67 pages • 2-hour read
The Grey Wolf
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Symbols & Motifs
Wolves
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
As the title The Grey Wolf indicates, wolves play a significant symbolic role in the novel. There are literal wolves in Three Pines and the monastery Saint-Gilbert-Entres-les-Loups, or Saint Gilbert Between the Wolves. When Armand and Reine-Marie sit outside in their small village, “they [can] hear the far-off howling of a wolf in pursuit” (111). This is a neutral wolf, or a symbol of nature outside human conceptions of good and evil. Armand encounters a wolf when walking around the lake by the monastery. It threatens him, but Jean-Guy intervenes before the wolf attacks. This moment symbolizes how Armand’s friends save him, foreshadowing how Jeanne saves Armand at the novel’s end.
The monastery’s name comes from a Cree legend about two wolves. The gray wolf represents goodness, and the black wolf represents evil. During the case, Armand and his associates wonder who is evil, or who is involved in the plan to attack the drinking water: “Were they really so sure who was the grey wolf, and who was the black?” (237). Armand thinks that Jeanne is the black wolf. However, Jeanne’s boss, Lauzon, and David are the black wolves in this case.
The novel ends with Armand realizing that another black wolf exists. This “black wolf was in” Charles’s notebook about pollution in lakes (414). Penny’s next book about the pollution case will be titled The Black Wolf. The gray wolf is the abbot at the monastery, Dom Philippe, or Yves. After Yves’s passing, Armand’s friend “Clara Morrow [] create[s] two sculptures” (412). These are placed on “Yves’ favorite rock in Blanc-Sablon, and […] the peninsula at Saint-Gilbert-Entres-les-Loups, where the Cree Chief had told the first Abbot about the two wolves […] the grey wolf, staring out across the water. Ever watchful” (412). In death, as he did in life, Yves looks out for others. He remains a symbol of goodness and a life taken too soon.
Hands
The novel uses hands to symbolize comfort, in life and in death. Armand holds the hands of two people who die in the novel: Charles and Dom Philippe. Over the years, the “head of homicide ha[s] seen enough people die, ha[s] […] [h]eld those hands” (62). Working murder cases means that Armand is present when people pass. He also uses his hand to make the sign of the cross, which is a kind of religious comfort, and prays with the dying if it comforts them. When Charles dies, he has whipped cream on his hand from a pastry that Armand bought him.
When he sees whipped cream on living hands, it reminds Armand of Charles’s death. At one point, “he notice[s] a smear of whipped cream on Beauvoir’s fingers. To Jean-Guy and Isabelle’s surprise, the Chief Inspector t[akes] a paper napkin and wiped it off” (96). This gesture comforts Armand, physically reassuring him that Jean-Guy won’t end up like Charles. Armand also remembers Charles when there isn’t whipped cream. For example, in one scene, he feels “Reine-Marie’s hand in his, her thumb softly, softly caressing the back of his hand, where Charles’s whipped cream had been. As though it were still there. Always there” (106). Reine-Marie’s hand comforts Armand. Hands are thus a way of remembering those who have died and a symbol of comfort.
Maps
Maps symbolize Canada’s resources, especially lakes and forests. On his “large map of Quebec […] stamped Ministere de l’Envirnonnement du Quebec” (172), Charles documents how lakes are being polluted and sold. His boss at Action Quebec Blue (AQB), Margaux, has a similar map on her wall. Armand also has a map on his office wall, but it doesn’t include the information that Charles and Margaux have. Their maps are more complete and up to date in terms of natural resources than Armand’s. Charles hid his map in the monastery before he was killed. When Simon sees Charles’s map, he says, “The thing that most struck me was water” (194). Canada has a surprising amount of freshwater and wood to collect and use.
Contrasting the literal maps is the figurative “mud map” that Whitehead draws when talking to Jean-Guy. A mud map is a description of how explorers would draw maps for each other in the mud. Whitehead’s map illustrates how government and society would change if an attack on drinking water occurred; it’s a map to chaos and coups.
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