him, both in the form of memory and in the tangible effect it had on his life. Thirdly, the reader is given insight into Grant's character. They not only learn the story of his past but also how Grant considers that past in the present day. The dream provokes him into self-reflection, something that he tends to avoid:
The feminists and perhaps the sad silly girl herself and his cowardly so-called friends had pushed him out just in time. Out of a life that was in fact getting to be more trouble than it was worth. And that might eventually have cost him Fiona.
When Grant reflects on these events, he reveals his biases, his selective gratitude, and his priorities.
Related Themes:
