The Use Of Symbols In The Clan Of The Cave Bear By Jean Auel
Jean Auel’s novel The Clan of the Cave Bear incorporated a wide foundation of ecological, archaeological, and anthropological data, leading it to be a realistic story of survival and hope. However, Auel used artistic license throughout the novel to express a major point in gender roles relating to the future of human life. Auel decided to make the Neandertal group we follow a deeply rooted patriarchy, which is evidenced by the fact that the roles of men and women are both predetermined in their biology. When a Neandertal is born, they naturally possess a specific set of knowledge unique to their gender, such as skills in stone tool making, or food preparation and for some female bloodlines, medicine. Auel decided to have all clan members immune to the trait of learning and retaining new information, therefore making gender roles a rigid and permanent aspect of the clan. The fact the Auel made Ayla an anatomically modern human instead of a Neandertal is a huge detail, since she was not born with those limitations the Neandertals are all characterized by. Therefore, Ayla had the capability of teaching herself how to hunt, as well as making stone tools (with some help from Droog), and continuing Iza’s legacy as a medicine woman. Her capacity of learning both women’s and men’s work was not only essential to her own survival throughout the novel, but Auel makes it apparent that it is a large part of the continuance and evolution of humankind for years to come.
After reading her novel, a clear message Auel makes is that Ayla is the embodiment of the hopeful future. At one point in the novel, there was a ritual where Creb and a few other shamans connected their minds and ate the brain of a young man who was killed by a cave bear, as a way to inherit his traits of courage and bravery. This is a clear example of Auel switching between fact and fiction to further support the message she wants to convey. After Ayla mistakenly witnessed this bizarre cannibalistic affair, she had a vision of the extinction of the Neanderthals and the future of her own Cro-Magnon species. A striking quote can be found on page 389, “She found her own way back to herself, and then a little beyond. She had a fleeting glimpse of the cave again, followed by a confusing kaleidoscope of landscapes, laid out not with the randomness of nature, but in regular patterns. Boxlike structures reared up from the earth and long ribbons of stone spread out, along which strange animals crawled at great speeds; huge birds flew without flapping their wings. ” Ayla’s vision of a modern world filled with buildings, roads, cars and airplanes makes it clear that we are her descendants. Despite the fact that the novel ends with Ayla being alone after she is banished from the clan, one can be confident that she is fit to survive and will do just that. This further supports the message of how The Clan of the Cave Bear is not only a triumphant tale about Ayla’s coming of age, but also about humanity’s. It is not only Ayla who is surviving and carrying on; she is representative of her people thriving for years to come. These aspects are different from Golding’s motives in The Inheritors because Golding’s major theme was that human beings are born with a natural capacity and tendency for evil. In his story, anatomically modern humans were the ones who inherited the Earth, since they killed off all the Neandertals. This emphasized that the strong survive, and the world is not a place for the meek. Golding makes a comparison between the primitive man who he views as innocent and naive, and the new man who is more aggressive and complicated. Golding labeled the characters with such names as "Fa", "Lok", and "Ha" to emphasize the simplicity of the society. When the new tribe of more advanced people discover the Neanderthals, they immediately see them as devils and try to kill them. However, the Neanderthals are too naive to realize the motives of the new people, and they are only confused when their members begin to disappear. In the end, all of the Neanderthals are dead except for one, and the new people are the inheritors of the earth.
The murders of the primitive men in The Inheritors symbolizes the end of an era. The time of innocence has ended at the hands of a devious, evil people. The Cro-Magnons assumed that the Neanderthals were evil without first carefully observing them to discover what their true nature was. The first fearful reaction of the new people was to kill the outcasts because they were different. This can be compared to Jesus Christ, who walked the Earth as a different type of man. His holiness was a threat to the scribes and Pharisees and so they had him killed without first carefully observing what his true nature was. Golding was aware of this when he wrote The Inheritors and he included the parallel not only to indicate to readers man's general lack of ability to accept others, but to trace this shortcoming back to man's roots. The leadership of Mal can be contrasted to the leadership of Marlan, who is the fearful Cro-Magnon leader. At one point in the story, Marlan has Tuami paint a deer while the rest begin chanting. Someone was then chosen to have his finger cut off by Tuami, as a sacrifice to the animal. Others decide to shoot a deer, as an act of power they think was given to them. This shows that even in this group’s religious rituals, there is a sense of violence, bloodshed, and fear, which can be attributed to the Cro-Magnons’ congenital ways. The last scene in The Inheritors is of the inheritors sailing away on a huge lake. A vast isolated lake on which a few lost souls are sailing aimlessly provides a vivid image of the lonely, directionless state of man. This is the symbol Golding chose to use to illustrate the hopelessness and emptiness of man's heart.
