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The Bear Came Over the Mountain

Critique • Quotes

Hateship, Friendship story collection first editionStory collection first edition
By Alice Munro
Publication details ▽ Publication details △

First publication
1999 in The New Yorker magazine

First book publication
2001 in story collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

Literary form
Story

Genres
Literary

Writing language
English

Author's country
Canada

Length
Approx. 16,000 words

On both sides now

Alice Munro's not-so-short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" is about a man whose wife becomes lost to him when she moves into a long-term care home after developing Alzheimer's. 

It's about much more than that of course. But what is most enigmatic about the story may be what Munro calls the story. Why that title?

The nursery rhyme of similar name is a repetitive account of a bear that went over a mountain to see what he could see and, in the most common variant, discovered...the other side of the mountain.

I've seen vague explanations that the reference to the kids' song in the story's title highlights the contrast between the innocence of childhood with the complexities of adult life. However, I don't see this in the story. Although Munro, in her usual fashion, compresses a novel's worth of material in the tale, jumping around in time to span aspects of the couple's past and present, children are never depicted or even mentioned.

Bearable loss

More convincingly, other critiques have held the mountain of the title to represent the challenges of health and memory loss that people—like the bear in the song—have to face. Aging and the passage of time inevitably create emotional distance. In this analysis though, does the bear coming over the mountain indicate the characters in the story overcoming these obstacles?

This seems unlikely. You might see the husband Grant, who had frequent affairs, and the wife Fiona, who forgets him and finds a male friend in the nursing home, eventually reaching some sort of satisfactory accommodation in the story, as underlined in the final scene when the temporary return of Fiona's memory gives them a brief respite and Grant can reaffirm his undying attachment to her.

But, as lovely as the resolution is, this view of the story, as far as it goes, seems too sunny, too affirmative.

Is it overly picky to point out the small difference between the two titles in question? One has to do with going, the other with arriving. In the nursery rhyme title the bear went over the mountain out of curiosity and found just the other side of the mountain. A somewhat discouraging message for kids maybe. But in the story title the bear came over the mountain. So here we are, aging adults, on the far side already and what do we see? Nothing new. Nothing great. But okay.

Hills and valleys

You can relate this to the story several ways. Grant strays from Fiona but never finds a relationship that keeps him from staying with her for even a single night. After he's lost her to dementia, he's still trying to please her as he always did in the past despite his affairs—to the extent of overcoming jealousy and condoning her friendship with Aubrey in the nursing home, perhaps in belated atonement for his own past misdeeds. Meanwhile, after dealing with all their spouses' problems, Grant and Aubrey's wife Marian find they are still open to exploring a new romantic relationship. And in the end, after all appears to have been lost between Grant and Fiona, a brief moment of reconnection, both poignant and pathetic.

Nuanced victories, defeats and stalemates on both sides of the mountain.

With this perspective one can appreciate that Munro provides no completely affirmative or negative understandings of human behaviour as we face the inevitable challenges of life and relationships. We just pick our moments as we can.

— Eric

 

Critique • Quotes