The Significance of Familial bond in Alaska Native Novelist Eowyn Ivey’s “The Snow Child”

Abstract

Various renderings of experts demonstrate that the Native Alaskans reachedthe northwestern part of the North American continent from Asia across the Bering.Their forefathers built diverse and intricate native societies over the ages in the Arctic. Fishing, mining, and hunting, braced by the Alaska Railroad in the 1920s, have remained the means of subsistence for the natives. Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child, the 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist, was praised for its magnificent, meticulous descriptions of Alaskan ambiance, terrain, andconnection to Alaskan people and sentiments. The novel, set in the 1920s inspired by a Russian folktaleSnegurochka (The Snow Maiden), uses magical realism to portray the story of Faina, who fetches bliss in the life of an old twosomesurviving in an arduous condition. This paper highlights homesteading in Alaska and its social-economic repercussions on people while bringing out the lonesomeness, hardships, and grief in the lives of Jack and Mabel.