Extension One: Navigating the Global “Island” by Alistair Macleod

The closing down of summer

Overview • The plot follows the protagonist, a middle aged male, who essentially

becomes a reflection of a man removed from the local community and forced into the creation of this global community.

• Essentially “The closing down of summer” is a first-person reminiscence of a veteran miner and crew foreman who contemplates the profound changes that have occurred in his profession and his life, relating the changes to larger cultural developments in the world. It takes place on the evening before he leaves for South Africa to work in the diamond mines.

• The short story directly depicts the way in which globalisation can affect society on a singularly individual level as the protagonist contemplates his decision to leave the local world and the values it upholds, to grapple with the global world and the issues it presents to himself, such as the separation from his family and the life he engaged with originally. It is evident that the narrator fundamentally has become incredibly disconnected with his family and particularly his wife as his occupation and link to the global world has dominated his position and therefore his life and where it is situated.

Values/Attitudes

• As the story depicts a figure ultimately stuck between the two drastically contrasting worlds of local and global the text inherently foregrounds this issue and attempts to portray a personal expression or judgement of it.

• There is a very distinct sense of loss that is continually imposed throughout the narrative. The protagonist dwells on the past during his alone hours and the children and wife that have become seemingly disengaged due to his mining profession and the way in which it has physically removed him from this initial lifestyle focused on values such as family. He reflects on how he has become foreign to what was originally named home due to occupation and also the immense amount of childhood that he is missing within his children in his own dwelling. There are aspects are regret that are recognisable when he speaks of how he has neglected his own children's upbringing and also how he has become a stranger to his own partner.

• However, in some aspect of contrast to this he also makes the audience aware that this traditional trade of shaft mining that has been passed from generation after generation is unlikely to be followed by his children as they have become subjected to more of the global world and the changes in modernity that have occurred. In this instance the title of the story is significant as it is named “the closing down of summer”, giving an insight into how these customary values are becoming diminished at the hands of globalisation and westernization. The construction of the family therefore become a symbol for this global world or the opportunity to become engaged in it as they are educated and given the ability to learn of the world and the further prospects it holds.

• For the protagonist this act of mining is where he is eventually stuck and has become alienated as he lives in this old tradition. Nevertheless, there is still hope that these traditions do not become radically erased as they remember those Gaelic songs, “so constant and unchanging”, from their youth and the narrator can still remember those verses from the 15th century he read when he was a student.

• In essence the protagonist upholds and implies respect to the tradition values that have become embedded in his lifestyle but also acknowledges the way in which this lifestyle has restricted his connection to family and place.

• There is also a strong motif of death that is developed within the story