A Touch of Fire

A TOUCH OF FIRE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph b LLOYD W. RANG In partial Wlment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts September, 1999 O Lloyd W. Rang, 1999 National tibrary Bibliothèque nationale 1+1 Ofc,,, du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON KIA ON4 OttazwaON K1AON4 Canada canada Your fi& Votre réfBmnce Our file Noue rëfBma? The author has granted a nom- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute ar sell reproduire, prêter, disûibuer ou copies of this thesis in microfom, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/nlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT A TOUCH OF FlRE Lloyd W. Raag Advisor: University of Guelph, 1999 Dr. Janice Kulyk-Keefer This thesis is an excerpt fiom a campus noveI in progress. Jeffery MacArthur, a young historian who is the protagonist/narrator, is convuiced that he has "the touch of £ire," a quasi-mythicai gifl which compels hirn to see entropy and immolation everywhere. When a strmger named Mitchell Quist, (a Nova Scotia historian with the apparent ability to forecast the future), cornes to town, MacArthur takes him as a housemate. They befi-iend two women, Claudia Lefebvre and Diana Dunn, each of whom, like Mitchell Quist and Jeffery, have erased their pasts and family histories. As each character's past and motivation are revealed, the resulting conflicts Iead to reflections on identity, myth and the place of academia withïn a broader culture. While the novel's beginning/ending is tragic and violent it is also, paradoxically, a moment of rebirth and redemption. This preparation of this thesis would have been dificult without the research assistance of the University of Guelph Library and the Oshawa Public Library. Additional information was provided by the Chinese Consulate in Ottawa, Bnan Wagter of the Dunnville VoIunteer Fire Department, the Otis Elevator Corporation, Margaret Appleby at OMFRA, Dr. D.G. Bell, and Ancathus Interiors of Port Hope, Ontario. My employer, ' Durham Christian High School, gave me a leave of absence to pursue this project and the School of Literatures and Performance Studies in English at the University of Guelph provided facilities and an inspirational environment. This thesis would have been (at best) lackluster were it not for the patient guidance of my supervisor, Janice Kulyk-Keefer. 1 am also thankful to the members of my examination cornmittee: Stephen Henighan, Patrick HoIIand and Judith Thompson. Significant edits were pe~ormedby Sandra Rang, Hugh Cook, Kevin VanderMeulen, Paul Winkelhorst, Johanna Hiernstra, Morgan Demis, Maryanne Kaay and William Katerberg. Each provided significant feedback and criticism of the work in progress. Sandra gave me tremendous support. And, though a spouse can encourage a project's completion, it takes a soulmate to truly inspire it- to let the electronic genie out of the bottle. This- thesis would never have been written were it not for the life's labor of the late Dr. George A. Rawlyk; a brilliant scholar, a taskrnaster, a compelling teacher and a good man who cast a long, bear-like shadow over the lives and work of al1 of his students. This thesis is dedicated to him. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1). Acknowledgrnents 2). Table of Contents 3). Preface 4). Chapter One 5). Chapter Two 6). Chapter Three 7). Chapter Four 8). Chapter Five 9). Chapter Six 10). Theoretical Considerations 11). Bibtiography 12). Appendix For Alline, in particular, there was no such thing as linear history. Since God lived in what he ofien referred to as the "Une Etemul Now, " surely, the Falrnouth preacher argued, the truly redeemed of the Lord "must inhabit the same" at precisely the moment he or she reached out to the Almighty since "the work of conversion is instantaneous." According to AlLine, for al1 those who had experienced the New Birth, there was indeed no sense of "Tirne, and Space, and Successive Periods." George A. Rawlyk, Champions of the Truth. p. 33. yathii ptakasayaty ekah One sun illumines krtsnarn lokam imam ravih the entire worId ksetrarn ksetn tath2 krtsnarn Likewise, the Lord of the field prakasayati bhhta illumines the entire field. ksetraksetrajiiayor evam. Those who have the insight to know antamm jfi~acaksusa About this distinction b hutaprakrtimoksam ca between field and master of the field ye vidur yiinti te panirn And about