Tracking and Trapping the Narrative Strategies of Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, the Beet Queen, and Tracks

Tracking and Trapping the Narrative Strategies of Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts

Lisa C. Leonard Department of English McGill University, Montreal August 1993 e§) L.C. Leonard 1993 National Library Bibliotheque nationale of Canada duCanada Acquisitions and Direction des acquisitions et Bibliographic Services Branch des services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa, Ontario Ottawa (Ontario) K1AON4 K1AON4 Your file Votre reference

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ABSTRACT

Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks are stories

about communities, about how the individual perceives

his/herself in relation both to those in the immediate community and the world. Each novel reaches toward a multi

dimensional understanding of the net of relationships inevitable in communal life and contact between individuals with varying personal perceptions and experience. Dual or

multi- perspectival narrative strategies encourage the reader to consolidate many stories and draw connections between

diverse and often disparate points of view, as he/she tracks

down the story of the absent character and the mark it makes on the other narratives. When read together, these multiple

narrators work to contradict, criticize, and cast and re-cast the stories in relation to one another. Tracking through

shifting points of view, lies and ambiguities, and stories that appear only superficially linked, the reader becomes more conscious of the importance perspective plays in recognizing

the tracks of one story on another. Behind each story is a

character's vision which controls narrativi ty and conveys

his/her personal sense of connectedness and separateness to c the others. Erdrich uses a narrative strategy of dual or c ii

multi- perspectivity to explore how individuals negotiate their own agency and the power of their connections with others. In each novel's structure of independent narrative and narrative dependence, Erdrich reflects the balance individuals need to set between their power to shape and be shaped by other stories and people.

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R~SUM~

Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, et Tracks sont des recits de communautes; c'est-a-dire, comment une personne se perQoit vis-a-vis ceux qui l'entourent et le reste du monde. Chaque roman a pour but une comprehension multidimensionnelle du faisceau des relations inevitables dans la vie communautaire et dans les contacts entre individus ayant des perceptions et des experiences personnelles diverses. L'usage de strategies narratives a double ou multiple perspectives encourage le lecteur a unifier plusieurs recits et a etablir des liens entre des points de vue varies et souvent disparates, alors qu'il retrace l'histoire d'un personnage absent et ses consequences pour les autres recits. Lorsque ces recits sont lus simultanement, ces multiples narrateurs ant pour fonction de contredire, critiquer, mauler et re-mauler les recits mis en juxtaposition. En retraQant le flux des points de vue, les mensonges, les ambigu1tes et les recits qui ne semblent etre relies que superficiellement, le lecteur devient plus conscient de l'importance que revet la perspective en devoilant les traces d'un recit a l'autre. Dans chaque recit

il y a le point de vue d 'un personnage qui controle la 0 narration et qui communique son sens personnel de sa coherence et de sa divergence aux autres. Erdrich utilise une c iv

strategie narrative a double ou multiple perspectives pour demontrer comment les individus sont a la fois leurs propres agents et solidaires des autres. Dans la structure de narration independante et dependante de chaque roman, Erdrich reflechit l'equilibre que les individus doivent etablir entre

leur pouvoir de fa9onner et d'~tre fa9onne par d'autres recits et d'autres gens.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to Professor Max Dorsinville for tracking

through this thesis and for all of the assistance and i~sights

he has given me since I began graduate studies at McGill.

Thanks also to Nick Sloboda who generously offered the angle

of his thoughts.

To my parents, Betty and Jacques, much appreciation for your

understanding and tenacity, and to Kelly, special thanks for

always recognizing the opportunity to land on the tallest

ladder after sliding down the longest chute on the board.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I INTRODUCTION • • • • • • • • • . • • • • • • • • • . • • • . • • • • • . . • 1

II LOVE MEDICINE: Narrative Threads of Power •.. 10

III THE BEET QUEEN: Aerial View .•••••...••••.••• 38

IV TRACKS: Turning the Story over ••••.....•.•.• 66

V CONCLUSION . • . . . • • • • • • • . • • . . . . . • . . . . . • ...... 99

VI NOTES • ...... • • • ...... • . . . . . • • ...... • 109

VII BIBLIOGRAPHY • • . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . . . . • • • . . . . • • 113

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

Louise Erdrich' s use of dual or multi- perspectival narration in Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks has fuelled most of the scattered flames of critical and analytical response to her writings. Recognized as

"Faulknerian" 1 and linked with the use of multiple points of view in modernist literary antecedents such as Eliot's The

Waste Land and Virginia Woolf' s The Waves 2, the novels' fragmentary textual form has concurrently attracted comparisons with traditional Native storytelling "cycles" 3. The difficulty critics have had in trapping Erdrich's strategic interweaving and juxtaposition of points of view either in an exclusively North American literary tradition or in Native American oral traditions reflects the complexity of the novels' prismatic vision. Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks are stories about communities, about how the individual perceives his/herself in relation both to those in the immediate community and to the world. Accordingly, each novel reaches toward a multi-dimensional understanding of the net of relationships inevitable in communal life and contact 2 between individuals with varying personal perceptions and experience. Erdrich's dual or multi- perspectivity permits the interaction of voices and perspectives within the fictive reality of her novels, revealing how contact between individuals and their stories blurs and redefines boundaries set between them.

In this thesis, I intend to consider Erdrich's use of dual or multi- perspectivity by reading the narrative voices as re-joinders in a dialogue of changing perceptions and discoveries. Erdrich places at the centre of each novel an absent female character whose fragmented story is the thread that unifies the narratives. As the individual voices and stories accumulate, the absent story surfaces in the integrated components of the text and its recognized patterns. The novels, however, are not comprised exclusively of stories that speak of an absent character's life or clearly aid in weeding out the facts or events that lead up to her disappearance from the narrative. In tracking the course of the absent character's story through two or more shifting points of view, through lies and ambiguities, or through stories that appear only superficially linked, the reader becomes more conscious of the importance that perspective plays in recognizing the tracks of one story on another.

Hefshe begins to see the mark that a story can make on the significance of other stories and the kind of connections that can be drawn between them. By employing dual or multi- 3 perspectivity to tell the story that unifies the novel, Erdrich encourages the reader to adapt to the constant flow of information, to consolidate many stories and draw connections between diverse and often disparate perspectives, as he/she tracks down the absent story. The reader thereby comes to recognize how the individual speakers function as a community of voices in the novel as a whole. In each chapter I will undertake a text specific reading that highlights an individual novel's orchestration of narrative point of view. There will be a loose pattern to my method of tracking and trapping Erdrich' s narrative strategies in all three novels: I will use a two-pronged approach that examines the structure of the novel's simultaneous imposition of unity and disunity to the short story-like chapters. This approach will permit me to communicate how the structural balance Erdrich creates between the individual narratives is reflected thematically in the connectedness and separateness experienced and envisioned by the characters. For each novel I will begin by identifying the "unities" of the text -- clear formal divisions that mark off narratives that can function independently as short stories 4. These divisions are frequently labelled as chapters either untitled or titled, and flagged temporally by seasons, months, and/or years. The most distinguishing feature of the formal divisions, however, is their organization by either a distinct third-person voice or a named first-person voice. These first 4 and third-person narratives are each told from a particular point of view, filtered through a perspective that suggests a location andjor identity behind the story which frames what is seen and how it is interpreted. Within these narrative "unities" of a named voice and character, the speaker delves into the past to find the reasons why a cathartic event occurred and how it has become linked with a change in perspective. In essence his/her story is a hunt -- a tracking of the connections between events, others, and the self. As Louise Mengelkoch points out in "Rejection and Renewal: The Theme of Alienation in the Writings of Five Mixedblood Word Warriors," Erdrich' s speakers most often act as "interpreters for the meaning of [other] people's motives and the meaning of relationships" (145). However, with the exception of Nanapush in Tracks, the named speakers do not participate in an active dialogue with the other speakers who could provide information that would broaden the scope of their particular limited view. Each narrator appears unaware of the other tellings and speaks into a void an audience both nameless and silent. In my discussion of the coherence and independence of the individual narratives, I will consider the consequences of this thematic narrative isolation on tracking the story of the absent character. Secondly, I will address the intertextual relationship of the narratives -- "where events loop around and tangle" (Love 0 5 Medicine 95). Although Erdrich permits the individual character narrations to "shape the novel, [they] never contain it" (Holt 152). Rather, frequent temporal and, in the case of Tracks, seasonal overlap between the tellings, connect and complicate the events related by the speakers. Both linear and cyclical progression dominate a novel's structure. The result is that the text moves back and forth between the present and past, perspectives shift, and motifs return. This interaction blurs the narrative boundaries, causing the "unities" to no longer appear as self-sustaining or closed. The significance of each formal division -- of each telling, alters profoundly by being "subordinated" to the work as a whole. Bakhtin explains this organizational power of speech and voice in the novel: The linguistic and stylistic profile of a given element is shaped by that subordinated unity to which it is most immediately proximate. At the same time this element together with its most immediate unity, figures into the style of the whole, itself supports the accent of the whole and participates in the process whereby the unified meaning of the whole is structured and revealed. (262) My intention, thus, is to track how when read together, these c multiple narrators work to contradict, criticize, and cast and 0 6 re-cast the stories in relation to one another, ultimately

telling the story of the absent character and revealing the

mark it has made on the others.

