Wilderness in Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks

Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks offers us a different perspective on the famous abolitionist John Brown from his son, Owen Brown. Owen Brown’s narration and complex personality captured my attention from the very beginning of this novel. One of the novel’s settings was in the Adirondacks. This wilderness served as a place for John Brown to represent the ideal American family. Owen states, “To him, we were a farm family settled in the wilderness, wholly admirable, exemplary even- an ideal American family of Christian yeoman” (200). John Brown and his family showed that American’s could tame the landscape and make it on their own, without slavery.  He used his family for a model of what was morally right and used the Adirondacks as a backdrop for his beliefs.

Owen Brown had a very complicated relationship with his father, which in turn complicated his relationship with nature. Through Owen Brown’s eyes, the reader sees how John Brown’s hatred for slavery in essence enslaved Owen himself to his family. Owen Brown retaliated with anger towards his father, followed by guilt for being wrathful. This is witnessed in the scene when Owen, talking to Ruth, says,  “’…But I want to leave this place. I want to get away, that’s all. From everything. This farm, the Negroes, these mountains!’…  I was angry and confused- wrathful was what I was, for, uncertain as to the object of my anger, I was smearing it over everything in sight” (193). Owen resented the Adirondacks and felt alone in the wild. He did not believe he fit into the model his father created and therefore blamed his surroundings for his unhappiness. Owen Brown felt trapped by the wild instead of the wild facilitating freedom, like his father preached.

This father and son dynamic offer us two different perspectives of the Adirondacks. Russell Banks shows us that the wild is as we interpret it ourselves. It is complicated, just as Owen’s relationship with his father is throughout the novel.