Solar Storms (Themes) 📑

Question 1

Define the Anthropocene.

Answer 1

(according to National Geographic Society)
unofficial unit of geological time that refers to the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems

Question 2

Absorb and memorize this really important sentence:

Answer 2

“‘Solar Storms’ challenges some Western approaches to ecological and social problems by linking family, history, and the complicated notion of progress to the health of our planet.”

Question 3

___________ ___________ shapes the personal identities of many characters in the novel, as they are influenced by their interactions with, history of, and associations with the land.

Answer 3

Environmental advocacy

Question 4

How does the quote: “elders said…the land and water had joined together in an ancient pact, now broken” illustrate the theme of healing the land, and healing the self?

Answer 4

Links the destruction of the natural landscape to the disruption of familial relationships:
- Hannah suffers brutal abuse, which is then perpetuated onto Angel
- intergenerational trauma absorbed and passed down, leaving scars that are further damaged by the construction of the dams

Question 5

In addition to the disruption of familial relationships, the resource guide mentions that Angel becomes attached to Adam’s Rib and empathizes with “the place named Poison”. How are “the weary houses…strung along…in a line…all of them dark and brown and dreary” relate to the theme of healing the land and healing the self?

Answer 5

The houses serve as physical reminders of the intergenerational trauma absorbed by the people who dwell in them. Angel’s growing love and concern for the people, houses, and history of her ancestral lands signifies her acceptance of this land as home.
- Hogan encourages readers to see home as more than a house so that we too may equate the planet’s healing with our own
- ecological mindset and immersion in nature can be as healing for readers as it is for Angel

Question 6

How does Hogan use the dam workers in contrast with the indigenous peoples to illustrate the theme of land, profit and power?

Answer 6

• dam workers cannot relate to understand the land as an equal being
• attempt to subdue the land rather than form symbiotic connections with it
• they see indigenous cultures as ignorant or backward, used as an excuse to strip indigenous territories for profit
• hydrodams and other ecological projects put forth as necessary economic drivers prioritizing national and provincial economies over Indigenous ones

Question 7

Angel explains at the end of the novel that, “the people were in pain…It was a murder of the soul that was taking place [in the Fat-Eater’s territory]. Murder with no consequences to the killers.” By describing the indigenous peoples this way, how does Hogan illustrate the theme of land, profit and power?

Answer 7

• state of indigenous peoples’ bodies mirrors various traumas experienced by the land and animals as they feel the devastating impacts of the dam construction
• dam builders, police, soldiers, and corporations ignorant to the threat that rerouting water has to the environment and indigenous communities
• by pushing indigenous peoples off the land, they still benefitted economically

Question 8

(According to the resource guide, although you could probably argue for all of these) What theme does the dam builders trying to control the water be representative of?

A) Remembering the Wilderness
B) Finding Hope in the Face of Ecological Catastrophe
C) Land, Profit, and Power
D) Healing the Land, Healing the Self
E) Hannah’s Scars

Answer 8

C) Land, Profit, and Power

• controlling the water leads to control over the population, incorporating the Tribal communities into the ‘progress’ of the developed world without their consent

Question 9

Whom does the resource guide compare Hannah’s inability to function in harmony with the natural environment with?

Answer 9

the corporate employees

Question 10

What two things does the resource guide explain are characteristics about Hannah that embody landlessness?

Answer 10

1) mixed-blood status
2) early separation from her family

Question 11

How is Hannah’s body depicted like a map? How may it also show that maps aren’t reliable for taking change into account?

Answer 11

• her custodians’ and lovers’ exploitation leaves scars like tributaries on her skin, mapping Hannah’s displaced body as one might mark a map of conquered land
• her scars mirror the physical and emotional toll of governmental and corporate control of water as the dam construction has a damaging impact on local ecosystems

Question 12

How may Hannah’s mixed-blood status contribute/be linked to spirits infesting her body?