Although dual or multi- perspectivity as narrative form

can create contradictions and ambiguities, I will argue that

a scale by which to measure the reliability of independent

narratives emerges from this interaction. Erdrich places her

reader at the crossroads of stories, calling upon him/her to

witness the distribution of power among many voices, as hejshe

explores the contradictions and connections that dual or

multi- perspective interaction creates. Furnished with the

opportunity to track the absent story that will hook the

narratives together, the reader strikes a balance between

events and tellings, recognizing the power of story to

transform events. He/she becomes aware of how a speaker uses

hisjher discourse and for what purpose. In order to examine

the nature of truth-telling in each novel, I will focus on the

multiple nature of the speakers• narratives. I will discuss how a story tells of a speaker's identity, motives, and

his/her relationship to others. I will read this in the

connections speakers make between events and how they acquire,

interpret, and reproduce other speakers' voices and stories

within their own narration. Hence, I will consider the

possibility of locating the truth of the events that led up to

the absent characters' disappearance by examining how the

juxtaposition of voices and stories within and between 0 7 individual narratives works to fuse a story with credibility or doubt. Within the larger context of my study, I will move away from much of the criticism and cultural analyses of Erdrich's novels which tend to impose prescriptive frameworks on her use of language, motifs, and form. Rather, I agree with Gerald Vizenor's argument in his introduction to Narrative Chance: Post-Modern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures, that post-modern techniques such as fragmented narrative, discontinued or episodic chronology, doubling of characters and events, absence of closure, metafictional commentary and intertextuality, dialogues with history, mixing of modes, and a use of irony, all work toward loosening up both modernist and anthropological constraints on discourse. The literal translations and represent ations of tribal literatures are illusions, consolations in the dominant culture. There can never be "correct" or "objective" read ings of the text or the tropes in tribal literatures, only more energetic, interest ing and "pleasurable misreadings." (5) Instead, I will root my close analytical readings in an aesthetics of polyphony and cross-cultural imaginings termed by Diana Brydon as a literary strategy of "contamination" s. As products of a pluralistic society, Erdrich's novels blur boundaries within and between narrative elements and cultures 0 8 by using hybridity and heterogeneity as their key mode of representation. Attentive reading of Erdrich' s dual or multi- perspective textual strategies will expose their ability to communicate the complex relationships patterned out in constellations of meanings. As will become apparent throughout this thesis, the knowledge of many stories provides the skill to recognize multiple levels of significance. It offers characters the power to perceive, as Nanapush formulates it in Tracks, the "design" of a story {34). For the reader as well, accretion of stories gradually provides an understanding of the different angles of meaning -- the points where perspectives and stories converge and diverge. Indeed, the best hunters or greatest fishermen of the truth of the absent stories, Nanapush of Tracks and Lipsha of Love Medicine, use multiple levels of meaning generated through language and story to open their field of vision, giving them the ability to create connections and bridge gaps between images, events, stories, and ultimately, people. It is important to note, however, that although Erdrich's technique of intersecting narratives often fills in the gaps, connecting people to events and tellings in an effort to trap the story of the absent character, the resolution of each novel does not come about through a synthesis of the multiple narratives into a single and seamless story strand. While critics such as Nora Barry and Mary Prescott point to a 0 9

"holistic vision" 6 in the novels' circularity, multiple viewpoints, and themes of reintegration and continuance, they tend to gloss the heterogenous and often ambiguous ways the individual narrative "unities" interconnect. In contrast, I will discern how speakers use their individual narratives to re-define their personal experiences, exploring their own subjectivity. Furthermore, I will argue that the movement toward resolution reflects each novel's combined structural and thematic balances between independent narrative and narrative dependence, and between the agency of individuals and the power of collective forces. In the following chapters, then, I will explore the dynamics of the novels' dual or multi- perspective narrative strategies. I will focus each chapter on a particular text so that I can reveal in greater specificity the individualities and interdependence of its voices. Recognizing that narrative is, as Ursula Le Guin's formulates it in Dancing at the Edge of the World .•• , a kind of "medicine bundle, holding things in particular, powerful relation to one another and to us" (169), I will attend to the relational aspect of the narratives - the balances Erdrich establishes between the power of story and the individual to shape and be shaped by other stories and other people. 0 10

CHAPTER II LOVE MEDICINE Narrative Threads of Power

In her first novel, Love Medicine, Erdrich creates a carefully scaled formal and thematic relationship between her narratives, an equilibrium which contrasts with the divisions, imbalances, and instabilities of her characters. At the same time that it holds the narratives together under one title, the novel's form establishes distinctions between the fourteen chapters or "monologues" (Mitchell 163) by labelling each with a particular speaker's name and a title. A chapter can function as a coherent story with clear narrative progression and resolution. Told by a speaker in either a first or third person voice, these individual narratives develop thematically the significance of their particular chapter titles. As well, they are mediated by a perspective: Named speakers Albertine Johnson, Marie LazarrefKashpaw, Nector Kashpaw, Lyman Lamartine, Lipsha Morrissey, and Lulu Lamartine relate their stories in the first-person with their own "idiosyncratic cadences" (Mitchell) . The few third-person narrations are equally mediated; they are filtered through a 0 11 perspective that indicates a particular line of vision from which the action is observed. Erdrich distinguishes between the first and third-person voices by not naming the third person tellings, although as with the named tellings, they focus on an event in the life of a specific character and explore the significance of their chapter titles. Third-person voices, however, do not create the same kind of intimacy in their tellings as the named speakers. The reader does not get

a sense of the narrator 1 s character -- his/her personal peculiarities and explanations of what makes his/her point of view different from the others. Although the reader is not directly addressed as the listener to the named tellings, the confessional tone and revealing content of these first-person narratives make the reader "realize the interconnectedness of teller and event" (Mitchell 164). David Mitchell explains how the narratives are closely linked to the named voices: The reader experiences life through the eyes of the [named narrators] who tell their stories directly; we are privy to the secrets and intricacies of their lives. It is an act of collusion that the reader is allowed to enter. (Mitchell 163) In contrast, the third-person accounts are told from a spatial point of view -- a location from which an event is being observed. They offer no explanation for or meaning of what is 0 12 seen. Named narratives, however, focus on how perspective is shaped and linked to individual experience. They speak about specific narrators' lives and their particular understanding of events that provoked change. Moreover, they are consciously structured in a circular pattern: Beginning with retrospective knowledge of the outcome of events, a speaker explains how an experience produced a cathartic change in his/her understanding and self-perception. In "Saint Marie," for example, Marie Lazarre/Kashpaw begins her telling by explaining that her story will reveal what led to the change between her past and present understandings: I was ignorant ••. And it was just that the pure and wideness of my ignorance - that got me up the hill to Sacred Heart Convent and brought me back down alive ... It was a poor convent. I didn't see that then but I know that now. (41-2) The combined intimacy, self-consciousness, and specificity of experience related in the named narratives link these stories to their particular teller's identity, experience, and vision. The reader's sense of the separateness of the individual narratives comes not only from the formal chapter divisions and the coherency of the titled stories and voices, but also from the jumps in chronological time. Erdrich arranges the chapters so that the narratives jump back and forth between the 1930's and the 1980's. While in the individual narratives 0 13 events are ordered chronologically by speakers attempting to gain an understanding of the cumulative effects of their experiences, the non-chronological chapter arrangement makes the text appear disjunctive or "erratic" (Mitchie 480) . Indeed, the circularity of the tellings of the individual narratives does not initially seem to be reflected in the novel's frame which begins with the third-person telling of June Kashpaw's death in a snowstorm in "The Worlds Greatest Fishermen" (1981) and ends with Lipsha Morrissey standing on a bridge in "Crossing the Water" (1984). Love Medicine is not, however, simply a loosely related group of stories, but a work that uses the force of its aggregate voices to tell a particular story -- the story of the absent character, June Kashpaw, and to mediate on how individual stories and speakers effect and are effected by the accretion of stories and their contact with other characters. Several elements of the narrative lead the reader to recognize how the individual "threads" of narrative are woven together. In the first chapter, Erdrich immediately begins the exploration of the mark a story can have on other stories. The third-person telling of the circumstances leading up to June Kashpaw•s death in the "World's Greatest Fishermen," haunts the motifs and the events related by the other speakers in the novel. The use of metaphor in the description of her death reflects the multiple shapes and meanings it will take on throughout the novel: 14 Even when it started to snow she did not lose her sense of direction ... The heavy winds couldn't blow her off course. She continued. Even when her heart clenched and her skin turned crackling cold it didn't matter, because the pure and naked part of her went on. The snow fell deeper that Easter than it had in forty years, but June walked over it like water and came home. (6) June returns, albeit metaphorically, to the place from which she had begun her journey. This figurative return creates, however, the central question of the novel: How did "she continue" -- how is her story renewed in the lives of the other speakers? To track June's story in the narratives is, thus, to understand the significance her life and death has taken on for others. In the first chapter of the novel, Erdrich introduces the reader to how the dynamic of her narrative balance creates connections between stories. "The World's Greatest Fishermen" functions as a microcosm of the novel's structure and themes. The chapter is divided numerically into separate episodes: The first episode is told by a third-person voice and the other three are told successively by Albertine Johnson. Each section of Albertine•s three part telling picks up the thread of the story across gaps in time, much like the individual speakers 0 15 return to tell their stories throughout the novel. The third person telling of June's death is juxtaposed with Albertine•s tellings. However, unlike the other chapters of the novel which link only one title with a single episode and voice, the four episodes of "The World's Greatest Fishermen" are held together under the same title. Notably, this title is in the plural -- "Fishermen," in contrast to the patch on King

