SOURCE: "A Neglected Theme in Two Solitudes," in Canadian Literature, No. 75, Winter, 1977, pp. 53-60.

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. The following quotation from critic George Woodcock is in this respect typical: "If Two Solitudes had ended with Tallard's death, it would have been a moving and cohesive book. But up to this point it merely...