Ocampo, Jessa L.

18-52888
Master of Arts in English Major in Language and Literature
LIT 503 Contemporary Trends in Literature

SHORT STORY ANALYSIS

THE BEAR CAME OVER THE MOUNTAIN
BY:
ALICE MUNRO

THE AUTHOR

Alice Munro or Alice Ann Laidlaw was born on the 10 th day of July, 1931 in

Wingham, Ontario, Canada. She is a Canadian short-story writer who gained

international recognition and also known as the master of the contemporary short

story. In fact, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. Her works

are noted for its precise imagery and narrative style having lyrical, compelling,

economical, intense, and revealing the depth and complexities of people in their

emotional lives everyday. She was raised in a vaguely, disreputable town. In the

University of Western Ontorio, she found her journey in studying English and

journalism. However, two years after, he left Ontario and moved to Vancouver
and later, in 1951, she married her first husband, James Munro at the age of 20.

In 1963, they moved to Victoria and started a bookstore while raising their three

daughters. Meanwhile in 1972, her first marriage ended, and went back to

Ontario to live with her second husband in 1976.

In terms of her literary career, she begun writing when she was teenager and she

made it as her foundation to establish herself as a writer. She also experienced

rejections from publishers while facing the barriers in her literary career from the

responsibilities of being a wife and a mother. In 1968, she published her first

collection of stories entitled Dance of the Happy Shades. Other collections

published, following her first collection were The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and

Rose (1978) and The Progress of Love (1986) which awarded the annual

Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. Other works of Munro are the

following: Lives of Girls and Woman (1971), which was recognized as a novel but

developed into series of interrelated coming-of-age stories, Something I’ve

Meaning to Tell You (1974), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), Friend of My Youth

(1990), A Wilderness Station (1994), and The Love of a Good Woman (1998), a

volume which received the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the National Book Critics

Circle Award in the US, Open Secrets (1994), which contains stories with

settings in Ontario to the mountains of Albania, Runaway (2004), which she

explored usual lives through the use of temporal shifts and realistically rendered

reminiscences, The View from Castle Rock (2007) with the combinations of

history, memoir, and fiction, Dear Life (2012), which unified by emotions of sex,

love, and death and contains stories that fictionalized Munro’s life, and some of

her writings which influenced by her pioneer writings such as The Bear Came

Over the Mountain (2001) and Family Furnishings: Selected Stories (2014).

Some of her works was adapted by films and inspired by several stories.

Munro, except Saul Bellow, was the first Canadian and 13 th woman to be named

the Nobel literature laureate.

SUMMARY OF THE STORY

The story begins with Fiona, a wife of a retired professor of Anglo-Saxon

and Nordic literature named Grant. Fiona grew up in an upper-class home and

suffering from dementia in her seventies. She is a beautiful and charismatic

woman who chose Grant out of her several suitors, to be her husband and even

proposed to Grant for them to be married. Fiona’s parents were wealthy, her

mother was politically active, but Fiona never showed interest about politics and

her social status. She loves jokes and ironic mode of social interaction, which

keeps her from earnestness, effusive, or emotionalism which was respected by

her husband, Grant. Unfortunately, the two couldn’t bear a child so, they decided

to adopt two Afghan Wolfhounds, a hound that is distinguished by its thick, fine,

silky coat and having a ring curl at the end of the tail. They named these two

hounds as Boris and Natasha whom both died after Fiona leaved to stay at

Meadlowlake.

Grant has been taking care his wife for several decades to a residential facility in

Meadlowlake for individuals with dementia because Fiona’s memory has

degenerated significantly over the past year. They about to leave to go to

Meadlowlake when Grant remember the day when Fiona proposed to him,

asking for marriage and he thought that Fiona was joking.

The said facility has a policy for new residents that they are not allowed to be

visited within a month after their arrival for them to adapt in the new environment.

Grant patiently waited for this period to end, while checking on Fiona regularly via

phone calls and to a nurse named Kristy. At the beginning, Fiona catches a cold,

and according to the nurse, she was like a kid starting school, but later gets

better and make friends. During this period, Grant spent his time on skiing and

preparing dinner alone while remembering how they shared these things

together. Until one night, he dreamed about a girl whom he had an affair and said

from the letter that she tried to kill herself after he ended the relationship. After,
that dream, he woke up and sorted out if it really happened. The letter and the

affair were real, but the note was not. In reality, though Grant did not confess that

he had slept with the student, Fiona had a dismissive reaction towards the girl’s

pain. Grant suddenly remembered how his colleagues and fellow professors

socially criticized him after what happened, leading him to promise a new life with

Fiona and take an early retirement and moved to Fiona’s father’s farmhouse.

