Interestingly , this use of “ survival ” as an uncontested “ god ” term has a literary history which is connected to themes of death and undeath as can be seen in Margaret Atwood ’ s seminal 1972 critical study of Canadian literature , Survival , in which Atwood identifies survival as the main theme of Canadian literature and the victim as the main protagonist . Two figures Atwood considers emblematic of this Canadian literary tradition of survival are female and like Sylvanas ( a ranger ) connected with wilderness , namely the sisters Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill , who respond to marginalization and hardship with stoicism and determination . Sylvanas shares with these sisters not just gender , victimhood , and survival but also what is , according to Atwood , another major preoccupation of Canadian literature , namely death :
If the central European experience is sex and the central mystery ‘ what goes on in the bedroom ,’ and the central American experience is killing and the central mystery is ‘ what goes on in the forest ’ ( or in the slum streets ), surely the central Canadian experience is death and the central mystery is ‘ what goes on in the coffin ’ ( 1972 , 222 ).
Within Atwood ’ s framework , Garrosh Hellscream would be protypically American in his preoccupation with military conquest and triumphs in combat , a preoccupation paralleled in Trump ’ s concern with “ winning ”. Garrosh ’ s uncontested terms of “ strength ” and “ honor ” are deeply personal , grounded in his own need for saving face and not appearing weak and then generalized or extrapolated to the groups to which he belongs , orcs as a race and the Horde as a faction . Sylvanas ’ sense of survival also has a personal sense , as she is a rape and torture survivor concerned with racial survival .
Examining the pairing of Trump and Clinton , we find an opposition similar to that between Sylvanas and Garrosh . Trump ’ s uncontested term seems to be “ winning .” This attitude is expressed in his iconic statement “ We gonna [ sic ] win so much you may even get tired of winning ” ( Johnson and DelReal 2016 ). There appears to be little consideration of whether the fights themselves are worth winning or the possibility of a Pyrrhic victory . Clinton ’ s “ god term ” is “ human rights ”, as was most powerfully exhibited in her 1995 Beijing speech in which she eloquently emphasized “ human rights are women ’ s rights and women ’ s rights are human rights ” ( Clinton 1995 ). In some ways , Clinton ’ s assumption of human rights as a self-evident ultimate good echoes the opening of the United States ’ Declaration of Independence :
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