Two Wolves

The first nine chapters of Two Wolves contain many of the elements that are explored throughout the novel. The protagonist, Ben Silver, is a precocious and thoughtful 13-year-old boy with a contentious relationship with his family, particularly his father, Ray. Bancks establishes conflicting desires within Ben in the first chapter. Ben simultaneously wants to be respected by his father, who values strength, manliness, and withholding emotions, while at the same time, he wants to pursue his own tasks and goals: creating art in the form of stop-motion films and becoming a police detective, both of which his father looks down upon. These conflicting desires are reinforced by Ben’s father’s annoyance with Ben’s personality; for example, early on, after being forced to flee his home, Ben asks his panicked father a number of questions. Ben’s father responds by hitting himself on the forehead and saying, “That kid asks too many questions!” (10). Through their interactions, Bancks establishes the theme of The Relationship Between Fathers and Sons, which will be explored through several different angles throughout the text.

Even though Ben and his father have a tense relationship, Ben still demonstrates many of the qualities shown by his father, such as stubbornness, a lack of emotional regulation, and a desire to be independent and not be controlled. However, unlike his father, Ben recognizes those traits in himself, and he continually worries whether he’ll turn out to be a person like his father. In addition to his father, this section also introduces Uncle Chris, Ray’s brother, who, despite never being a major character, demonstrates the way sons can perpetuate their father’s problems as he helps the family escape the police. In Chapter 3, Ben discovers an old story that his grandfather wrote in a notebook, establishing creativity as another link between Ben and his male family members. The story concerns two wolves inside all people, with one representing the good side and the other the bad, and says that eventually, one of the wolves will win. This sets up a major source of worry for Ben as the novel continues—Ben’s only models for male behavior come from his father and grandfather, and so Ben does not have a good demonstration of how somebody might escape the environment they were raised in. The themes of The Relationship Between Fathers and Sons and The Two Wolves Inside Us remain intricately linked throughout the narrative, with each one informing the reader’s interpretation of the other.

In the early chapters of Two Wolves, the narrative focuses mostly on the Silver family’s escape from their home, their flight into the woods, and Ben’s suspicions growing as his parents act more and more desperate. This conflict between keeping secrets and uncovering them forms the bulk of the novel’s narrative, and the motif of secrets extends not just through the story but through the characters themselves. Ben’s parents keep innumerable secrets (the money, their family background, their plans for the future), while simultaneously, Ben and Olive keep secrets from their parents, such as their true suspicions, their anger at how they’re treated, and their discovery of the money and the family’s criminal history. Bancks, however, portrays the reasons for this secret-keeping as understandable and rational on both sides. This conflict, then, is difficult to resolve, as neither the kids nor the parents would want to reveal their secrets for fear of making things worse. This allows the narrative to explore different approaches to secrets, as well as the theme of Differing Concepts of Justice.

The clashing personalities of the two major male characters are contrasted in the text with the two major female characters: Olive and April, Olive and Ben’s mother. In contrast to Ben, Olive is portrayed as rebellious, talkative, and impulsive, whereas April contains a number of contradictory characteristics: love for her children, annoyance with them, and passivity in the face of her husband’s aggression. However, April is also shown to be intelligent with a lot of business savvy; in Ben’s understanding of the wrecking company, “Dad thought he ran the business, but Mum did” (12). However, due to his father’s dominance over the family, Ben, his mother, and Olive have never really formed a distinct unit; Ben and Olive bicker like most siblings and don’t show much sympathy for each other’s treatment at the hands of their parents. Part of what Ben learns as the novel goes on is how he should treat and protect his little sister, strengthening their sibling bond.