Generational Gaps
MacLeod is not what one would call a particularly prolific writer. He carefully and meticulously works out stories in which to explore a limited number of themes. The result is that when connected together, many of the stories read like episodes from a novel; there is a definite familiarity about them even as the characters and storyline differ. One theme unifying many of MacLeod’s short stories is the collision between the traditions of the older generation and the changes of time reflected in younger members of the family. Fathers take as personal rejection of their own values the decisions by children to strike out on their own, but MacLeod attacks this theme through another angle in a story in which it is the mother desperately trying to cling onto the traditions of the past which her daughters have rejected by failing to marry fisherman. The older generation is not just in personal conflict with family members, but with the new ways of the world. Sometimes, it is both as in “The Tuning of Perfection” when a grandfather finds himself at odds not just with his own family, but the television producer who insists on violating the traditions of folk songs during a talent competition.
Coal Mining
Part of MacLeod’s thematic interest in generational conflict is situated expressly within the milieu of coal mining towns facing economic desperation as resources become depleted and job opportunities available to generations suddenly disappear. Many of MacLeod’s stories are set within this milieu and he explores the repercussions from a host of different perspectives: some young songs leave town while fathers bring younger sons back to their hometown in an effort to share their nostalgia. MacLeod’s narratives focus not on the actual work of mining so much---though his imagery is unsparing in presenting the bleak lives such working conditions instilled—so much as on the effects on individual lives of relying too greatly on economic promises which simply could not exist forever.
Man and Beast
Animals play a huge role in so many of MacLeod’s stories. Sometimes the animal is of such important, that he is given the honor of being mentioned in the title, such as “Winter Dog.” At other times, the relationship between a character and an animal is presented as a seemingly tangential detail from the plot but which is revealed to be quite significantly thematically, such as the shocking fate of a mare which becomes a symbol of the changing world in which the aging protagonist of “The Tuning of Perfection” suddenly must confront head-on. Horses must be sold, dogs must be mercy killed and fish which must be caught become metaphors for progress or what passes for it.
