Summary: 'The Great Alone' | A Comprehensive Summary of the Novel

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A Complete Summary of The Great Alone

The novel is Leni’s hero-journey as well as a coming-of-age tale. The story is told from her point of view. It is her mind the reader inhabits; it is through her eyes that the reader experiences the narrative. The beauty and danger of the wilderness we experience through her.
The Hero’s Journey.
Leni travels from Seattle, Washington to Kaneq, Alaska on a beat-up Volkswagen bus. She escapes from Kaneq on a ferry, escapes from Homer on a small airplane and comes back to Kaneq. All these physical journeys mirror her emotional journey.
When the novel begins, she leaves her home to go to school. School is her escape from her parents’ emotional upheavals. She escapes the bleakness of her home and poverty by reading books. Her body is present with her parents, but her mind is in the warren of Watership Down or the Shire of the Lord of Rings. She devoured books for entertainment to escape.
Her journey was a study in contrasts. In Alaska, she feels both confined and free. Although the expanse of the Alaskan wilderness was hers to explore, the dangers posed by the climate and the wild animals keep her close to home. At home, where she is supposed to be safe, she feels caged with her father who becomes increasingly rabid.
Leni journeys from brokenness to wholeness. She learns to accept that her father is an abusive drunk. She learns to forgive him and accept that his abuse stems from his post-traumatic stress disorder. She re-establishes a relationship with her grandparents from whom she is estranged.
She journeys from the world of her “self” where she feels safe, but also lonesome, to a world of family. She begins to learn how to build relationships the way she learns how to build fire from flint and how to tend to the fire to keep it from burning out. She finds Matthew and re-kindles her relationship with him. Her journeys scars her, but she emerges strong and mature.
From being emotionally isolated, she journeys into community life in Kaneq. She journeys from being alone to being part of a group. At first, she is wary of the community, but gradually, the community draws her in and she becomes an Alaskan. She befriends Marge and Matthew. Leni journeys from being alone to being part of the Kaneq community.
Matthew is Leni’s best friend in school. They had read the same books. They both had irregular domestic lives. Matthew’s parents are divorced but his mother still lives with her new partner on their homestead. Matthew’s mother dies subsequent to falling into the river after the ice cracked. Matthew went on a journey, himself: he left Kaneq after his mother’s death and his depression, to live with his sister and aunt and uncle in Fairbanks. He returns to Kaneq as he journeys from disability to recovery. Matthew’s physical and emotional journeys mirror and reinforces Leni’s journey.

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