Preview

Erdrich Love Medicine Summary

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
318 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Erdrich Love Medicine Summary
Erdrich's Love Medicine, a novel made up of a collection of short stories about a family of Chippewa Indians that reside on a reservation in North Dakota. The stories cover three generations, fifty years, and several families, with the main theme of the novel being the struggle between stability and change and there are eight distinct narrators. The stories seem so loosely related; some critics have questioned whether this novel really stands as a true novel alone. One critic, Allan Chavkin, describes the novel as several short stories without a complete solution to end each characters problem, and a possible solution to why the author chose to revise the original. "It is likely that Erdrich concluded after the publication of the 1984 Love

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Louise Erdrich’s novel Tracks, published in 1988, recounts the story of an Anishinaabe family on an Indian reservation. The plot revolves around the life history of the protagonist, Fleur Pillager. Erdrich uses the multiple narrator technique by telling the story from the perspectives of Nanapush, an affable tribal elder, and Pauline Puyat, a mixed-blood girl. The novel recounts the incidents that took place between the years 1912 to 1924 in the life of Fleur Pillager. Erdrich divides the narrative into two distinct sections. The Nanapush chapters recount the conversation between Lulu, the daughter of Fleur, and Nanapush. In these chapters, Nanapush in an “authoritative and confiding tone” (Walker, 37) narrates the events that compelled Fleur…

    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible” Lyman Lamartine tells his story about his brother Henry, and the red convertible, showing them joy but also heartache. Henry and Lyman are Native American and live in Chippewa. Lyman narrates the story and explains how he and his brother spot the red convertible one day walking down Portage, and are fortuitous enough to have money to purchase it. The brother’s then start out on a summer adventure, driving place to place eventually leading them to Alaska after picking up a hitchhiker. After coming home from their trip Henry is drafted by the army, then becomes a Marine. Lyman writes Henry however Henry does not write as often to Lyman. Henry returns home after the war and his family quickly realizes…

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Throughout Love Medicine, the majority of the novel was written from the point of view of one character…

    • 1772 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Canadian writer, Brian Doyle wrote The Wet Engine in 2005, which is a series of short stories. One of the short stories, “Joyas Voladoras” is about several different organisms and their hearts. Doyle talks about the hummingbird, whale, other mammals and the human heart. Throughout the story, the author portrays that the people and the heart are vulnerable.…

    • 314 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Louise Erdrich was born on July 6, 1954 as the eldest daughter of seven children of a Chippewa Indian mother and a German-American father in Little Falls, Minnesota but she grew in Wahpeton, North Dakota. Louis Erdrich’s cultural identity was that she was of the Chippewa Indian tribe of the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota from her mother side. At an early age Louise was encouraged by her parents to write stories and that her father would paid her a nickel a story and her mother made covers for her first books and Louise continued her writing by keeping a journal when she was in high school. Louise Erdrich is known for her first novel Love Medicine which won her the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1984, The Plague of Doves, which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and the Round House which won the National Book Award for Fiction. “Louise Erdrich”, “Poetry Foundation”, “OEDB”…

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Louise Erdrich, the author of the short story “The Leap” main focus throughout the story is about the past of the narrator’s mother, Anna. Anna, an ex blind folded trapeze performer who is now sightless due to enriching and stubborn cataracts, is an unbreakable bow an arrow; being pulled and released into an unpredictable life. When it comes to Anna’s daughter, Anna would do anything for her; even if it were “[leaping] through [the] air … and hanging by the back of her heels from the … gutter” (195). When the house fire occurred no one including the firefighters, were trying to get Anna’s daughter out of the house. Anna was the only person brave enough to save her daughter.…

    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In her letter wirtten in response to an American woman, Marian Evans Lewes utilizes an array of rhetorical strategies to convey her belief that the development of a writer is an ongoin process which is pressed on by "some force." Instead of having a condescending tone, Lewes puts herself on the same level as the woman, taking a pathological route in addressing the woman. By using words such as "us" and "we", Lewes sympathizes with the woman and reassures her that she has been in the same position. This sympathetic approach not only informs the woman that what she is goin through is normal, but it lets her realize that no matter what status; well-known novelist or unknown woman; everyone goes through difficult times, and "the only hope is to try and unite the utmost activity with the utmost resignation." Supporting this pathological route, Lewes utilizes first-person enriched syntax to illuminate her experiences and her beliefs on the developmental process of the reader. By stating how she "began writing [works] with no great glory at all" and then flourished into the reknowened novelist she is now provides insight to the woman that, quite frankly, you go to start somewhere. This gives the woman "hope", which is a necessity to all writers. Moreover, Lewes uses chronological syntax to illuminate that the development of a writer is ideed a time consuming matter. Stating the she "entered [with] struggles", the "began writing" and the wrote "ficiton which has been thought a great deal of" conveys her belief that the development of a writer is not a mere overnight happening, but is a long, drawn-out process. In her response to Melusia Fay Pierce, Marian Evans Lewes illuminates the fact that the development of a wirter is not ephemeral, but , just like her synatax, chronological, and time consuming, and to be successful, on must have "hope".…