Kashpaw' s hat in section three which reads "The World's Greatest Fisherman." Accordingly, a particular angle of significance of the title is developed individually in each of the four sections of the chapter. For example, in the telling by the third-person narrator, the fisherman is Andy, the mud engineer who lures June into the bar as she waits for the bus back home: It was like going underwater. What [June) walked toward more than anything else was that blue egg in [Andy's) white hand, a beacon in the murky air. (2) As with King's "World's Greatest Fisherman" hat that is passed on to Eli, Lynette, and then King Junior, the metaphoric title of the "Greatest Fishermen" moves across the four sections, taking on and taking off meanings. Similarly, Erdrich merges and blends significance between narratives and different chapter titles in the rest of the novel. The title of Nector's telling, "Wild Geese," for example, refers to the "two geese slung from [his wrists]" (57) which he offers to Marie after 16 they couple for the first time. This title could simultaneously function as the title to other narratives, such as "Love Medicine," which tells of Lipsha' s efforts to reunite Nector and Marie with a love potion recipe calling for the hearts of two geese-- "a bird what mates for life" (200). By creating these titles which metaphorically cross chapter boundaries, Erdrich points to the power of language to make connections between stories. Language is generative, developing an interplay of images which can reveal links between stories invisible without their contact -- without the interaction of several stories. In this first chapter, Erdrich also begins to reveal the imbalances between the characters. All of the characters are estranged from one another. Unlike the novel's form, which

establishes distinctions between narratives and its content1 which concurrently crosses them through titles, metaphors, and images, the divisions between the speakers do not permit the possibility of interaction and creative exchange.

consequently, with the exception of Lipsha Morrissey1 who learns to surpass boundaries, none of the speakers benefit from the knowledge of the stories. Because she does not know her mother's story, Albertine believes, as Lipsha Morrissey initially does, that her mother did not want her. She assumes that her birth had corrupted her mother's lifelong vision of 0 being a nun: "I'd been the one who'd really blocked my mother's plans for being pure" (10). Speakers are unaware of 0 17

the other tellings 1 and moreover 1 often misinterpret and wrongly construe motives for each others' actions. Hence, Erdrich establishes the divisions between the characters as different than the formal separations. While the individual chapters have the power to merge and function as one organism through language, the speakers and other characters do not communicate. They do not use language to cross from the banks of their personal grudges and feelings of resentment to share their stories, and tell the story of June for those., like Albertine and Lipsha, who need to know the "things that happened before [their] time, things [they had] been too young to understand" (17). The divisive relationships between characters create the need for a different kind of "fisherman" to net the untold stories, in particular, the story of June Kashpaw. This "fisherman" must gather stories, compile the words of others, sift through gossip, and lure others into telling more than they might be willing to reveal. In section two of chapter one, Erdrich introduces this angle of meaning to the world of the novel, adding it directly to the metaphorical significance of the chapter title, "The World's Greatest Fisherman." As the narrator to this opening story, Albertine Johnson becomes the first fisherman of the novel, attempting to trap the reasons for June's "vanish[ing] off the land like that sudden snow"

(7). However, with only her memories, Albertine•s initial attempts at locating or ordering the events that lead up to 18 June's death are unsuccessful. She ascertains that alone she cannot be sure of events she did not witness: I saw it laid out clear, as I sat there at my table, how down to the limit that kind of life would have gotten June. But what did I know, in fact, about the thing that happened? (9) Her own stories are not enough; Albertine is too young and the memories that she does possess are vague and insubstantial: "June was a good aunt to have, the kind that spoiled you ••. she had been pretty" (8). She must, therefore, return home to collect the facts through other people's stories to communicate with those who knew June and shape her story through the words of others. However, all of Albertine' s efforts in this first chapter at capturing June's story fail. At home, she finds only her mother's and her aunt's gossip and Nector's crazy silence surrounding the events of June's life.

At the end of the story 1 Albertine is left only with the fragments of stories, as helpless to fit them together as she is in piecing the pies smashed apart by King's anger and anguish over June's death. Although at this early stage in the novel the reader does not clearly understand the full meaning of Albertine's return to the reservation and her attempts to trap the story of June's life, hejshe can recognize that in spite of Albertine's failures, she has metaphorically completed June 1 s journey back 0 19 home. Unlike the reader, however, Albertine has not heard the third-person account that precedes her story; she cannot recognize the significance of her own journey. As with Lipsha's decision to return in the final chapter, it is a significance which increases as the narratives of "false starts and fragile links" (Mitchell 162) accumulate: Albertine has an unseen connection to June which/if known, would give her reason to reconcile with her mother and ultimately, to forgive her, as Lipsha forgives his mother, June, in the last scene of the novel. However, Albertine's story is just at the beginning of Love Medicine. Only after all the voices pass through the novel and the tellings accumulate, June Kashpaw returns. Her story is told and brought home through the character of Lipsha Morrissey, who possesses "the touch" of healing words and the knowledge of the stories because he is the greatest fisherman of them all. Albertine Johnson is unsuccessful in trapping the story of June Kashpaw, but her efforts to communicate - to use language to build bridges and track June's story by learning the other characters' stories'!""' briefly opens up the scope of her vision. For a moment, she sees the complex interplay of stories and people that Erdrich creates through these individual narratives held together in the web of her novel. This insight comes as she and Lipsha lie in a field watching 0 the night sky: Northern Lights •.. The air, our faces, c 20 all cool, moist and dark, and the ghostly sky ••• Living lights. Their fires lobbed over, higher, and higher, then died out in blackness. At times the whole sky was ringed in shooting points and puckers of light gathering and falling, pulsing, fading, rhythmical as breathing. All of a piece. As if the sky were a pattern of nerves and our thought and memories travelled across it. As if the sky were one gigantic memory for us all. (34) In order to access this "gigantic memory," Albertine needs to learn more of the stories and to recognize how her story fits into this "pattern." She must come to understand how stories of personal experience and transformation function together. June's story is one of many stories of personal transformation. However, because it is absent, Albertine must look to her own story and the stories of other characters to trap it, finding out how June's story has shaped them. June's story, thus, unlocks the larger question of change that pervades the novel. Through the narratives, Erdrich addresses how and why changes occur to individuals and the role they have had in affecting them. The reader is witness to multiple perspectives and mediations on how these individual stories 0 work together as "points and puckers of light gather[ing] and fall[ing]." He/she comes to recognize the connectedness of 0 21 this "pattern" of narratives as "one piece," functioning as a whole.

In the narratives which immediately follow 11 The World's

Greatest Fishermen, 11 Erdrich brings the reader back in time to re-encounter characters he/she met in the opening chapter. Marie LazarrejKashpaw's and Nector Kashpaw's tellings appear first. Having been introduced to Marie and Nector as Albertine's grandparents, the reader is immediately struck by the changes in their characters, a transformation which he/she assumes has occurred during the gap in the narratives between Albertine's 1981 telling and Nector's and Marie's 1934 tellings. The first of the two 1934 stories, "Saint Marie," is told by Grandma Kashpaw Marie Lazarre/Kashpaw, whom Albertine presents as "the rock" {15). Albertine explains in her narrative that her grandmother is a woman who "never changed much" {15) and is the renowned "oracle" (19) of the family. However, in "Saint Marie," Marie -- now Marie Lazarre, is a young and "ignorant" (41) girl, vulnerable to Sister Leopolda's masochist practices. Moreover, she is dead certain of her vocation as a nun. In Nector's case, the change in character and perspective is even more striking. The bright young man and politician in "Wild Geese" and "The Plunge of the Brave" is juxtaposed with Albertine's crazy grandfather, Nector, whose "mind had left • . . gone wary and wild" ( 17) . By beginning her novel with such extraordinary contrasts and 0 changes in character that have developed over many years, 22

Erdrich gives the reader the sense that these stories, and thus, June's story, reach far back into time and events in the lives of many characters. Furthermore, some of the key participants in the events, such as Lulu Lamartine, are not directly implicated or visible in Albertine 1 s account. Erdrich reveals, then, as Thomas Matchie rightfully observes, that

June's story "takes fifty years to see" (480). Accordingly, in all of the narratives which follow "The

World's Greatest Fishermen," individual speakers explore the space between narrative moments in time, mapping out the points where they believe "the river branched" (92} in their lives, altering their perspective and ultimately, their identity. Nectar explains his sudden realization of the direction of his life in "The Plunge of the Brave":

I remember the day it happened ...

everything went still I lifted my head

and looked around. What I saw was time

passing, each minute collecting behind me before I had squeezed from it any life •••

The moment •.• was brief but the fact is

when I got up from the front steps I was changed. ( 94)

Such descriptions of abrupt points of change may appear to conflict with the novel's slow process of accumulating many shifts in perspective over time. However, Erdrich orchestrates a balance between the 11 invisible" or cumulative changes in the 23 novel as a whole and the "visible" or sudden moments identified by individuals in their narratives. Instead of placing in opposition these two perceptions of how change is effected, she reveals how the individual moments of recognizable change fit into the larger scope of cumulative events. Cumulative change occurs because stories and lives overlap. Erdrich shows how one speaker 1 s experience of a cathartic event often is the result of hisjher story coming into contact with others' stories. Changes occur in the novel as products of the collision of two or more stories or individual lives. The significance of their coming together reverberates in multiple consequences and meanings across connecting generations.

