Ayla was part of Nature’s new experiment, and though she tried to model herself after the women of the clan, it was only an overlay, a facade only culture-deep, assumed for the sake of survival.Īs the foregoing passages suggest, the novel is overlaid with a veneer of feminism. They had reached the peak of their development there was no more room to grow. Broud’s race was too static, too unchanging. His hatred of her was the hatred of the old for the new, of the traditional for the innovative, of the dying for the living. Ayla was more than a threat to his masculinity, she was a threat to his existence. Sensed the opposing destinies of the two. Her antagonist, Broud, son of the clan’s leader She could accept the new, shape it to her will, forge it into ideas undreamed of by the clan - and, in Nature’s way, her kind was destined to supplant the ancient, dying race. Her brain followed different paths, her full, high forehead that housed forward-thinking frontal lobes gave her an understanding from a different view. She was one of the Others a newer, younger breed, more vital, more dynamic, not controlled by hidebound traditions from a brain that was nearly all memory. She had not had subservience bred into her for untold generations. The girl, Ayla, is “tall, blonde, slender and smarter than the rest.” The Neanderthal’s are “chinless, bearded, bow-legged and barrel-chested.” It is the deeply rooted and fundamental differences between the two human types which furnish the novel’s dramatic tension. Set in the late Pleistocene, the plot concerns an orphaned Cro-Magnon girl adopted into a Neanderthal band, the clan of the book’s title. (ILLUSTRATION: Scene from the film version of the novel while good, there was insufficient racial divergence shown.)
The Clan of the Cave Bear is the first sociobiological novel. That something is an understanding of sociobiology.
What is more to the point is that to appreciate the basic message of the book, the reader must bring something to the reading of it. How, then, could Jean Auel’s book have spent five months on the New York Times bestseller list? That it is, as popular novels go, very good, is hardly sufficient explanation. THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR is a profoundly “racist” novel. Classic story of the dawn of true humanity - as a race apart - can inspire Whites
0 kommentar(er)