Learning from what happened, Grant considered himself a philander though

there is an objection. That time, he persuading himself that it would have been

better for him to leave Fiona but he will continue to support Fiona emotionally

and financially. He acknowledged however, that their move to the countryside

was nevertheless a product of his dalliances. Grant feels some gratitude because

he was forced to go out of his philandering, considering that it was just in time to

prevent the more serious consequence of his action to loss Fiona.

The end of the month came, and Grant is preparing, for him to visit Fiona. Along

the way, he felt the same feeling, a feeling of anticipation, he had when he was in

the outset of a new affair. Despite of what he is feeling, he still bought expensive

bouquet of flowers that made Kristy impressed while directing him to Fiona’s

room but he found out that Fiona was not there. Unsurprisingly, Kristy guide him

to the communal area, where Grant sees Fiona. Fiona’s face looks different, and

seems that she is gaining weight, and her long hair has also been cut.

In the communal, Fiona is sitting while playing bridge with a man. He approached

Fiona, she speaks in a friendly manner but in distracted way and shows

eagerness to return to the side of the man with whom she usually sits in the

facility, named Aubrey. Aubrey is living in the Meadowlake while his wife is on

vacation. Grant talked to Kristy about their relationship but the nurse neglected

him, and said that new residents are often form such close attachments. In his

following visits, Fiona treated him the same and showing greater closeness with

Aubrey. The two usually play cards and walk the halls together.
On his way home, Grant remembered his career, teaching Anglo-Saxon and

Nordic literature, when married women started going back to school to enrich

their lives. Remembering one of the women he had an affair with, Jacqui Adams,

his first lover. He had been together for years but Grant easily dismissed her. He

also remembered younger girls who were available for sex while attending

universities. In these scenes, Grant remembered how this demographic shift

created drama in the university he was in, having scandals leading to dismissals

or sometimes, professors are moving to more liberal universities. But Fiona was

not interested in this social scene which led Grant to feel a gigantic increase in

his well-being.

In his next visit, Fiona and Aubrey are deeply upset and agitated. Aubrey’s wife

has returned from her vacation and is removing Aubrey out of the facility. Kristy

then assured Grant that Fiona will surpass the challenges of being left by Aubrey

but Fiona does not. She started to refuse eating and sleeping that lead her to

intensive care section of the facility. Grant then think of Marian, Aubrey’s wife,

and discuss the situation.

The two talked about their respective marriages and care taking roles. Grant

asked Marian why she did not put Aubrey in Meadowlake full time. Marian quickly

responds that the decision of bringing Aubrey home was influenced by the

family’s financial status. Marian rejects his idea of the visit but when Grant

returns home, he learned that Marian left two voicemails for him. Grant then

wondering what changed after he left that inspired her to reach her out. He

wonders if spending time with Marian would result a change of heart regarding

visits between Aubrey and Fiona. Marian calls again, and he listens to the next

voicemail, in which she asks if he had called her back as she had missed it. He

decides to call her back.

Time passed and Grants continuously visits Fiona at Meadowlake. He brought

Aubrey in his visits but Fiona didn’t recognize Aubrey instead, he recognized
Grant and thanked him for not abandoning her at Meadowlake. And Grant

respond that he would never have left her.

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH

Phenomenology is a philosophical method founded by the German

philosopher, Edmund Husserl. It appeared as the most important philosophical

trend of the 20th century. It grounded in the realization that all we know about

reality is known through the cognizing consciousness. According to Newton

(1998), this approach attempts to surpass the boundaries between subject and

object, or the mental and the material through the examinations of consciousness

and its object simultaneously. Hursell stated in his philosophy that our sole

source of knowledge about reality is our consciousness and objects are

intentional object formed and intended by naming, interpreting consciousness.

However, consciousness is capable of getting to know the essentials, real, and

authentic features of reality through the intentional procedure of bracketing out

subjective prejudices and disturbances. In addition, phenomenology, based from

the word itself, concerns to describe human experience and attempts to describe

how the world must appear to the native observer, stripped of all presuppositions

and culturally imposed expectations (Mambrol, 2017).

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY

According to Matus (2017), literary lenses provide different methods for

the analysis of literature and also called it as schools of criticism. Literary lenses

allow for an adaptive study of literature that reveals layered and variable

meanings. And as an evolving discipline, literary theory has changed to keep

pace with historical and cultural shifts.

Psychological theory explains how and why certain things occur

based on scientific evidence. In relation to literary analysis, it encompasses two

almost contradictory critical theories. The first focuses on the text itself with no
regard to outside influences; the second focuses on the author of the text.

