"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight." The central symbol for Canada, occurring in both French and English literature, seems undoubtedly to be that of Survival or la Survivance, which answers the question that has occupied the minds of people for decades, "What have been the central preoccupations of our (Canadian) poetry and fiction"" (Atwood: Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature 167) asked by Margaret Eleanor Atwood. In the critical views of Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, Atwood maintains that the central problem of Canadian life is that we are a colonized nation. First the British, then the Americans have imposed an insensitive, arrogant and egotistical foreign rule. In response, Canadian writers have described the political, the personal, and the...