Each Man's Son Essay: Celtic Identity And The Puritan Religion

The portrayal of conflict in Each Man’s Son within rebelling alongside the Celtic identity and the Puritan religion.

History has taught us that rebelling against your people or religion almost always results in displeasure, as the members of the community usually frown upon it. Throughout the novel Each Man’s Son by Hugh MacLennan, there are two themes which are linked to this topic of defying your origins, though never plainly affirmed: the Celtic identity and the Puritanical predestination-like values. Not conforming to these ways of life demonstrates two themes at which Archie the fighter and Ainslie the dreamer display: the attempt to foster new values will doom you to failure and resisting your religion will only let you yearn for
The novel is full of richness, which provides ironic information about the people: who were found “older than France” with “no organization” (MacLennan 25-5). This characteristic given to the men of Cape Breton is highly relevant to the plot as Archie choses to literally fight the regulatory social norms of the Celtic identity when he follows his dreams to become an American boxer. In the novel, the Celtic identity is in direct conflict with Puritan values within certain characters, especially Ainslie. Presbyterians note that they “live and die under the wrath of an arbitrary God who will forgive only a handful of His elect on the Day of Judgment” (MacLennan 2). The value of the quote symbolizes an underlining view on the Puritan religion as it describes how the Calvinists must live a basic life in order to be resurrected with eternal life. In the Bible, which Puritans follow unfailingly, it is written, “you must be born from above” meaning that you must have “been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (John 3:7, 1 Peter 1:2 NIV). Furthermore, religion takes a crowning importance in the novel as it acts as the basic yet powerful feature of the story. Numerous characters struggle to adopt their identity, namely Doctor Ainslie for he attempts to darken his religious distinctiveness. The lacing of the Celtic identity and the Puritan religion represents tension, which Archie the fighter and
“Archie is a hero” with grandiose “physical strength” who was loved “because he was giving significance, even a crude beauty, to the clumsy courage they all felt in themselves” (MacLennan 19-9). Generally Celtics feel that destiny works against them; they feel that luck must have been against them. This illustrates that the repercussion of rebelling against the Celtic identity is absolutely forbidden. The Celtic character is normally condemned to a life of simplicity, total depravity and unconditional fellowship of God and as Archie ventures the unknown he distorts the norm. Animalistic Archie emphasizes that some men will “live their whole lives like oxes and cows" and that he is “not one of them” this statement, in other words, means that Archie does not intend on living a reclusive life as he fully intends on going out into the world, in spite of the consequences, to create a new life for himself and his family. He had “left his home to find wider opportunities in the United States” (MacLennan 3). Ironically, as Archie attempts to make money and follow his dream of becoming a boxer he refuses to obey the Celtic norm and is doomed to fail;