Erdrich often presents this interaction of stories as the literal collision of characters. An example is found in "Saint

Marie" and the narrative which follows it, "Wild Geese."

"Saint Marie" ends with Marie running down the hill from

Sacred Heart, while "Wild Geese" opens with Nector climbing up to the convent. Nector describes their crash meeting in his narrative:

Because I am standing there, lost on the

empty road ... I never see Marie Lazarre

barrel down. In fact, I never even hear

until it is too late. She comes straight

down like a wagon unbraked .•• (58)

Individual narratives detail events and circumstances that 24 bring speakers to the point of intersection with others.

Through her juxtaposition of many perspectives to tell the story of her novel, Erdrich shows that these voices work together as a community. Although an occurrence may have particular significance to a speaker, the intersection of their individual narratives, experiences, and lives is a creative connection. The effects of stories interacting and people coming together are as far reaching and variable as the generations of children that such meetings as Nector's and

Marie's ultimately produce.

However, because the individual speakers of the novel remain unaware of one another's point of view and descriptions of events, they do not recognize the interlocking circular patterns of their stories. Through her speakers' voices,

Erdrich creates a narrative design with subtle variations.

Each narrator tells a distinct story; yet, the tellings are pulled together into web of interconnecting narratives by the movement of metaphors, the circularity of the individual narrative explorations of sudden shifts in vision, and the overlap of their experiences. Although characters have trouble tracking June's story and making connections, the reader sees variform traces of June's story emerge from the interaction of the tellings. Not only does he/she witness events specifically from June's early life in narratives such as "The Beads" and

"The Good Tears," but third-person narrated stories like "A

Bridge" and "Crown of Thorns" are re-visions of the telling of 0 25

June 1 s death found in "The World • s Greatest Fishermen. 11 In

these parallels to June's story, however, there are

significant differences. Other characters play determining

roles. For example, in "A Bridge," Albertine acts the part of

June. The narrative tells the story of Albertine•s running

away from home. In spite of the fact that June's story finds

her running back home, there are clear correlations between

the two stories. The underwater imagery of the Rigger Bar in

June's section is re-invoked as Albertine walks the "slick,

deep green" (131) streets with Henry Lamartine Jr., a man who

like Andy of "The World's Greatest Fishermen" (1), Albertine

follows because he looks "familiar" (132) to her. The doubling

of events becomes evident in several scenes of the stories.

Like June, Albertine has "lost a sense of herself and feels

utterly directionless" (Smith 15). Both Albertine and June go

into the ladies room to be alone to control similar chaotic

feelings of helplessness and confusion. As well, both

narratives culminate in ambiguous sexual encounters. A different kind of re-visioning is found in "Crown of

Thorns. " In this narrative Gordie Kashpaw comprehends the meaning of June's death after he runs over a deer and

bludgeons it to death in the backseat of his car. In his

drunken confusion, the memories of his frequent beatings of

June and the immediate killing of the deer merge. June re 0 surfaces as Gordie envisions himself as her murderer: He sat there in the front seat, holding 26

tight to the bar .•• The dash fell open

and the radio shrieked. The crowbar fell,

silencing that too. The shaking stopped, a

sudden lull that surprised him. In that

clear moment it came to his attention that

he just killed June. (181}

The connections between June's story and these other narratives become apparent to the reader because hejshe knows the opening narrative. He/she sees the many ways June

"continues" in other stories. In spite of the jumps in time between the two or three stories clustered around a particular year, Erdrich reveals to the reader that all of these lives are actually woven together in loose repeating patterns of narrative-- as "connecting threads" (248).

While the reader can recognize how the novel functions as a whole -- balancing the individualities of speakers and their narratives with the larger story of a community of Chippewas living in North Dakota, the speakers, as with Nectar and Marie, "lose hold" (93) of each other. They see only the divisions and differences between them. In fact, most of the intersections of the individual lives are only momentary exchanges, rather than long-term relationships. Like the "bar trick" of "inter lapping knives" that Henry Jr. shows Albertine during their brief encounter in "A Bridge," the frail connections between speakers are often of "precarious, linked edges" (135). The nature, as well as the results of such 0 27 exchanges or comings together, are also not exclusively creative: Henry Lamartine Jr. commits suicide after finally reconciling with his brother Lyman in "The Red Convertible;" Mary Lazarre/Kashpaw feels as if Nector and the children are "grinding" her down like the lake stones are worn down by the current, "smaller and smaller until they finally disappear" (73). Yet, despite the fragility of the connections and the destructive results of some of these exchanges, a character who is the result of such a frail and momentary encounter, Lipsha Morrissey, brings the stories together and traps June's story. In Albertine's narrative of "The World's Greatest Fishermen," the reader meets Lipsha as a confused young man who does not know the true circumstances surrounding his parentage. Unaware that he is the product of the short affair between his mother, June Kashpaw, and his father, Gerry Nanapush, he believes that he was "saved" by Marie LazarrefKashpaw from his unknown blood mother who "wanted to tie a rock around [his] neck and throw [him] in the slough" (242). As with Albertine, Lipsha sees himself as the result of a loveless and meaningless connection. Tracking the story of June Kashpaw runs parallel to the quest for Lipsha Morrissey • s true identity and his relationship to the other characters in the narratives. Related by blood or by sentiment to all of the 0 characters in the novel, Lipsha ties the Morrissey, Kashpaw, Lazarre, Lamartine, Pillager, and Nanapush families together. 0 28

In "Love Medicine, 11 Nector offers Lipsha an explanation of the important role he plays in connecting their lives together: One time, long ago, both of us were fishing together. We caught a big old snapper what started towing us around like it was a motor • • . [Nector] said "Let • s keep this turtle on and see where he takes us. " So we rode along behind that turtle, watching as from time to time it surfaced • . . "Lipsha," [Nector] said, "we are glad your mother didn't want you because we was always look ing for a boy like you who would tow us around the lake." (208-9) In the process of finding his connection to the others, Lipsha consolidates stories and re-unites characters. Appropriately, the title of the novel, Love Medicine, is the same as Lipsha's first narrative. As with the merging of titles across stories, Lipsha Morrissey blends and unifies all the individual narratives together, effecting change with his words. A figure of communication and reconciliation, Lipsha pulls Nector back to Marie through his own narrative, "Love Medicine" and helps to bring Lulu Lamartine and her lifelong adversary, Marie LazarrefKashpaw, together in "The Good Tears." Locating his own connection, however, requires that 0 Lipsha learns the true story of his mother, June, and comes to an understanding of how she "continued" in him. The novel 0 29 tracks his progression from ignorance in "The World's Greatest Fishermen" to his coming to knowledge in the final narrative, "Crossing the Water." Erdrich parallels Lipsha's discovery of June's story and his identity with the reader's interweaving of the accumulated stories and shifts in perspective. When the reader first meets Lipsha in "The World's Greatest Fishermen," he/she encounters a young man who is directionless and lives in dreams of leaving the gravity of the earth to "[fly] through the air" and "land on the moon" (37). Not realizing his connection to the other characters -- how he figuratively "tow[s]" the other stories, Lipsha finds himself trapped by both his lack of clear direction and his fear of possibilities. In her essay "Where I Ought to Be," Erdrich explains the need for an understanding of connections: We can escape gravity itself, and every semblance of geography, by moving into sheer space, and yet we cannot abandon our need for reference, identity or pull to landscapes ... (24) Lipsha's rootlessness translates into his feelings of displacement and ineffectuality. As he explains at the start of "Love Medicine," "I never really done much with my life ••. (Marie LazarrefKashpaw] used to call me the biggest waste on the reservation" (189). Without the knowledge of the other 0 stories, Lipsha is not aware that many of his feelings and the events in his life have "happened before" (271). He does not 30

have the "reference" of others' experiences which would give

him an appreciation of the value of his connections, as well

as enhance his individual experience.

However, Lipsha Morrissey has "secrets in [his] hands

that nobody ever knew to ask" (190). While Lipsha claims he

has the power to cure people of their minor illnesses and

pains by touching them with his hands, the reader recognizes

that the real source of his healing "touch" (190) is language.

