54 pages • 1 hour read
Volkswagen Blues
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Themes
The Reconciliation of Diverse Cultures
La Grande Sauterelle is Métis—the child of a Montagnais woman and a French man—and, as such, embodies the cultural diversity of 20th-century Canada. Through her struggle “to come to terms with her twofold heritage” (220), the novel advances the theme of cultural divisions and reconciliation. To better appreciate the significance of this theme to late 20th-century French Canadian readers, a brief look at Quebec’s uniquely independent spirit is useful.
Quebec is the only Canadian province to have a predominantly francophone—or French-speaking—population, as well as a majority Roman Catholic population. Because of their linguistic and religious unity and their divergences from the rest of Canada, the Francophones of Quebec have developed a strong “national” identity. “Whiteness” is central to this identity, as are the historical legends of the early French explorers of North America, such as the francophone folk hero Étienne Brûlé. In 1980, just a few years before Poulin published Volkswagen Blues, the Francophones of Quebec turned their independent spirit into political action and held a referendum proposing Quebec sovereignty. The referendum failed, creating something of an identity crisis for the population.
Near the end of the novel, “the girl in the showcase” (207), who is from Quebec, asks Jack and La Grande Sauterelle “if independence would be coming soon” (209). Informed by postmodernist ideas that discredit the concept of unified, “pure” identities, Volkswagen Blues suggests that independence is not a viable option. Quebec’s population is not exclusively “pure laine” (a term referring to Quebeckers whose heritage is purely French Canadian), just as La Grande Sauterelle is neither exclusively “Indian nor white, but something in between” (169). La Grande Sauterelle, a native of Quebec, symbolizes the hybridity of the province. When Jack urges her to see herself as “something new, something that’s beginning,” the narrative is also endorsing the recognition of Quebec as multicultural, and as “something that’s beginning” (169).
Violence and Nation-Building
Violence as a feature of European contact with North America’s Indigenous populations and the whites’ colonization of the continent is a theme that courses through the novel. The two maps at the Gaspé museum symbolize this colonial violence. The first map “depicted North America before the arrival of the whites; the map was strewn with the names of Indian tribes, names […] [Jack] knew […] but also a large number of names he’d never heard of” (11). The second map is of an altered North America, “on which one could see the vast territory that belonged to France in the mid-eighteenth century […] that extended from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico” (90). Not only did the French conquest of “vast” expanses of North America erase the Indigenous people from the maps, but it also erased many First Nations from history, as Jack’s unfamiliarity with their names testifies.
It is evident from modern maps, and from the grand narratives of heroic French explorers that Jack embraces, that history is written by the victors. This historiographic silencing of alternative voices and narratives is a discursive violence that supports nation-building by establishing, through grand narratives, a unified culture rooted in a shared, heroic past. Thus, the francophone Quebeckers of the late 20th century, united by language and a glorified conception of their history, aspired to sovereignty as an independent nation.
The violence of extermination from history by historiography (or the writing of history) is of course secondary to the original violence that marked the Europeans’ first contact with Indigenous Americans. As Jack and La Grande Sauterelle follow Théo’s path across North America, they trace the white incursion into the continent, bringing history alive, so to speak, and affording the girl opportunities to correct the record. She recounts massacre after massacre of the Indigenous people at the hands of the whites. Jack, a life-long admirer of the explorers, stops reading Explorers of the Mississippi because “[v]iolence burst out on every page” (89). The dominant historical narrative that heroes built the modern nations of North America gives way to a vision of violence as the foundation of these countries.
Narrative and Personal Identity
Grand historical narratives shape national identity, but they also inform personal identity. As francophone Quebeckers, Jack and Théo learned, as children, to venerate their culture’s founding heroes and the ideals of manhood they exemplify: strength, courage, boldness, and honor. While Jack sees these qualities in his brother, he feels he lacks them. This disparity between his self-image and that of the ideal man undermines Jack’s confidence in himself as a person and a writer, and he withdraws from life. Ironically, he retreats into writing—or making personal narratives—but because he has internalized the dominant narratives of his culture, these narratives stifle his personal stories. Thus, he is apparently suffering from writer’s block: “he still didn’t have the faintest idea what his next novel would be about” (58).
Jack goes “on the road,” and his cross-continental journey is an allegory for his journey of self-discovery, with La Grande Sauterelle as his guide. She leads him—often “pushes” him —to witness the deconstruction of his culture’s master narratives. When “her face was hard again,” Jack knew that his heroes, his brother’s heroes, “and his brother himself was about to come under fire” (125). By the end of Jack’s journey, the historical narratives that have haunted him and possessed his identity have been exorcised, but he has not “discovered” himself. He has yet to explore who he is without the conviction of inferiority thwarting him. La Grande Sauterelle reminds him he once “said writing’s a form of exploration” (221), and the end of the novel suggests Jack is now free from writer’s block and will explore his identity in his next novel, which is arguably Volkswagen Blues itself.
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