The latter embodied the psychology of wolf but little human. Count von Bächl-Wolfing was a relatively minor, but well-drawn character, not as ruthless as Natalia Petrovona. Speranza was a good, but not great, character torn between evil’s repulsion and the attraction to the evildoer. Multiple personalities in a werewolf are interesting. The characters of Johnny Kindred and Teddy Grumiaux (a profane train urchin I started out hating a lot) were compelling. (How does Kindred know enough of her life and thoughts when she’s away from him to narrate the story to Carrie Dupre? Seemingly through a mystical, telepathic bond never really explained.) The evil of the Europeans and whites is more a symbol of universal human evil. Speranza, our viewpoint character, is attracted to the evil European werewolves but ultimately risks all for Johnny Kindred. After all, white Kindred is the werewolf, symbol of the moral and philosophical integration we must have. However, it is not fair to Somtow to say he breaks morality along racial lines. While we have the psychopathics Major Sanderson and Cordwainer Claggert as the evil whites, we see little evil in the Indians. They see themselves as part of a great circle of nature serving a function as human and wolf. They, unlike European werewolves, are not lustful creatures preying on the innocent. It’s also no accident that this novel gives us a bit of the noble savage in the Indians. It’s no accident Johnny Kindred begans to integrate under them. The Indians represent, in their holistic philosophy, an integration of man’s propensity for good and evil, compassion and ruthlessness, lust and love. They are torn by their “genetic” heritages and the conflicts of good and evil in themselves and the pull of two cultures. All these characters are biological halfbreeds, psychological halfbreeds, and cultural halfbreeds.
All the werewolfs are half-breeds, of course. The most obvious one is Teddy Grumiaux, half-Sioux, half white. This novel is full of alienated halfbreeds.
What I got was a thoroughly literary novel of character a study of alienation and the beast within with the werewolf a symbol of social and personal alienation (the most extreme example being Johnny Kindred’s multiple personalities) and the lustful id (much of Freud in the dream sequences) long, minute descriptions of characters and their relationships and some Indian mysticism. I expected an epic feeling novel, instead of just a long novel, with many short scenes and lots of violent confrontations between European and Lakota werewolves and a book with a feeling of history. My reactions upon reading this novel in 1991.
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