SOURCE: "Malcolm Lowry's Comic Vision: 'Elephant and Colosseum'," in Canadian Literature, No. 101, Summer, 1984, pp. 167-71.

In the following essay, Rankin explores the comic aspects of Lowry's short story "Elephant and Colosseum."

Those who know Malcolm Lowry only through Under the Volcano are often surprised to discover that much of his later work rejects that novel's dark and terrible vision in favour of a far more positive, even comic, outlook. Volcano seems such a devastating apocalyptic novel that one marvels that its author would, or could, arrive at any comic resolution whatsoever.

Actually, though, I think it is just these readers' misreading of Volcano that keeps them from appreciating the later work. Volcano, after all, is not so much a tragic novel as a novel about the possibility of tragedy. The Consul's wasted life, his terrible death, is meant to serve as a warning, just as the final words...