Lipsha is the symbol of communication of the novel. He gives

meaning to the chaos of Grandpa Nector's mind and later acts

as the interpreter of Nector's ghostly presence. Most

importantly, Lipsha understands the real "love medicine" of

the novel: "It's true feeling, not no magic" (214). He

explains how like "true feeling," "love medicine" can take

many forms, and that the power of "love medicine" comes from

communicating "true feeling." As Lipsha defines it for Marie,

"love medicine" is someone taking the "chance to tell you how

he loves you ... how he understands" (214). Lipsha Morrissey also uses the power of language and

storytelling to reconcile the accumulated stories and

understand the impact of the past on the present. Through his

own narratives, Lipsha attempts to track down where the

stories of others intersect. His first telling, "Love

Medicine," details his search for the connections between the c stories of Marie, Nector, and Lulu to explain their strange and antagonistic behaviour toward one another. His second 0 31 narrative, "Crossing the Water," explores his own place in the stories after his discovery that he is the product of June Kashpaw's and Gerry Nanapush's stories coming together. Through his own storytelling and discoveries, Lipsha learns that, like the sequence of the narratives themselves reveal, connections between stories and people incessantly "loop and tangle" (94). He realizes that a coming to knowledge is, therefore, a continuous process of throwing one story back and pulling out another which might better encompass multifarious experiences. Lipsha describes this project of broadening perspective through multiple stories in a metaphor of fishing: [Nectar] was fishing in the middle of Lake Turcot. And there was big thoughts on his line, and he kept throwing them back for even bigger ones that would explain to him, say, the meaning of how we got here and why we have to leave so soon. (193) Lipsha is the greatest fisherman of the novel; he successfully nets the story of June because he learns as many of the stories as he can, putting them in contact in a vision that permits them to function as a whole. Lipsha integrates many different stories to "get down to the bottom of his heritage" (248). His self-reflective process of gathering stories brings him an awareness of the importance 0 of balancing the events detailed in a narrative with a particular teller's integrity and motivation in telling. After 32 hearing many stories, Lipsha becomes aware in "Crossing the Water, " that an individual narrative point of view may provide valuable information about events, but placed side by side, accounts often conflict with one another. In this final narrative, Lipsha discovers the importance of exploring a speaker's motivation in telling a story. He believes Lulu Lamartine' s story about June because of her reasons for offering him her account: "I'm the only one that had nothing to lose by telling you all this," Lulu went on •.. "It's simple. I either gain a grand son or lose a young man who didn't like me in the first place." [Lipsha] sat there in total quiet. [Lulu] had caught [him] but good. (244) Lipsha recognizes that a knowledge of many accounts combined with an understanding of a teller's motivation and point of view can help interweave the "connecting threads" (248) of story, and ultimately, to locate the truth of what happened. Fishing for the truth about his and June's story, Lipsha sifts through others' memories, lies, half-truths, and gossip -- the remaining evidence from which he can construct what happened. Because he has not witnessed many of the events or known the people of the past, he must use other speakers' words and stories to describe his history, merging their tellings with his own. Erdrich reveals, however, that there 0 33 are disadvantages to this weaving of others' stories into an

individual's own story. As in the third-person telling of

June's death that opens the novel, motivation for a telling is

not always knowable; the credibility of stories and speakers

often cannot be measured. When the stories are lies, a

speaker's weaving of another's words into his/her own story

can jeopardize his/her future and prevent the creation of a

strong and stable sense of self. For example, Lipsha's story

of his mother's efforts to drown him is actually Marie

Lazarre/Kashpaw's fabricated version of the events. Having

integrated this lie into his own story and identity, Lipsha

feels isolated and alone, seeing himself and his story as

severed from the others.

Yet, because Lipsha eventually comes to know many stories

and works to integrate varying points of view to tell the

larger story which includes his own, he acquires the power to

take another's words or story and transform their

significance, making them relevant to his own experience. Gerry Nanapush's "No concrete shitbarn prison built that can

hold a Chippewa" (248) has particular force and meaning in

Lipsha's narrative. It speaks to his feelings of entrapment in

a directionless and unconnected identity, having a

significance that goes beyond the political message that Gerry

intended when he spoke those words. As with the novel's 0 altering of the significance of individual narratives by putting them in contact, to transform the meaning of his own c 34 story, Lipsha interweaves his knowledge of the stories and words of others with his own experiences and perspective, creating a vision both personal and a part of the whole. Once he has tracked down June's story, Lipsha faces the dilemma of how it fits into his present life. In order to place her story in relation to his own, Lipsha must develop an overall balance between his own identity and agency and the "power of events" (266) and other people acting on or creating his story. This balance translates into an understanding of the processes of change. As Lipsha explains it in "Love Medicine," he has to locate the "factor of decision" (207) which will reveal the cause of an event. Lipsha discovers, however, that this "factor of decision," is not singular. As the novel's multi-perspective narration and temporal jumps reflect, many stories past and present lead to a comprehensive knowledge of both events and the people involved. In "Crossing the Water," Lipsha finally recognizes how change involves multiple factors and many people: "It was all these connecting threads of power, you see, that gave me the flash of vision" (248). An understanding of the interplay of the accumulated stories, gives him the power to make sense of the events, and consequently, the possibility of affecting the outcome -- of participating in change. Erdrich equates knowledge of the stories with an ability to read the crimping signs on a marked deck. Lipsha, like his father, Gerry Nanapush, reads the cards by locating and understanding the patterns: "His fingers moved c 35 around the paper edges, found the nail nicks ... There was a system to the crimping that he recognized" (260). However, although he possesses the ability to recognize the "pattern," Lipsha must choose how he will use that knowledge. Knowing how he fits into the design of stories is not enough. He must also decide how his own story will affect that "pattern." Lipsha makes his decision in the last chapter of Love Medicine, as the novel completes a loose circular pattern.

Dated three years after "The World • s Greatest Fishermen, 11 "Crossing the Water" is also structured like the opening chapter: It is divided into four sections, beginning with a third-person telling and continuing for the other three sections in a first-person voice. The difference between the first and final narrative is caused by Lipsha Morrissey. Not only does he trap June's story and merge Gerry's, hers and his own together so that he can see how the events were shaped, but more significantly, Lipsha recognizes the coming together of these stories as a chance to change the significance of June's death. Instead of symbolizing entrapment in a cycle of alcoholism and violence, Lipsha's connection to June in the form of the Firebird bought with her insurance money, becomes a "route of escape" (262). The men's link with June provides the means for Gerry to "cross the border into Canada" (262), and for Lipsha to cross "the bridge over the boundary river" 0 {271). In "Crossing the Water, 11 Lipsha' s knowledge of June's c 36 story allows him to assert both the independence of his own story and vision and his dependence on the patterns of others' stories and 1 i ves. Aware of the sources of his identity, Lipsha possesses a sense of self and connections with others which gives him the power to cross personal boundaries and merge with others: "Belonging was a matter of deciding to" (255). He finds his perspective in a balance between individual experience and the communality of existence: So many things in the world have happened

before. But it~ like they never did. Every new thing that happens to a person, it's a first ... In that night I felt expansion, as if the world was branching out in shoots and growing faster than the eye could see. I felt the smallness, how the earth divided into bits and kept dividing. I felt the stars. (271) As Lipsha stands on the bridge over the "boundary river," he weighs the choices he has made in his life and the "power of events" or circumstances that have "forced [his] hand" (270). Although he embraces the Pillagers, Nanapushs, Kashpaws, Lamartines, and Lazarres, Lipsha creates a personal vision and a separate identity. He distinguishes himself from Nector Kashpaw who allows fate to take its course -- the "current •.. to [carry] [him]" (93) and who imposes rigid boundaries on his identity, unable to reconcile himself with the reality of his c 37 growing older. Lipsha does not fall into madness or sever himself from reality. Nor does he try to control chaos -- how "the ground [can] shift that you thought was solid" (209), by

identifying1 like Marie LazarrefKashpaw, with a "higher power" in the hope of manipulating the outcome of events. Moreover, unlike June, Lipsha comes home. He decides to cross the river and reconcile the past with the present, accepting the changes of the past and the possibilities of the future. As Erdrich explains in an interview with Kay Bonetti, "Lipsha's crossing the old symbols of the people who've not been able to survive. He has, and there is something quite wonderful about that simple fact •.. there's a strength that he's found in himself" (91-2). It is Lipsha's choice to return to the community, to continue, to "bring [June) home" (272). However, her story returns in a form significantly altered, rather unlike herself -- in his own shape, in Lipsha Morrissey. 0 38