According to the first view, reading and interpretation are limited to the work

itself. One will understand the work by examining conflicts, characters, dream

sequences, and symbols. One will further understand that character’s outward

behavior might conflict with inner desires or might reflect as yet undiscovered

inner desires.

Psychological theories have made their contributions into different field of studies

in dealing with human behavior in almost all aspects of human endeavor. Literary

criticism, in particular, is based on psychological theories which is significant to

understand how and why a certain phenomenon exist within an individual

behavior or personality.

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

Psychoanalysis, with its relationship to literary criticism spans much

of the 20th century which is fundamentally concerned with the articulation

of sexuality in language and moved through three main emphases in its

pursuit of the literary unconscious among the author, readers, and the

text, (Mambrol, 2016). It all started with Freud’s analysis of the literary text

as a symptom of the artist where the relationship between the author and

the text is analogous to dreamers and their dreams.

Psychoanalytic Theory is a personality theory which is based on the

notion that an individual gets motivated more by unseen forces that are

controlled by the conscious and the rational thought. According to

Sigmund Freud, the human behavior is formed through an interaction

between three components of the mind such as id, ego, and super ego. Id

in its definition, is the primitive part of the mind that seeks immediate

gratification of biological or instinctual needs wherein the former refers to

the basic physical needs while the latter, corresponds to the natural or

unlearned needs such as hunger, thirst, sex, and etc. It is also defined as

the unconscious part of the mind that act instantaneously without giving

much thought to what is right and what is wrong. Super-Ego, on the other

hand, is related to the social or moral values that an individual inculcates

as he matures and acts as an ethical constraint on behavior and helps an

individual to develop his conscience. And finally, the ego which is the

logical and conscious part of the mind which is associated with the reality

principle and balances the demands of the two (id and super-ego) in the

context of real-life situations. To achieve the tasks of these three, the ego

calls on myriad mental tricks, such as repression, to keep unacceptable

impulses buried in the unconscious, unexpressed. According to Freud’s

theory, mental illness arises when the ego is incapable of maintaining

control of the id and super-ego, when their impulses are too strong. These

three, are fundamental structures of the mind that help us to develop our

personality and behavior.

Freud also understood that adults expressed the range of their sexual

fantasies as symptoms of emotional disorders as elements of dreams,

making of art, and in overtly sexual acts (Hoffman, 2005). Freud’s ideas in

psychoanalysis teach us the value of intimate personal attachment and its

key place in mature sexual fulfillment. Psychoanalysis describes the

conflicts that we experience between intimate personal fantasies and the

norms of social life and individual development and recognizes the

necessity of developing normal controls over uninhibited expression of

these fantasies.
 ANALYSIS

In this analysis, I applied the phenomenological approach to reveal or to

trace what are the phenomena why the characters in the story behave that way

through the lens of psychology, or psychoanalytic theory in particular. I focused

on the two main characters, Grant and Fiona as they both exhibit traits and

behaviors corresponding to Psychoanalytic Theory.

The story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” was written by Alice Munro

in Ontario Canada. It was published in 1999 in The New Yorker, 2001 in her book

(Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage), and republished in 2013

in The New Yorker as a tribute to Munro’s Nobel Prize in Literature. This story

was also adapted into an independent film called Away From Her by Canadian

writer and director Sarah Polley. The said film was premiered in 2006 and

received widespread critical acclaim (Braveman, 2020).

Alice Munro, the author, usually writes stories based on her personal

experiences. Her first marriage was traditional, where she stays at home while

her husband is working. Their marriage fell apart and she became more

sympathetic to the changing values and increasing liberalism of the time than

was her husband. This phenomena in the author’s life reflected in the story of

The Bear Came Over the Mountain where the main character, Fiona was at

home while his husband is working, however, having different perception on how

the author and Fiona view the world. The author is more aware of what is

happening in the cultural landscape rather than the fall of their marriage. She

even increased her political involvement after their marriage fell. Fiona, on the

other hand, didn’t even show interest in politics because for her, it’s a joke.
The main characters in the story were affected by how they think. Fiona, one of

the main characters and the wife of Grant, grew up relatively carefree in a

wealthy family, but suffering form dementia in her seventies. She is a beautiful

and charismatic woman who chose Grant out of her many suitors and later

proposed marriage to him when they were young. The author revealed her

characteristics in the first paragraph through these lines” It was a big, bay-

windowed house that seemed to Grant both luxurious and disorderly, with rugs

crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table varnish. Her mother was

