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Home / Publications / Books / Scotnotes Study Guides / Scotnote 10

Scotnote 10

Robin Jenkins’s
THE CONE-GATHERERS

Iain Crichton Smith

Published in: Paperback.
By: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1995
Price: £5.95
ISBN 978-0-948877-26-1

Order from our bookshop

Click here to watch Ann MacKinnon’s talk on The Cone Gatherers and other novels by Robin Jenkins, plus other videos from the 2019 ASLS Schools Conference.


Robin Jenkins’s greatest novel is a powerful examination of good and evil, set against the backdrop of a Scottish estate during World War II. With its themes of class-conflict, war, evil and envy, this is a towering work of fiction that remains as relevant today as when it was first published. Suspenseful, dark and unforgettable, it is one of the masterpieces of modern Scottish literature.

Iain Crichton Smith’s Scotnote is a skilful and intelligent guide to the themes and characters of the novel, and explores the religious, philosophical and moral questions that it poses. Suitable for senior school pupils and students of all ages.

CONTENTS

  • Introduction
  • Summary
  • Structure
  • The period
  • Characters
  • The moral question
  • The religious aspect
  • Class
  • Nature
  • The ending of the book
  • The novel as fable
  • Further reading
  • Questions
  • Notes

Primary Sidebar

Retrieving and Renewing: a poem for ASL

   Forget your literature? – forget your soul.
   If you want to see your country hale and whole
   Turn back the pages of fourteen hundred years.
   Surely not? Oh yes, did you expect woad and spears?
   In Altus Prosator the bristly blustery land
   Bursts in buzz and fouth within a grand
   Music of metrical thought. Breathes there the man
   With soul so dead—? Probably! But a scan
   Would show his fault was ignorance:
   Don’t follow him. Cosmic circumstance
   Hides in nearest, most ordinary things.
   Find Scotland – find inalienable springs.
  Edwin Morgan, 2004

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