CHAPTER III THE BEET QUEEN Aerial View

In her second novel, The Beet Queen, Erdrich's strategic use of accumulating points of view to weave a web of entangled narratives that can trap the story of the absent character, differs from that of Love Medicine in two striking ways. As with Love Medicine, the focal point of The Beet Queen is the disappearance of a female character and the direct and indirect effects of her vanishing on other characters. However, unlike June Kashpaw's departure in Love Medicine, Adelaide Adare's vanishing into the sky is witnessed by two of the novel's speakers-- Karl and Mary Adare. In The Beet Queen there is, thus, no mystery or dispute over the events which take place before Adelaide jumps into the airplane and flies off with Omar. The familial connections between characters are also known; in contrast to Lipsha Morrissey, they are all aware of their "heritage." Moreover, Adelaide's children, Karl and Mary, are familiar with their mother's story up until her point of departure. Unlike June's story, her story is not fragmented. What lies at the heart of this novel, then, are c 39 the distinct marks Adelaide's departure makes on the vision and stories of Karl and Mary and, consequently, on those characters with whom they are in contact. The reader rapidly becomes aware that although these speakers witness the same actions, what Mary later understands of the event that divided her from her mother differs significantly from what Karl understands. In their individual narratives, each offers an explanation of Adelaide's intentions. Mary recognizes her mother's gestures as a desire to take flight: "Here!" my mother called, holding her purse up Without a backward look, without a word, with no warning and no hesitation, she elbowed through the people ••. and stepped into the cleared space around the pilot. (12) In contrast, Karl envisions Adelaide's flight as an abduction: I thought of the way my mother's lips had grazed mine before she thrust her arm up, to offer her money . . . Her lips were cold, in spite of the full sun. Her jaw was clenched. She had never gone up in a plane before and she must have been afraid An adventure to break the tedium was all she'd wanted. Her fear and cool kiss proved it [Omar] had secretly c 40 planned not to bring her back ..• {53) As the novel progresses, Mary and Karl's disparate visions of the reasons for Adelaide's abandonment divide them. By placing the disagreement over the meaning of Adelaide's departure at the centre of her novel, Erdrich uses multi-perspectivity in The Beet Queen to explore the separation and silence that different perspectives can create. However, as with Love Medicine, she shows that communication and the knowledge from accumulated stories can bring the characters together again. Only if they exchange stories can they see the interdependence of their lives and experiences, a balance that Erdrich reflects in the simultaneous independence and dependence of her individual narratives. Erdrich adds another twist to the story of Adelaide's disappearance which affects how the reader perceives the movement of her story across the narratives. Adelaide is neither dead nor does she depart entirely from the text. She only vanishes from the characters' immediate lives. Consequently, tracking down the mark her story makes and how it continues in the lives of other speakers is locating, as Sita Kozka describes it, "the currents that flow invisible, above us" (287). The reader looks for signs of Adelaide in the stories; her presence is resurrected in images of flight and broken branches throughout the novel. While individual speakers detail how an event they witnessed caused a sudden change in perspective, because of Adelaide's persistent but 0 41 invisible presence, the reader focuses on why certain meanings of events are manifest to particular characters and yet, invisible to others. Erdrich's structuring of distinct points of view which accumulate as the novel progresses, creates an interplay of individual visions. The "aerial view" of the accreted stories gives the reader, then, the possibility of acquiring an understanding of how individual visions work together to shape the meaning of events, creating a communal perspective that is a heterogeneous mixture of people's desires and experiences. Structurally, The Beet Queen appears as a novel of many divisions. It is separated into four numbered sections composed of dated chapters. Each chapter breaks down into one or more first-person tellings combined with one third-person perspective. With the exception of Dot whose narrative closes the novel, all of the voices appear at least twice. The formal divisions, however, are not constrictive: The named voices do not repeat in any identifiable pattern, nor do they cluster within a particular section. Rather, in each chapter a selection of different voices is linked to events over a period of one year; individual speakers describe occurrences from their own points of view. As with Adelaide's departure, in each chapter, there is general consensus on the facts about the incidents detailed. Speakers discuss instead how they understand what they see -- the particular angle of meaning that a cathartic event has taken on in their individual lives, 42 and the change in personal perspective that it provoked. The internal coherency of these individual narratives and their exclusive identification with a particular name appear to mirror the strict borders of self that the speakers impose. However, in contrast to the characters who use their vision of events only to distinguish how their story does not fit with the rest of the stories, the novel's form implies many different simultaneous "unities" and separations between the speakers' voices and perspectives. In the individual narratives, Erdrich develops a speaker's character as hejshe delivers the story of how an event came about and why it wrought change in his/her life and perspective. In tracking a meaningful "pattern" that will bring "rhyme and reason" (21) to present situations, speakers tell their stories in a retrospective and circular manner. They correlate their storytelling with a process of coming to knowledge. As Mary observes in her telling of Adelaide's flight, "Thinking back now, I can't believe that I had no premonition" (11). The stories also describe a maturation, a coming to grips with the discrepancies between personal dreams and reality by understanding the mark that these fantasies make on perspective. Yet, in spite of the fact that they live with one another in a small community and have close personal ties, most of the speakers do not reveal their stories and visions. They keep their thoughts as secrets and their lives closed off. 0 43 As in Love Medicine, this lack of communication is a source of division and separation. The contact between

Celestine James and Mary Adare exemplifies the shortage of mutual understanding and breakdown in human relationships.

Friends during their youth and later eo-workers at the House of Meats, Celestine and Mary exchange stories on a regular

basis. In their individual narratives, however, neither

expresses a clear understanding of the reasons for one

another's actions or stories. Although they interact daily, they rarely permit their true perspectives to cross: "This

upsets me, but with effort I form my face into an eager mask I can't say this to Mary because it seems small and

foolish" (216-7). In an interview with Mickey Pearlman,

Erdrich describes the silences between people within close knit small town communities:

There are terrific people there but I found

growing up there difficult because the emphasis

is on conventionality. You have to conform, because otherwise there is a lot of psychic pain that you have to go through. {5-6) By keeping their thoughts unspoken, however, the characters

isolate themselves. Moreover, the knowledge that they gain

through their narratives is unproductive; instead, only

"silence accumulate[s] between [them]" (254).

Although Erdrich emphasizes the importance of sharing

points of view and telling stories, this exchange does not 0 44 imply that individuals will discern the same meaning in a

story or event. In Chapter Two, for example, Celestine relates

Mary's remarks after the accident on the slide which Mary

believes produced a miraculous image of her brother Karl's

face in the ice:

"It was a sign," [Mary] says, "but not

what they think."

"How do you mean?"

"It was Karl."

[Mary] has never mentioned Karl before,

but from Sita I know he is her brother ..•

[Mary's] face screws up. She is thinking

deeply •.. and has lost all track of me

Her eyes glare into the distance, light

and still, and I see that she is very

annoyed. ( 43)

Celestine is unable to understand why Mary interprets a

particular pattern in what is seen. Furthermore, although

Celestine knows that Karl "[ran] off on a boxcar heading west"

( 43) and; like the others, is aware of the stories about

miracles, she does not recognize the face of Karl or Christ in

the ice. Unlike Mary, the nuns, her brother and sister, and

the rest of her class, "··· all [she] can see [is a)

smashed spot" (44). Characters may share the same stories and

know the same people, but this does not guarantee a

homogeneous communal experience or vision. 0 45 As with Celestine, the characters perceive their personal visions and experience as distinct from the others. However, each strikes his/her own balance between the independence of their stories and perspectives and their need for others' stories and visions. Erdrich creates two characters -- Mary and Sita who living in community, are unable to reach an equilibrium in placing their perspectives and experiences in relation to the others'. Both Mary and Sita view themselves as extremely "unusual" {113). Unlike Karl who sees any contact with other lives as "setbacks" and "never let[s] anything go far enough to cause [him] trouble" (104), Mary and sita live amongst the others in order to set themselves apart. Mary explains her special view on events: I don't apologize, and there's really no excuse, but what happened in the Minneapolis grandstand, the boxcar, and on the play ground ••• had affected me, set me above the rest in my differentness. I had perspective. sometimes before sleep I looked down from my bed and saw Argus ... It was small, a simple crosshatch of lines on the earth •.. (66) While Mary distinguishes herself through her predictions and insight, Sita identifies with the absent Adelaide, whom she sees as unique. As Sita describes her aunt, "··· [they] could 0 not appreciate Adelaide's style ••• [i]t's not everyone who understands how to use their good looks to the best advantage" 0 46 (28). A model for DeLendrecies department store, student of Dorothy Ludlow School of Charm, owner of Chez Sita, and finally a resident of the exclusive Blue Mound, Sita stylizes a persona of riches and culture in an attempt to avoid "[going] back to being Sita Kozka, daughter of Pete, the butcher" (86). Both women hold themselves and their visions apart from the others in an effort to create distinct identities. Rather than share their perspectives and attempt to understand how their stories fit with the others, they try to preserve a self that is separate and uninfluenced by the lives with which they are in contact. They refuse, thus, to integrate the other stories into their own, instead equating their own perspective with the unequivocal truth. All of the speakers have faith in the veracity of their own words and the clarity of their vision. The confessional tone of the narratives and the pervasive secrecy of the tellings testify to this sense of exclusive knowledge. Moreover, in their narratives, speakers use the "authority" of their point of view to criticize others' actions and words, reading unspoken intentions and motivation. As Mary points out, "Celestine never saw that because she .•• took pleasure in Dot's helpless softness ••. I understood things about [Dot] that her mother could not accept" (180}. However, because they are mostly unaware of the others' perceptions, these er i ticisms are often misdirected. The novel's structural juxtaposition of individual narratives works in a more 0 47 productive manner, showing the reader the angles of an event that individual speakers fail to recognize. Because narratives in a chapter revel ve around particular events that each speaker participates in, the reader is able to compare the successive accounts and points of view. He/she can consider

characters 1 stories and their reasons for telling.

Furthermore, Erdrich 1 s inclusion of third-person narratives in the mix of perspectives, aids the reader in consolidating the stories and in navigating the often disparate significance given to events described in them. The organization of these individual narrative perspectives reflects the pervading image in the novel of a train of connecting boxcars, separating and re-joining at different points along the tracks: Through the cracks between the boards, Karl saw lanterns arc and swing and move away. And then there was a sudden jolt, another and another all down the line of cars, until theirs moved too, pounding, slowly gathering speed. (26) The third-person tellings which open the novel and end each chapter (with the exception of the last narrative), serve as these points of intersection between the first-person tellings. They are limited "aerial views" of the novel: each third-person narrative describes changes that affect all of the individual stories which precede it and foreground the 48 changes which follow. Themes developed in the individual narratives are also introduced in these tellings. "The Branch," for example, opens the novel by relating the arrival of Mary and Karl in Argus and their sudden separation. It explains how the characters react to the dog's leaping toward them by running in separate directions. The effect of this event reverberates in all of the narratives which follow, both metaphorically in the differences between characters' perspectives on the same event, and literally in the changes Mary's presence makes in the Argus community. Moreover, the telling establishes an image resurrected throughout the novel -- the branch which "either to protect himself or to seize the blooms, Karl reach[es] out and [tears] ••. from the tree" (2). All of the third-person tellings work analogously: They connect and re-connect the individual narratives by introducing the larger changes that have their roots in the tellings which come before and their effects in those which follow. In spite of the lack of any repetitive structure in the arrangement of named voices, the consistent coupling of third person tellings with several first-person narratives in each chapter, creates a kind of circular pattern to the narratives. In this sense, The Beet Queen can be seen as comprised of interlocking circles, albeit circles that consist of varying numbers of disparate voices. The numerous divisions of the novel into sections, years, chapters, and voices express the 0 49 endless movement -- separations and returns, and the fluidity of the narrative elements shaping the novel. Formal boundaries are amorphous: Not only do the stories run together in chronological order, but as with the characters' leaps and bounds out of boxcars, into planes, and down icy playground slides, the individual narratives jump and land across time. Speakers return to tell and retell parts of their stories in order to understand the "hidden signs" that foretold the outcome of events. The reader "[pieces] together what happened" (249) and how Adelaide continued by taking advantage of the novel's fluidity-- by blending the conversations and sightings, discerning emergent metaphoric designs, and recognizing loose patterns to speakers' perspectives which will help untangle the events from their personal desires and visions. In a novel where the speakers' narratives do not refute the events which took place, but instead contradict the significance of what was witnessed, tracking the truth of an account requires that the reader concentrates on assessing the credibility of the individual tellings. He/she must make judgements, ascertaining speakers' reasons for attributing a particular meaning or metaphor to an occurrence. In the individual narratives, telling a story is an attempt to find some order in chaos, to reconcile disparate elements, and to emphasize the links between events. Erdrich does not, however, equate all of her narrators' points of view as equally viable. 0 50 Rather, several speakers' visions reveal an odd mixture of comic and destructive tendencies. Sita' s " [loss] of the ability to speak out loud" (205) after pretending to lose her voice, and her physical separation and drug induced madness clearly exemplify a harmful way of seeing and reacting to events and experience. Similarly, Erdrich works to reveal to the reader the ridiculous stories some of her characters will believe in order to confirm the vision they hold of themselves. The episode of the naughty box in Mrs. Shumway's first grade classroom, reflects how the novel critiques a speaker's credibility and credulity. Mary readily believes Dot's tale of the toy box as an instrument of torture because her vision is skewed by an image of her self: I looked down at Dot, and she looked up at me. In her eyes I thought I saw adoration, innocent trust. I was her godmother of the fairytales, her protector. (186) In spite of all the signs pointing to the absurdity of the five.year old girl's story, Mary fashions the evidence into a tale that corroborates Dot's lie: •.• I threw open the lid. I half expected to find pale children huddled there. But the box was full of toys. "Do you fill it up each night?" I turned, accusing Shumway. (187) Speakers' tellings reveal much about what leads them to make 0 51 judgements on what they witness. Although Erdrich often shows how they are prey to many forces acting upon them, she also recognizes how each speaker has a hand in creating the meaning of an episode and a choice in the actions and shifts in vision it generates. Although the speakers focus predominantly on their different points of view, each strives to make connections between the stories that he/she knows. Characters recognize that to link stories is to solve the mystery of why an event transpired. However, their limited knowledge of the accounts bars them to information which could balance out their own sightings. Because they rely so heavily on their own perspectives, they do not have the understanding provided by many angles of vision. They cannot, therefore, access the power to transform the stories, to organize them in a manner which brings significance to their combination. Erdrich breaks the stalemate between her characters by introducing another element into the narratives half-way through the novel -- Dot Adare. In contrast to the other characters, Dot is distinct because she generates contact, communication, and stories, rather than limits them. Like Lipsha in Love Medicine, Dot personifies the bridging of stories to create transformative connections. The product of the meeting of Karl's and Celestine's stories, she physically and metaphorically draws all the characters together in a strange kinship of blood and sentiment. As Wallace Pfef observes, "sometimes it was as if 0 52 all of her family's worst qualities were crowded into her" (233). Dot forces the others to interact, and hence, to communicate and see that they share at least one thing in common -- her. Both a source of happiness and pain, Dot's actions and attitudes remind them of their own power to shape what happens and the consequences of their influence. Wallace explains Dot's magnetic pull on Celestine, Mary, and himself and some of the negative results of their combined sway on Dot: More than anything we had in common, Dot's spite drove [us] together •.. She ate our hearts to the bone, devoured us, grew robust on our grief ••• More than anything, we were shocked by what we had created (301). Dot causes them grief, but she connects each one of them to the future. She symbolizes their link to the unknown and their hand in shaping the stories to come. She brings meaning to their lives beyond the limits imposed by their own physicality. Rejuvenating them, her life and its significance become as "essential as air" -- a more creative kind of self preservation than isolation. Karl's singular moment of deep self-reflexivity leads to this insight: I made less and less sense •.. I was part of the senseless landscape. A pulse, a strip, of light. I give nothing, take nothing, mean nothing, hold nothing ... c 53 in that darkened, bleak, smothering moment, something came back to me ••• a sweetness ... just a breath ••• I linked [Dot] with that moment of sweetness ••• (318) All of the characters fear the possibilities of the future and their lack of control over circumstance; each hopes to be prepared for the unexpected. No one wishes to be, as Erdrich cleverly puts it, the "donkey of destiny" (224}. In their individual narratives, speakers use their retrospective tellings to discover the connecting threads which will open their eyes to the logic in the outcome of events. However, they must rely on each other for assistance and information, to share stories which together may offer "the answers to [the] incompletes" (88) of past, present, and future. Mary, Celestine, Wallace, and even Karl look to Dot as the link - the teller of the future stories which from their present perspectives cannot be foreseen. Through their narratives, characters actively seek to influence chance by knowing the "hidden stories" which helped generate the outcome of events. Mary's first telling dated 1932, explains "how [she] came to Argus" by pointing to a story of 1929, a year unseen from the 1932-72 time line of the novel: This story starts then, because before that and without the year 1929, our family would probably have gone on 0 54 living comfortably in a lonely and isolated white house •.. (5) The individual narratives hold such concealed stories. Tapping into the power of all their lives drawn together interconnected, the characters could discover some answers to the mysteries that trouble them. Instead, they over-extend "[their] imagination to mend the holes in [their] understanding" (263). Erdrich acknowledges the fact that any tracking to explain the mechanism of phenomenon and have perspective on a series of events can confuse and mislead rather than illuminate. Every character misrecognizes the meaning of one or more events when describing a sudden insight into the reasons for an occurrence. All individuals bring stories together through imagination in order to track events and experiences, and to understand consequences. However, at the same time, Erdrich advises caution when puzzling out these "hidden stories" or causes of change. There is a distinct comic undercurrent, for example, to characters' efforts to comprehend the mixture of forces that act on their lives. Mary's belief in fortune-telling and reading stories in the lines of her hand is one such attempt to enforce order and meaning on the outcome of events: [Mary] has been to the library for books and has taken her favorite out once more. It is a book by a man named Cheiro and is all about reading the lines in your hands ... 0 55 "I just want to see if that island in your Head Line has shrunk," [Mary] says, consulting her book. "It could mean a tumor of the brain or a nasty blow." (214) similarly, the prevalent symptom of sita' s madness is her recognition of a pattern in every action and event in life. Sita is consumed by images of death, finding its shape in other characters like Mary and Karl, and its signs in natural processes like eating and breathing. Part of her attraction to Adelaide's story is what she views as her aunt's elision of the pattern, ending her story by disappearing with Omar. Sita imagines Adelaide's flight in contrast to the slow death of the chickens in the butcher shop: "I saw her sucked up into a cloud ... Her wings never made that terrible chicken sound, thrashing earth, but no sound at all" (287). While Mary tries to see a fixed design in the unknown, Sita searches to find signs of death. Both women, however, share a belief in a set pattern or meaning to events. They become so blinded by their desires to see the "hidden stories" that they inadvertently block out reality in a comical, yet destructive way. Speakers are seduced by the mystery and intrigue surrounding the possibility of stories unseen or unknowable from their present place and time. This is especially true for Dot, as she is young and vulnerable, knowing very few of the stories and having limited experience. Consequently, Karl and Adelaide become figures which feed Dot's imagination because c 56 they produce stories which are concealed from her: Karl' s

