SOURCE: Thibault, Bruno. “‘Awaite Pawana’: J. M. G. Le Clézio's Vision of the Sacred.” World Literature Today 71, no. 4 (fall 1997): 723–29.

In the following essay, Thibault explores the central themes in Le Clézio's lengthy short story “Awaite Pawana.”

“Awaite Pawana” is a long short story of some fifty pages, published by J. M. G. Le Clézio in 1992, the very year of the commemoration of America's discovery by the Europeans. But in this text the mood of the author is not one of celebration: “Pawana” is an apocalyptic tale. It does not evoke the age of great discoveries but rather the closure of the “western frontier” and the systematic destruction of America's natural resources.

The central action takes place at the beginning of 1856, the period that saw the development of colonization on the California coast. At first Le Clézio describes, with a certain realism, the fishing boats...