The Bear Came Over the Mountain

The Bear Came Over the Mountain
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The Bear Came Over the Mountain
Nothing done can prepare one for this kind of illness and the isolation. The memory of family and friends is gone, and no one you ever knew is there. Alzheimer’s is a cognitive disorder that affects memory function and behavior patterns. The writing “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” (McGill, 2008) and the movie Away from Her (Lister, 2013), portray similar points.
Even though both the short Story and the film have the Alzheimer’s Disease in common, Munro’s story depicts how the lifetime sexually immoral deeds of a spouse who also happened to be a respected university professor hurts and undermines his partner that she uses her memory loss as a way to abandoning Grant, taking her revenge, and restating herself. The movie, on the contrary, creates a tale where a husband is unable to withstand the loss of his partner such that his devotion leads him to give her whatever would make her happy in the nursing home she strangely escaped to in order to convince her to express her lasting affection and desire for the husband (McGill, 2008). This paper seeks to look at the similarities and differences in the Short Story and the movie and to explain the irony in both works.
The story is mainly told from Grant’s point of view and intel how a mental disorder can change and complicate life. Grant and Fiona Anderson have been married forty plus years. Grant notices Fiona slowly losing her memory, which seems like Alzheimer and is not mentioned, nor ever diagnosed by a healthcare professional.

Her behaviors did not make sense to Grant (“Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Too: “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” to _Away from Her_: How Critique Became Justification,” 2018).
Grant was a professor at a college and often slept with his female scholars. He never had the thought or courage to leave Fiona but decide to resign and relocate to Canada in a house in the mountains. Despite Grant’s affairs and infidelity while working at the college, Grant loved and adored his wife, Fiona. One will question his love for his wife and asks if he indeed loved his wife, why the scandals (“Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Too: “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” to _Away from Her_: How Critique Became Justification,” 2018).
In the short story Fiona tells Grant “You could have just driven away, she said. Just driven away without a care in the world and forsook. Forsooken me. Forsaken” and He replied, “Not a chance” (McGill, 2008). Grant could have driven away when he took his wife to the nursing facility and started a new life with a clean slate. He chose to call the center to see how she was doing and visited even when she did not realize Grant’s was her husband.
Both Polley’s film and Munro’s story are based on getting back, only that Munro inspires the reader to condemn Grant for being unfaithful in his marriage, while the movie insists that the actions were not essential and that Fiona should pardon Grant since she could not do without him. About three-quarters of the film occurs a pointed chat. Kirsty (Played by Kristen Thompson), an employee in the ward, who decides to have a conversation with Grant (played as Gordon Pinsent) in his regular visits and comfort him, suggests that even if Fiona had a loss of memory, she could be faking her Alzheimer’s Disease. In the conversation, Grant also suggests that Fiona (Played by Julie Christie) may be taking revenge. Grant tells Kirsty that he had been unfaithful to Fiona, and thinks that his affairs did not matter since they were happy in their marriage. Grant now tries to remain unbiased over Fiona’s relationship with Aubrey, played Michael Murphy (Lister, 2013).
Comment by Grant stimulates Kirsty to make an infrequent personal admission in the film: in the movie, Kirsty is divorced, her spouse stays miles away, and she takes care of their three children while doing her rather a tiresome job. Kirsty suggests that while most men might say they were in contented marriages; their wives would not agree to the statement. It is crucial to look at the disparity between the narrative text and the film here: Munro’s Kirsty does not tell any such story and does not make such open conclusion on Fiona; the book is dependent on Grant’s narration of the several affairs he was involved in with other women to show us how Grant severely hurt his wife without realizing what he was doing.
The story is dissimilar since Grant’s affairs are brought out as real. Grant gives us the women’s description, and his feeling of accomplishment over some, and his feeling of promiscuity and competitiveness, which is seen from the letter the roommate to one of his students wrote to inform him that her friend attempted suicide. Grant does not believe the student would have indeed committed suicide. However, in the film, memories on Grant’s affairs and his spoken thoughts are not made central to the film’s action. This film concentrates only on the devotion Grant had for his wife, Fiona: he is afraid of being away from her; she is “the spark of life,” a phrase available in the writing but not precisely rephrased in the film (“Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Too: “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” to _Away from Her_: How Critique Became Justification”, 2018).
Nevertheless, a central moment is seen in both the text and the film, in Fiona’s conversation with Grant on the way to their home for retirement. She admits that they should avoid keeping their painful moments to themselves but goes ahead to speak about her pain towards Grant’s relationships and the fact that he never appreciated her even though she was desperate for it (Harris, 2011). She considers herself lucky since some of her friends were left by their husbands. Her marriage is still intact. In both, she quickly falls in love with Aubrey. In both the film and the written text, Marion, Aubrey’s wife, invites Grant to dance and afterward requests him to pretend to be in love with her. In the real sense, Grant appeared to love her to the extent that they sleep together in the film. In the text, he suggests to adore her.
Even though the film seems to contradict to the text’s creation of Grant, the movie meets the standards of the writing. Alice Monroe, in her short story, brings out the theme of pain, emptiness, and guilt for every character involved, which also appears in the film when Gordon has to give up his happiness for Christie to be with Michael Murphy. Gordon (Grant) and Olympia (Marion) also end up together due to emptiness felt after Fiona and Audrey fall in love. The film, Away From Her, therefore successfully achieves an unhappy ending, as planned by Monroe in her text (Harris, 2011).
References
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Too: “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” to _Away from Her_: How Critique Became Justification. (2018). Jimandellen.org. Retrieved 4 February 2018, from http://www.jimandellen.org/feministblog/685.html
Harris, D. L., & Gorman, E. U. N. I. C. E. (2011). Grief from a broader perspective: Nonfinite loss, ambiguous loss, and chronic sorrow. Counting our losses: Reflecting on change, loss, and transition in everyday life. New York: Routledge, 1-13p.
Lister, R. (2013). adapting the short story: Fidelity and Motivation in sarah Polley’s Away From Her. Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, 6(1), 43-54.
McGill, R. (2008). No Nation but Adaptation” The Bear Came over the Mountain,” Away from Her, and What It Means to Be Faithful. Canadian Literature, (197), 98.