    • 314 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Unlike Nanapush and Fleur, Louise Erdrich uses the character of Pauline to demonstrate the rejection of Ojibwa religion and culture. Throughout the novel, Pauline is known as a liar and troublemaker who tries her best and hardest to single handedly destroy Ojibwa life, religion, and culture. For example, in the novel, Pauline had “bothered [her] father into sending [her] south, to the white town. [She] had decided to learn the lace-making trade from the nuns” (Erdrich, 14). Pauline is asking her dad to send her south away from the other Native Americans, and more importantly, away from the Ojibwa religion. In this part of the novel, Erdrich best conveys Pauline’s rejection of Ojibwa religion by showing how the efforts she would go through in order to separate herself from the Ojibwa way of life. Pauline has rejected this lifestyle to such great amounts that she is willing to move…

    • 529 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    At a young age Florentino Ariza caught a horrible sickness consisting of diarrhea and vomiting that became so severe his mother, Transito Ariza, called Florentino’s godfather who was an old homeopathic practitioner. They feared he may have Cholera. “But his examination revealed that he had no fever, no pain anywhere, and that his only concrete feeling was an urgent desire to die. All that was needed was shrewd questioning first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera” (Marquez 62). Garcia-Marquez hypothesizes that love is like Cholera. Once it enfuses its virus into you it slowly breaks you down bit by bit. Only a few lucky souls will avoid it, and…

    • 585 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Love Dose Analysis

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages

    After reading the book Love Dose by Bob Goff many wonderful Ideas stuck with me. I am amazed at how many truly wonderful things happened to one man. It brings me comfort to know that there are people out there like Bob who love’s all people, no matter what. Goff loves people not just because Jesus said to, but because he wants to. That concept to me is amazing and truly meaningful. The story that stuck out to me the most was the first chapter. I promise I read the book, but even after finishing the book over a month ago the first chapter stuck with me the most.…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Both of these authors used different ways to show how they write about love. In "The Love Potion" he wrote a love story in a play type of story. The whole story was written for a play to be made i think its easier to understand whats going on. In the story it told the readers how the charcter act, and how they are, and what they do. The whole story actually ends very quickly, but in a entertaining way. Jesse Martin wrote about love in a fiction way with the magic love potion being involved. On line 62 it says "i can see it in her face. She is feeling the effects of the potion. She is now in love with me too." In "The Goodness of St. Rocque" The author actually wrote a realistic story about love dealing with weddings, and things. He also…

    • 176 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Ovid: the Art of Love

    • 1633 Words
    • 7 Pages

    There have been numerous questions that have always confused mankind since the early days. The significance of life, how everything functions, is there a god of every single topic that still confuses humans. Although those concepts create a good argument, a topic that is time consuming in our lives is how to pick up on women. A main example of how old that problem has bothered men is in the book of Ovid: The Art of Love. We independently come up with our own style of picking up on a female through personal experiences and knowing stories. The majority advice given by Ovid is dead to me but there are a few things I do concur.…

    • 1633 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Red Convertible

    • 1109 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Pratima Dutta wrote in her criticism piece that, “The red convertible, although extremely western in its resonance, is the only native link between Lyman and Henry” (121). Her statement precisely highlights the importance of the red convertible in the story and it's significance to the both brothers Lyman and Henry. The red convertible had a great influence not only on the lives of both brothers, it also had a great value for the author of the “The Red Convertible” Louise Erdrich. She grew up near Sioux Indian reservation and was raised in between the western and Native American philosophies of life, which she deeply incorporated into her stories, so deeply, that even Pratima Dutta stated that, “According to the Native American critics, she is not a true Native American writer and does no justice to Native American storytelling traditions. Erdrich has also been…

    • 1109 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    “We have to believe in the future, in a better future. The world wants peace …”…

    • 2167 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Raymond Carver’s 1981 short story “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love,” he gives us insight on the fascinating topic of love. This short story is narrated in first-person singular in the present tense through the narrator Nick. He is telling a story about two sets of couples. Laura, and the narrator Nick, and Mel and Terri are the other couple mentioned. Nick is observant throughout the story and seems extremely nonjudgmental of others.…

    • 471 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays