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How Does Hannah Play In The Solar Storm Wétikoism

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In the novel Solar Storms by Linda Hogan, wétikoism plays a large role in the characterization of the antagonists within the novel. Although it is able to be seen that many of the character’s actions are driven by their own personal motives, it can be seen that the characters are also driven by the greater systemic issue of wétikoism which influences their destructive natures. Wétikoism (cannibalism) is defined to be by some as “the greater epidemic, sickness known to man. The rape of a woman, the rape of land, and the rape of a people, they are all the same” (Forbes 16). Wétikoism a cultural body in which the fears of as society are expressed, and the monsters are cultural projections of the fears that a group experiences (Cohen 2). Wétikoism …show more content…

Hannah is a physical representation of wétikoism because she is described to be a part of something that is “powerful and large, and it was cold” (Hogan 100). When Hannah first appeared on Adam’s rib, Bush says that she was afraid she would stop breathing, which shows how Hannah was already at deaths door and had become a monstrous figure when she arrived at her family’s home because she lacked those basic human qualities. (Hogan 97). Hannah’s cold nature is representative of an internal imbalance causing her to take advantage of the people who care for her (Johnston 224). Upon her death bed, Hannah’s pelvis is “like an empty bowl” (Hogan 52). Wendigoes are creature that is “gaunt to the point of emancipation, its desiccated sin pulled tautly over its bones” Hannah is so greatly malnourished that she physically resembles a wendigo with its tall haggard figure. During Hannah’s death, Angel says that death “didn’t look triumphant” and “even death did not want her” (Hogan 249). Angel even postulates that “maybe it, too, feared her” (Hogan 249). It is only in death that “what possessed her was now gone” (Hogan 249) since the only relief that Hannah and those surrounding her are able to find from Hannah’s destructive nature would be upon her death. “The damage the monster wreaks, the material remains…, but the monster itself turns immaterial and vanishes” (Cohen 2), …show more content…

Angel describes her complex relationship with saying that “tried to kill me, swallow me, consume me back into her body, the way fire burns itself away, uses itself as fuel” (Hogan 251). Hannah is mentally unstable and attempts to destroy her own blood relations in order to satisfy her needs. Hannah suffers from one of the greatest sicknesses known to man and will go to any lengths to relieve her needs (Forbes 16). Hannah inspires fear in her community and ‘religious people would never go near her” (Hogan 101). Monsters are described to be “our children,” and just as monsters are products, Hannah is a product of her environment who has come to reality and causes fear in her caretakers (Cohen 8). Hannah’s actions define her to the community, and she it thought of as dangerous because of her behavior. Bush recalls a moment when Hannah is in Adam’s Rib and she kills a dog; while the dog “lay still and bent. She kicked him,” reminding Bush of “how dangerous she[Hannah] was” (Hogan

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