Sunset Song

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What was wonderful was that Grassic Gibbon was very specific about the countryside, the people and the language of the Mearns, but his message wasn’t remotely parochial. That is a fascinating interpretation, MBC. Especially the empirical basis of your observation: “Living on a diet more of meat and milk, Highlanders were taller and stronger than Lowlanders. I discovered this from studying adverts for runaway soldiers in the Caledonian Mercury in the 18th century. A surprising number of Highland runaways were 5’ 10” – Lowlanders were a good few inches shorter.”

The novel touches on several issues; the distinctive, not always positive character, of small rural communities in the North East of Scotland, the role of women, and the "peasant crisis" i.e. the coming of modernisation to traditional farming communities. [1] The theme of the onset of modernisation and the end of old ways is explored using many symbols, for example, violent deaths of horses (supposed to represent old, traditional farming methods) and the appearance of motorised cars representing new technologies which brush the people of the land from the road. The author also has some political opinions reflected in the characters of Chae Strachan, the Socialist, and Long Rob, the pacifist, and he shows how they react to the coming of the war. The dilemma Chris faces over whether to continue her education or commit to a life in the land is also featured. The title of the novel is a direct reference to the theme of the sunset of the old ways and traditions. By some readings Chris is "Chris Caledonia", an allegorical figure for Scotland itself. [2] [1] Literary significance and criticism [ edit ] Zenzinger thinks this has to do with a host of factors but he singles out our ‘Calvinist heritage’ with its ‘negative attitude towards sexuality’ claiming it ‘has crippled the Scots emotionally’ and goes on to state: ‘The inability to love is … the primary curse of Scottish life.’ A short biography of Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell) and a brief summary of his published works. At the same time, it is important to remember that you are writing your argument out in English. Assuming any Scot wanted to affirm or deny your argument requires literacy in English.’ Outsiders’ perceptions can help jolt us out of cultural blindness. In 1989 the German academic Peter Zenzinger published an essay on contemporary Scottish fiction which is telling. He notes that disenchantment with life is commonplace in the literature of all industrialised countries but that ‘the extreme bitterness with which it is uttered in Scottish writing is remarkable.’The same can be said about ‘Frenchness’ or ‘Italianness or ‘Russianness’ as has been said about ‘Scottishness’. The point is not to be dismissive of any discussion of nationality and what it means to be ‘Scottish’ or ‘French’ or Italian’ or Russian’ or whatever; the point is that any contemporary discussion of nationality needs to question how useful the concept of a ‘national psyche’ is in the contemporary world. Sunset Song: watch the exclusive trailer for the first world war tragedy starring Agyness Deyn – video Guardian One can make a case for other Scottish books, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Muriel Spark, the collected poems of Robert Burns or more recent authors.

There are also a number of adaptations for the stage. One of the best known is by Alastair Cording. I think one has also got to be careful about attributing this harshness to Scotland rather than to Victorian and Edwardian generations. My father was not British and although he wrote tenderly of his father after his father’s death in his diary as kind, dedicated and faithful (that’s my memory of my grandfather too) he commented to me once that in the generations before his father (i.e. my father’s grandfather, Stefan, born around 1860) that people of that time seemed to be hard and judgemental. But that ‘nowadays’ (1980s) people were kinder and more inclined to want to assist those who had fallen on hard times rather than judge them as weak, profligate, or failures. I remember talking to somebody in Greece many years ago and he was raving about the book and I asked him why.He replied: ‘It tells the story of peasants the world over’ and I understood exactly what he meant. Sunset Song tells a beautiful, though often heartbreaking, story. Set in the north-east of Scotland around the outbreak of the First World War, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s novel is unsparing in its harsh realism. Crushing poverty, the toil of earning a living from the land, the sternness of religion and the oppressive reality of life for women in particular – these themes provide the context for the lives whose stories unfold in the book. Chris, who has had some education, considers leaving for a job as a teacher in the towns, but realises she loves the land and cannot leave it. Instead, she marries a young farmer called Ewan Tavendale and carries on farming. For a time, they are happily married, and they have a son, whom they also call Ewan. However, when World War I breaks out, Ewan Sr. and many other young men join up. When he comes home on leave, he treats Chris badly, evidently brutalised by his experiences in the army. Ewan dies in the war; and Chris subsequently hears from Chae Strachan, who is home on leave, that Ewan was shot as a deserter but that he died thinking of her. She begins a relationship with the new minister, and she watches as he dedicates the War Memorial at the Standing Stones above her home. The Sun sets to the Flowers of the Forest, bringing an end to their way of life, forever. I have had further time to reflect after my angry comment above. I am no longer angry but feel that this article is an embarrassment. Is it meant to make us less unenthusiastic about the promise of being ruled by Boris Johnson and King Charles? Because, you know, Scotland is just rubbish, you only have to focus on the negative aspects of one of its favourite books written only 100 years ago.

She has heard praise for Sunset Song wherever people are tilling the land and striving to make their way on the soil.James Leslie Mitchell couldn’t have imagined, while he was walking through the fields of north-east Scotland, that he would join the pantheon of the great literary figures.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon, whose real name was James Leslie Mitchell, was born in Aberdeenshire in 1901. After working as a journalist on the Scottish Farmer and becoming involved in left-wing politics, he joined the army in 1919, and served in the Royal Army Service Corps and RAF before settling down in Hertfordshire and beginning his writing career. Grassic Gibbon’s experience in the military informed his fiction, and, although he did not fight in the First World War, Sunset Song taught me more about that conflict – its human impact and consequences – than I would have learned in a dozen textbooks. At some passages, I cried, moved more deeply by a book than I had ever been before.It’s a long time since I played Chris (she returned in the second and third parts of the trilogy, A Scots Quair, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite as the ’70s progressed) but she was such a fascinating character.