Script Notes: Community

The sense of community in the novel is very strong. It is a constant presence in the voice which narrates the story, and it’s value is made clear in a number of set-pieces, in which the folk of Kinraddie gather either to help one another with work or celebration. the threshing, the fire, The funeral, the wedding, the sermon at the Stones.

The community explored, warts and all, positive and negative, at Chae’s threshing, and at the disastrous fire which follows; at John Guthrie’s funeral, at Chris’s wedding, and finally at the service amidst the Standing Stones to commemorate the fallen. The picture is a negative one only in the kirk, when attendance in the congregation is seen to bring out the worst in people.

Grassic Gibbon is ambiguous in his view: he clearly has a strong belief in the community he depicts, but at the same time he shows how powerless it is in the face of economic change, politicial duplicity and war.