fieedorn fiom existence and matter Are on their way to the highest goal. The BhagavadgTta XIII. 33-34 A Touch Of Fire Chapter One Put offa waiting Saviour no longer, lest you lose your Sou1 to al1 Eternity. You Say you cannot think that God dl convert, or Bring your sou! into Liberty this evening, and yet, 1 dare Say you expect he wiIl some other Time, and this is the very thing that still keeps you fiom Hfm ... - Henry Alline- A Sermon Preached on the 19~of February, 1783 at Fort-Midway This is the myth of myself: Not everything E love is destroyed, but almost everything. I've lost enough to convince me that 1 have the touch of fire. Without warning, a kind of burning spits from my hands or my eyes, sucks the air fiom around itselfand leaves only wire, nails and bones behind. It's not, of course, only what 1 love that's destroyed. OAen, it's cornmonplace people or objects. Like pedestrians in yeilow ski coats and toques, or bungalows with loose sofit where swallows nest- But these obliterations don? alarm me anyrnore. After all, I've been living with this condition since 1was twelve years old and, believe it or not, I've become used to it. It3swhen my fiends are consumed that my rnyth's price becomes apparent. Mine may be more dramatic than most, but everyone has a personal myth. My fiiend Diana, for example, could squint into daylight and tell you what phase the moon was in or spot wild spearmint growing next to sidewalks. But where Diana felt the pulse of nature beating below the pavement and the patient push of tree roots on foundations and basement walls, Claudia saw obstacles to progress. Her gaze was like a supermarket price gun. Green spaces were undeveloped land and kids playing on orange plastic park slides were future clients. 1'm not exaggerating. Then again, a lot of people mythologize the world in Claudia's terms and consider themselves realists. No one thinks it abnormal to reduce humanity to mouths hungry for frozen Thai dinners or to sweat glands to be plugged by aluminum-based anti-perspirants. 1 Such grotesque transfigurations are the religion of men in silk power ties crouching over squiggly graphs as though they're analysing the auspices. But if I said that I see decay and immolation around me, I'd be called alien and dangerous. So it's for good reasons that i've kept my myth quiet until now. Now, of course, it's a matter of public record, or its effects are, at any rate. A headline in the papers. And no one should have known, except that the one time I allowed myself to pretend as though my myth weren't true, the moment I let my guard down, I aimost lost everything. Just two months ago, I was walking home on an Ontario summer day. The air was like porridge. The kind of amiosphere in which even sounds are dampened, slurring as they leave the mouth. Al1 1could hear were the laboured scufings of my worn-dom sneaker heels against the pavement and the spit and clatter of a single lawn sprinkler. The Cessna's engine, mumbling to itseIf, went unnoticed at first. I could have been thinking about the bowl of Cheenos I'd forgotten on the table, by then a sweaty stew. Or about my backpack, filled with hard-bound dissertations from the archives, its one good strap biting into my shoulder. Or whether Diana was still in my bed, sleeping with the sheet twisted and damp around her legs. So, when the plane's voice behind me gathered into a rumble pounding across my chest, it was already too Iate to shout. The plane skimmed a few rnetres overhead, dipped its wing lightly to the right to adjust for the curvature ofthe street and slammed into my house, ripping away the brown shingled roof like a scab. 1 stopped. The house's square sides swelted into an orange ball. Naturai gas and aviation fuel coalesced into a blinding bud, opening as it fed from the gasoline that had been stored behind the cockpit. When the fiery wind from the explosion rushed over to smother me, it seemed, 1 thought, strangely cold. The way Dante Alighieri described it, the centre of hell is fiozen motionless except for the wind stirred up by the arch-traitor Lucifer, bound fiom the chest downward by solid ice. There, the one whom God had called the fairest of his angels weeps and beats his fleshy wings. From my experience, Alighieri's imagery is accurate, *** My ex-girlfiiend, Rochelle, the visual artist fiom Ottawa, said that 1 radiated warmth.

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