Item: The Wendigo
Rating: 3.5
Author: Jamie

Title: The Wendigo
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Publisher: Public Domain
First Published: January 1, 1910
Pages: 50
Genres: Classics, Horror, Paranormal
Format: Ebook
Source: Free, Public Domain
Rating: ★★★½

Synopsis:

The Wendigo is an influential horror novella by Algernon Blackwood, which was first published in a collected fiction book called The Lost Valley and Other Stories, in 1910. The story follows a doctor, his nephew, and their party on a moose hunting trip into the deepest wilderness of northern Canada. Things take a turn as the party split up and one begins to follow non-human tracks...

My Review:

Wendigos are some of the most terrifying specters of Algonquin folklore, a malevolent spirit that is often associated with winter, starvation, cannibalism, and death. The Wendigo reads like a campfire ghost story told around hunting circles about the unexplainable phenomena that can only be experienced in the farthest reaches from civilization.

The story follows a moose-hunting party on their trek into the woods near the end of the fall season. The untamed wilderness leaves the hunters struck with awe at the beauty and terrible loneliness of the Candian wilderness. The writing is a master craft of atmosphere, as the adventure displays the majesty of nature and the ever-powerful call that it has on the hearts and minds of men. The terrifying silence of the natural world feels oppressive, feeling like a monster that swallows up the hunting camp.

The one glaring issue that holds this classic down is the casual racism that is used to describe character traits. While understandable for the time period in which it was written, it is archaic and simply unpleasant to read. A blemish on an otherwise superbly written story, a terrible shame really.

Even so, this book stands as a classic that brought a part of First Nations folklore into the literary canon and influenced other horror writers and filmmakers in the decades after it was written. The Wendigo is a testament that the unseen horror can be just as effective without the excessive blood and gore of more contemporary fiction. A true delight for the senses as the tightly written prose evokes both fear and wonder in readers for generations.

“Men were sometimes stricken with a strange fever of the wilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them so fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to their death.”

Trigger Warning: Racism, Violence

My Thoughts

My goodness, what a beautiful and surprising poem this is. The Goblin Market is a classic poem filled to the brim with enchanting rhymes and fairytale-like imagery. It tells the story of a pair of sisters as they encounter goblin men selling fruit. The story is a clear allegory about temptation and has a strong moral lesson about the value and strength of a sister.

“For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands.”

This poem has been interpreted several different ways: the wickedness of men, drug addiction, a criticism of marriage and capitalism in the Victorian era, you name it. While it’s difficult to say for sure since the poem is intentionally ambiguous about the meaning, for myself personally it gave me the impression of being about the loss of innocence.

The young girls that ate the fruit became shells of who they were, bringing to mind the “fallen woman” trope from Victorian England. This trope harshly judges female promiscuity and the social belief that a woman’s sexuality should be reserved for their husbands. Marriage is brought up a few times in the poem as part of the natural order, while the goblin men and their succulent fruit were dangerous because they only appeared to un-ruined young maidens.

“She thought of Jeanie in her grave,
Who should have been a bride;
But who for joys brides hope to have
Fell sick and died”

The prose is lyrical and reads like a children’s nursery rhyme but whether or not it is appropriate for younger audiences is a little blurry, even from the author. The poem is dark and sinister at varying points and deals pretty directly with addiction and death. I felt that the imagery was a little too sexual to be appropriate for younger readers.

All in all, this was a magical poem that I really enjoyed. It’s easy to read in one sitting and the book is beautifully illustrated. It’s an interesting piece to study both for poetry as an art form but also for the era within which it was written. It’s one that I can comfortably recommend for anyone that likes fairy tales.