Icelandic—a powerful woman with a froth of white hair and indignant far-left

politics. The father was an important cardiologist, revered around the hospital but

happily subservient at home, where he would listen to his wife’s strange tirades

with an absentminded smile. Fiona had her own little car and a pile of cashmere

sweaters, but she wasn’t in a sorority, and her mother’s political activity was

probably the reason. Not that she cared. Sororities were a joke to her, and so

was politics—though she liked to play “The Four Insurgent Generals” on the

phonograph, and sometimes also the “Internationale,” very loud, if there was a

guest, she thought she could make nervous.” In these lines, we will figure out

that the environment where she lived reflecting phenomena why she is suffering

from dementia at seventy. The psychoanalytic theory of Freud focusing on

personality shows how the three fundamental structures of the brain function and

making the unconscious mind conscious. However, in the case of Fiona, she

failed to balance the capability of her id and super-ego that caused her to suffer

mental illness which is the dementia. Psychoanalytic psychologists see

psychological problems rooted in the unconscious mind. Fiona was too

unconscious in the beginning of the story, imagined that she was living with a

wealthy family but poor environment or luxurious but disorderly. She didn’t even

care about politics and everything for her is a kind of joke. She also proposed to

Grant which is ironic. Her ego, which is the unconscious part of the brain act

without processing if those things did by Fiona is either right or wrong. The
phenomena of living in a home defined by the author affects how she thinks and

behave. Because of the work of his unconscious mind, she asked Grant for

marriage. They lived together, but her husband had an affair with his student.

Because of this consequence, she failed to balance the demands of her ego and

super-ego and there, mental illness existed. The lapses in her memory caused

by the incapability of her brain to balance her thinking and emotions drastically

alter her personality as shown in this line “7 a.m. yoga 7:30-7:45 teeth face hair.

7:45-8:15 walk. 8:15 Grant and breakfast.” At this point, she always left herself

notes which shown that her super-ego is still fighting but the ego did not control

such existence. And her illness progressed to the point that she become less like

herself.

Another phenomenon regarding the situation of Fiona is the fact that the id,

which needed immediate gratifications didn’t satisfy its need which is the need for

love and care from the people around her, because her mother was politically

inclined and her father was a cardiologist. They both failed to satisfy the needs of

the character and instead, found comfort in her little car and a pile of cashmere

sweaters that were always with her. She found comfort also with her husband but

later, when her memory is slowly deteriorating, her husband sent her in

caregiving facility in Meadowlake. Grant choice of sending Fiona to Meadowlake,

helps Fiona to control the fundamental structures of her mind. In this line, “She

stared at Grant for a moment, as if waves of wind had come beating into her

face. Into her face, into her head, pulling everything to rags. All rags and loose

threads” it seems that she found difficulty in understanding what is happening

and who is with Grant when he visited her, while in this line, “Names elude me,”

she said harshly. she is now processing the information and tell what’s in her

mind, following with these lines ““I’m happy to see you,” she said, both sweetly

and formally. She pinched his earlobes, hard. “You could have just driven away,”

she said. “Just driven away without a care in the world and forsook me.
Forsooken me. Forsaken.” which shown how the ego surpassed the challenges

between id and super-ego.

In the character of Grant, he experienced challenges and conflict upon the

development of his behavior. Grant is a retired professor of Anglo-Saxon and

Nordic literature, and a husband to Fiona. He had an affair with his student and

later, with Marian, the wife of Aubrey. The phenomenon of unsatisfaction of the id

brought him to infidelity. His natural or unlearned need which is sex was declined

that is why he chose to be a philander without even considering the

consequences it may serve. After the discovery of the scandalous affair he had

with his student, he learned moral values that helped him to develop his

conscience. In line with that, he promised Fiona a new life and early retirement

from the university while living in Fiona’s father’s farmhouse. But because his

ego failed also to balance his id and super-ego, he went back to infidelity and

had an affair with Marian, Aubrey’s wife. His id and ego are still struggling at the

end of the story because he continued his infidelity while knowing that he still

loves and cares for Fiona. The existence of his needs interrupted his behavior to

behave accordingly, and because he is weak, he allowed the wrong doing occurs

while still loving Fiona.

REFERENCES:

Braveman, A. (2019 April 8). The Bear Came Over the Mountain. Retrieved from

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-bear-came-over-the-mountain/summary-

and-analysis

Cherry, K. (2020 February 3). Types of Psychological Theories. Retrieved from

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-theory-2795970

Hoffman, L. (2005 August 5). Freud’s Theory about sex as relevant as ever.

Retrieved from

https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/pn.40.15.0040008

Matus, D. (2017 June 13). Literary Lenses. Retrieved from

https://penandthepad.com/types-l iterary-lenses-8632920.html

Stretton, K. (2015). Psychological Theory. Retrieved from

https://slideplayer.com/slide/2954132/

Business Jargons. (n.d.). Psychoanalytic Theory. Retrieved from

https://businessjargons.com/psychoanalytic-theory.html