Answer 12

Hannah is the product of a blending of Anglo and Native cultures and cannot escape the pressures of the collisions of those two cultures

Question 13

The fracturing of Hannah’s psyche, as well as the fracturing of her community, mimics the fracturing of the ______ itself.

Answer 13

land

Question 14

What does the resource guide consider Angel’s turning point in being able to overcome her mother’s fracturing and disconnection with the world?

Answer 14

when she experiences a spiritual connection with the land during her boat trip with Dora Rouge

Question 15

Take this sentence from the resource guide in:

Answer 15

“[Angel] must come to recognize her face in the face of the rock cliff and make a spiritual leap in a dream state outside of time in the wilderness to be able to make her own psyche whole rather than perpetuate the traumatic loss of her mother and the mothers before her.”

Question 16

How does Hogan illustrate the theme of remembering the wilderness and present an image of place where humans thrive and transform in entanglement with the earth, as an alternative to a profit-driven domination of nature?

Answer 16

imagery used in depicting the remote, icy landscape of the Minnesota/Canada border reflects an immense freedom and spirituality that the intervening government systems, bent on technological progress, cannot provide
- mostly unaltered landscapes enable Angel and her grandmothers to nurture their connection with other-than-human nature and dwell as members of the ecosystem

Question 17

Building on the theme of remembering the wilderness, how does Hogan begin to change her language as the women travel deeper into the wilderness?

Answer 17

her prosaic descriptions evolve into a poetic experience of place
- relies on oral traditions to foster a sense of self based on place

Question 18

How does Hogan build on the theme of ‘remembering the wilderness’ through her characters’ experience of nature?

Answer 18

Hogan is able to resist forms of ecological violence through her characters’ experience of nature as a network of exchange and renewal.
- Angel specifically: connected to her ancestors by embodying the awe and the vastness of natural spaces; illustrates the intimacy and openness of the land with a sense of reverence that does not accompany descriptions of the houses in Oklahoma

Question 19

According to the resource guide (I didn’t make the rules), which of the following themes is best illustrated by Hogan’s linking the topography of the forest and the women’s ancestry to the changing physical, mental, and spiritual revolutions occurring in each of them?

A) Remembering the wilderness
B) Land, profit, and power
C) Finding hope in the face of ecological catastrophe
D) Hannah’s scars
E) Animals and the environment

Answer 19

A) Remembering the wilderness

Question 20

Which of the following themes is best illustrated by Hogan’s depiction of Angel during and after the protest?

A) Animals and the environment
B) Finding hope in the face of ecological catastrophe
C) Colonialism and the environment
D) Environmental place
E) Hannah’s scars

Answer 20

B) Finding hope in the face of ecological catastrophe
- protesters may only be partially successful at stopping dam’s construction, but their resistance and renewed kinship are acts that offer the possibility of a better future

Question 21

What does the resource guide describe as the indigenous communities’ hopeful reaction in response to finding the devastation, on the land and the people, at Holy String Town?

Answer 21

joining the protests; Dora Rouge believes that protesting is a form of hope, since “those who protested were the ones who believed they could still survive as a people”

Question 22

In addition to joining the protests against the dam construction, what is an additional way that the resource guide mentions the characters in “Solar Storms” found hope in the face of ecological catastrophe?

Answer 22

the Fat-Eaters reclaiming the name of “The Beautiful People”, and rejecting the name given to them by colonizers
- Hogan paints a new beginning for Angel and her relatives, one that offers possibility for them to create their own futures and to preserve and continue Indigenous communities and ways of being in the world.

Question 23

In summary, what are the TWO main examples brought up by the resource guide that Hogan incorporated into “Solar Storms” as a representation of the “finding hope in the face of ecological catastrophe” theme?

Answer 23

1. The characters’ responding to seeing Holy String Town in devastation by joining the protests
2. The Fat-Eaters’ reclaiming the name of “The Beautiful People” and rejecting the name given to them by colonizers