Herschel Hardin’s Esker Mike& His Wife, Agiluk

Instead of motto:

In front of him
But he couldn’t understand
I was keeping the lightning of
The thunder in my purse
Just in front of him
But he couldn’t understand
And I had been killed a thousand times
Right at his feet
But he hadn’t understood (Sarain Stump, I was mixing stars and sand)

Herschel Hardin’s Esker Mike& His Wife, Agiluk is a challenging play. Though it
has moments of comic levity, its conclusion is deeply disturbing in its implied criticism
of the liberal values non-indigenous Canadians have often relied upon to justify the
colonization of Canada’s far north by southern cultures and institutions. Esker Mike takes
a hard look at the notion of a mutually productive dialogue between indigenous and non-
indigenous cultures in Canada’s North and declares this marriage, like Esker Mike’s and
Agiluk’s, a sham.
There is another sense in which Esker Mike is a challenging play. The language
Hardin uses to construct his story can leave readers feeling lost in what seems initially to
be a strangely flat linguistic and hermeneutic landscape. Much like the western Arctic’s
Mackenzie River Delta, where Esker Mike is set, this verbal landscape is without obvious
distinguishing features to help the uninitiated find their way. But landmarks do appear as
the interpretive eye gains familiarity with the surroundings. Careful readers will be
rewarded by entering into Hardin’s strangely poetic world, one which is rich in
metaphoric nuances, word-play, character definition, and biting social satire.
First published in 1973, Esker Mike is a moment of able weaving together the
threads of comic and tragic. In a very real sense, these opposing elements are embodied
in the characters of Esker Mike and Agiluk. Agiluk’s story comprises the play’s tragic
component, one which supports a feminist reading. Agiluk is an Inuk woman who has
mothered ten children, eight of whom have survived, and six of whom she has watched
depart for Anglican and Catholic hostels in Inuvik. When the bottom falls out of the
muskrat-hunting trade by which Esker Mike has attempted to support his family, Agiluk
comes to a firm decision- no more sexual contact with Esker Mike until their children
“can eat out of their own hands.” It is not anger towards Esker Mike that inspires this
decision; rather, it issues from the pain and humiliation Agiluk feels at finding herself
alienated from the human products of her labors. As she tells her step-sister, “Nobody’s
to blame, but I can wait
Esker Mike’s response to Agiluk’s decision constitutes the play’s comic thread.
Having lost command of both his means of subsistence his lover, he reels from the blows
to his manly pride. In attempting to recover it, Esker Mike lurches from one potential
solution to anther- from marriage to welfare-fraud to entrepreneurship to drunken
oblivion, and finally, to rage. But to no avail. His actions get little sympathy or respect
from Agiluk. While the majority of Hardin’s satiric ire is focused on the southerners who
run Agiluk’s religious, governmental, and legal institutions, Esker Mike is the play’s
comic center. Thus, although his story is poignant when considered objectively, the fact
that it is mediated through comedy and the fact that Esker Mike is unable to express his
emotions sincerely, virtually dictate that the readers’ sympathies lie with Agiluk. Just as
the emotional resonance of satiric comedy is no match for tragedy, so Esker Mike’s
energy and machismo are no match for Agiluk’s strength, intensity and intelligence.
However, this may have not been Hardin’s plan. He may have sat down to write
with a plot and a subtext firmly in place. The plot involved a commercial traveling north
in search of vulnerable people to take advantage of. It was supposed to be Esker Mike’s
play. What happened, along the way? In a word- Agiluk. She just wrote herself into the
center of the play. “As his emotional engagement with her character intensified, his
critical engagement waned until the result surprised even him”1. Setting the comic layer
aside, the play is very close to Greek tragedy.
As a tragic hero, Agiluk’s refusal to continue without her dignity constitutes her
hamartia. This admirable conviction constitutes the tragic flaw because Agiluk’s
circumstances render it unattainable. As a woman living in a world and marriage
governed by patriarchal assumptions, and as an Inuk living in a place governed by
colonial institutions, Agiluk can only attain this ideal through actions which place her
outside of these systems of authority, and consequently, outside the rule of law. In the
sense that Hardin sees the North not only as a place, but as a “metaphor for being on the
outside”2 Agiluk’s infanticide precipitates two reciprocal movements. Because this act
constitutes an attempt on Agiluk’s part to recover some sense of cultural authenticity, it
instigates a metaphoric movement from South to North, from colonial to indigenous
values. On the literal level, however, this act catalyses Agiluk’s movement from North to
South, from Aklavik to an Edmonton prison. If, as William predicts at the end of the play,
“when the hot summer comes, she’ll grow sick, and that will be the end,” then Agiluk
maintains her integrity, but at the price of her life.

(Daphne Odjig, Roots )

1
Grace, E., Sherill, Canada and the Idea of North. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002, p.
129.
2
Ibidem, p. 136.