Change and development in Alistair MacLeod's use of the past in his short stories

The stories of Alistair MacLeod explore connections between past and present in the Celtic Cape Breton culture. An examination of the stories reveals change in MacLeod's use of the past from The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) to "Island" (1988). In The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, the focus is on the recent past in Cape Breton, with a pattern emerging of a narrator or central character unsuccessfully attempting to regain a meaningful connection to a past of personal memory. "The Road to Rankin's Point" marks a change in that the narrator attempts to connect to an ancestral, cultural past. Narrators and central characters in the stories of As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986) as well seek and, in some cases, recognize connection to an ancestral past, reaching back to Scotland and Ireland. Characters in the stories of As Birds also seem more at home in the present, for they recognize that the past, both personal and ancestral, persists in the present. An excerpt from a work-in-progress, entitled "No Great Mischief If They Fall" (1988) explores the presence of the ancestral past in the present. Finally, in "Island" (1988), ancestral past, recent past, and present seem to merge into one, and hope for the continuation of the Highland culture into the future is indicated in the story's ending.