THE DEEP ONES: "The Wolves of God" by Algernon Blackwood

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THE DEEP ONES: "The Wolves of God" by Algernon Blackwood

2gwendetenebre
Edited: Jan 18, 2023, 9:36 am

I like Blackwood's northern tales best, and the juxtaposition of Canada with later occurrences in the Orkneys works really well in this one. The tone of the part where the men are getting drunk and telling creep-inducing legends while death lurks just outside reminds me of the "Indianapolis" scene in JAWS. Attributing the Wolves of God to northern Native American folklore nicely makes this tale kin to Blackwood's "The Wendigo". He even mentions the latter creature once or twice for emphasis.

“John Rossiter,” he said, “it was not God who appointed you executioner. It was the devil.” And his eyes, thought Rossiter, were like the eyes of an angel.

This is such a curious bit of dialog. Who/what exactly was speaking?

3RandyStafford
Jan 19, 2023, 12:14 am

A second reading for me and the first since I actually had an opportunity to visit the Orkneys. They were, indeed, a major recruiting ground for the HBC.

To me the story seem to about the conflict between familial love, as exhibited by the Peace brothers, and the idea of rigid justice represented by Rossiter.

Jim may be guilty, and perhaps the Wolves would have gotten him anyway, but there is an implication that Rossiter is Jim's executioner in that accusation, seemingly by some mystical voice channeled by the younger Rossiter. Both executioner and accused don't escape unscathed. Perhaps, with all his genial encouragement to hear weird stories of revenge, Rossiter somehow serves a force that does allow the Wolves to get Jim.

On a non-weird note, I found the relationship -- taciturn and never prying for information not volunteered -- of the Peace brothers to be a realistic one of a certain sort of man.

4papijoe
Edited: Jan 21, 2023, 4:29 pm

Blackwood’s tales of elementals within elements (in contrast to our current existence within systems of systems) are bracing and this is a particularly effective example. As noted in the previous posts, the characters become avatars of principles like Mercy and Justice. Overall a very satisfying read.
Despite the hackneyed use of dark and stormy nights in Blackwood’s contemporaries I thought the Trans-Atlantic tempest was a clever way to deliver judgement to Jim.

>2 gwendetenebre: Agreed, the interactions of the characters at the end were curious and mysterious. I liked your comparison to the Jaws scene. I thought Sandy’s character worked well as comic relief to modulate the horrific onslaught. You really have to admire Blackwood’s pacing.
I think Rossiter’s role as a kind of judge (which doesn’t necessarily invalidate “higher” Sandy’s pronouncement that it was Satanic) was to neutralize Tom’s merciful impulse to deliver his brother, out of love, from judgement. But even if Rossiter’s motives were not righteous, Jim was then able to submit to the inevitable sentence of the Wolves of God.

>3 RandyStafford: I was really intrigued by the Orcadian setting and have added it to my list of places to hopefully visit if I’m ever released from corporate thralldom. Picts, Vikings, what’s not to like?

5housefulofpaper
Jan 22, 2023, 4:41 pm

I read Swan River Press' collection of Blackwood's non-fiction, The Lure of the Unknown, last year. It underscored how much of Blackwood's own experiences, including the esoteric ones - and however much altered in the writing process - went into his stories (I don't currently have access to the book, but I think a small number (small compared to Blackwood's story output) of strange experiences were reworked and reimagined as the kernels of multiple stories. Strange to think what might lie at the back of the idea of the Wolves, or of Sandy's possession at the climax of the story.

I think sometimes with Blackwood the characters can be stock "types", but his method of reporting on their moment-by-moment psychological and psychic states can obscure that. Here we have the two brothers, one who stayed home and the other back from a far-flung land after many years with a terrible secret, another returnee who has - if the phrase can still be used - "gone native", in his acceptance of the justness and omnipotence of the Wolves of God, and yet another who's come back drink-sodden and is comic relief - until the final scene when his drunkeness renders him an empty vessel for some kind of possessing spirit. I think we are to understand that Sandy's eyes were like the eyes of an angel, because he is possessed by an angel. and in this story at least, Blackwood is opposing a Pagan/Native religion against a Merciful Christian God.

I'm not for a moment suggesting that's Blackwood's settled religious view, only that that seems to be the dynamic at play for the purpose of this story.