occasional gifts of matchbooks from far-flung places make him

a "world traveller" {235) in her eyes. Particularly through

the character of Dot, Erdrich shows how a lack of direct

contact and open exchange between individuals can turn each

into an enigma for the other. A character • s absence makes

his/her stories easily manipulated by others. For example,

sita takes her revenge against Mary by telling Dot about

Adelaide's flight, transforming it into a "romantic" tale,

"almost like a legend" (288). Because Dot is unaware of many

of the stories, the other characters' divisions, silences, and

secrets prevent her from understanding why changes have

occurred. Unlike the reader who witnesses the individual

perspectives alongside the story of Argus• metamorphosis from

a cluster of cross streets to a thriving small town, Dot does

not appreciate how the contact and mixture of people and

stories create the present. She does not immediately recognize

how the stories can enrich her life's meaning and expand her field of vision. Instead, Dot suffers from the adults•

secrets, feeling "persecuted, miserable" and "plotting her

revenge" (301) against them. Moreover, she imitates their example, keeping her thoughts "secret in diaries that she

lock(s] with small gold keys" (301).

Dot does not initially comprehend the transformative

power of contact and connection. Like Sita, she feels trapped

in an identity whose borders are rigidly imposed by c 57 exclusively physical attributes. She surpasses them only in her dreams and fantasies: In her worst moods, the world was out to destroy Dot •.• [She) had started to collect things that worked against her "Sometimes I fantasize •.• I'm picked out by a magazine to pose on their cover. They discover me living like a nobody here in Argus, and they take me and dress me up, do my hair, and suddenly I'm gorgeous." (304) Dot is disappointed because none of these hopes and plans come true. Wallace and the others recognize that she needs to change her view that forces are working against her; she requires inspiration and meaning. Wallace attempts to boost her self-image by acting "like the godmother in a children's story, grant[ing] her one wish" {304), and rigs the vote so that she will win the title of the Beet Queen in the Argus Beet Festival. However, Wallace himself cannot transcend the boundaries placed on his own identity. He hides his homosexuality, creating a false past with stories about an imaginary "poor dead sweetheart" (159). The other characters similarly delimit their identities, unable to cope with a self-image that is not fixed. They cannot offer Dot the 0 knowledge that identity is unbounded and fluid, that she has the power to transcend the confining vision which she embraces 0 58 and they embody. Only through an understanding of how her story is a combination of forces -- of stories and people, can she use this power of mixture to shape an identity both independent and open to influence. The speakers see themselves as isolated and separate because neither their experiences nor their aspirations fit the bounded identities in which they disguise themselves. They believe these identities make them important or necessary to the others. With the exception of Adelaide who chooses to live without any connection to the community, each speaker tries to shape him/herself to be "essential to them all" (19) -- to the other lives he/she is in contact with. Even Sita•s wish to be set above the rest hides a desire to be a model, however unappealing or unattainable her example may be for the others. Ironically, these strict notions of identity result from characters' inability to recognize the points of intersection and relatedness between stories. Because the reader is exposed to the accumulated points of view of the novel, he/she witnesses the multitude of ways these speakers are seen in different contexts by others. He/she recognizes how they assume many identities when seen through the eyes of others. Erdrich's multi-perspectivity -- the gathering and combining of angles of vision, thus, reveals not only how different ways of seeing can transform meaning, but can also alter an individual's understanding of the significance of the self identity. c 59 Erdrich often conveys the power of vision in a very literal manner, as with the passing of an object from speaker to speaker. For example, the Bible which Celestine hands to Karl when asked for "a souvenir" after barring him from her house, is given to Sita in the following narrative as a gift. In Sita's narrative, however, the Bible takes on a significance different than that of Celestine's gesture of exchanging it for the baby Karl has fathered. For Sita, who recognizes the Bible as belonging to Celestine, it is a sinister gift, evidence of Karl's plotting to rob her: I stared, wondering if he'd done some thing to Celestine, perhaps threatened her, in order to get the book. Or perhaps he knocked her out. And then there was the suitcase .•. I realized why Karl was here. He had robbed Celestine and we were next. (149-50) A source of humour in the novels, the juxtaposition of these different perspectives creates a play of referentiality. In his introduction to Narrative Chance, Gerald Vizenor describes the transformative power of language as "trickster power": The trickster is chance and freedom in a comic sign ..• "Creativity occurs in an act of encounter," wrote Rollo May in The Courage 0 to Create, "and is to be understood with this encounter as its center." The trickster 0 60 is an encounter in narrative voices a creative encounter in discourse. (13} As with the "common red brick" (264) which becomes many different "sign(s]" (264) to Mary, Sita, and Celestine between the time it is flung in the window of The House of Meats by an unseen hand, and thrown out a window by Mary, smashing Sita on the head (284), Erdrich reveals how vision and language can enrich and revitalize metaphors and images, creating multiple layers of meaning and effects. In the accumulating and overlapping stories, interaction is a source of change. As with Love Medicine, one of the questions addressed by The Beet Queen is the dilemma over what makes things happen -- what brings these coherent narratives to culminate in a resolution. Tracking the "factor(s] of decision" that create the events of the novel, the reader examines the interplay of point of view: he/she zooms in on the independence of the speaker's individual narratives and zooms out on the links, connections, and symmetries of the narratives functioning as a whole. With their limited views, however, the characters must balance their power to affect change and bring significance to their own lives with the boundlessness of chance and the limitations imposed by their physicality: "Where did it go?" [Celestine] said, all 0 of a sudden I saw she wasn't really speaking to me, or asking. She didn't look c 61 in my direction but to the strips of crops

to either side, the neat endless rows that

seemed to revolve beside us as we moved.

"Everything that ever happened to [Russell]

in his life ..• all the things we said and

did. Where did it go?" (203)

Characters must reconcile with death, the future, and

possibility, and their individual roles in shaping and

affecting all three. Although many of the changes depicted in

the novel are terribly sad, Erdrich's overall vision is not

tragic. Rather, like the first story "The Branch11 which

describes Mary's and Karl's arrival as "both an addition and

a subtraction" (1), until all the stories are over, it is

unclear what is ultimately gained or lost.

The novel comes to its resolution by continuing the loose

circular pattern of juxtaposed first and third-person

tellings, coupling the opening narrative, 11 The Branch," with

Dot's first-person narrative. On the other hand, Erdrich's ending with a single first-person narrative also signals a

lack of closure in the novel. This combination of both open

endedness and completion of a pattern reflects the fact that

the narratives have come full circle, but with a difference.

Although the reader arrives back at the grandstand in the

final narrative and witnesses Dot's flight, he/she recognizes 0 that the episode is not merely a re-enactment of Adelaide's departure. Rather, it is both an image of Dot's connection c 62 with the "hidden stories" of the past and a transformation of them. For Dot herself, Adelaide's story provides clear motivation and a pattern to read in her own life. Moreover, she initially sees her flight as destiny, the "logical outcome" of the stories: Before me, in the grandstand, I know that my family sits with eyes like set traps •.. right there, beneath the eyes of my family and the town, the plan in my head commences to take shape, take form as a kind of logical outcome. There is a thread beginning with my grandmother Adelaide and traveling through my father and arriving at me. That thread is flight. (335) The layers of Adelaide's, Mary's, and Karl's stories present Dot with motivation and clear vision. Yet, as Erdrich reveals, "flight" is not as certain as Dot imagines. There are other routes for Dot to choose from; she has merely examined one story "thread". Like Lipsha in Love Medicine who learns how the "threads of power" have brought him to a particular point in his life, Dot also comes to understand that the "threads" (335) of connection in her life can give her direction. This knowledge does bring her a sense of belonging and importance, but she must nonetheless create her own path by balancing her 0 relationship to others and their stories with the control she has over her story and future. c 63 Dot decides to come back; she uses her own agency to change the significance of "flight." Part of the pattern, her story alters its design. She completes the circle, only in the literal sense, returning to the place she began. Her narrative both reflects Adelaide's disappearance and differs from it. By weaving the "thread" of "flight" into her life, she has brought the story into the context of her narrative, blending it with her own identity. Appropriately, Dot's telling is the only first-person narrative which is not labelled with a surname; the connections she emphasizes are her choice. She establishes her own identity and the power of her own story: Flying in the plane she "writes her name" (335) in the sky, then helps Tom B. seed the massed cumulus clouds to end the drought. Dot acquires "perspective" as the plane climbs high, permitting her to take in the endless expanse of sky and plains, and as it flies low, "magnifying" the objects and people below: I breathe deep and slow until the world comes clear through the windshield of the plane, and I dare to move ..• The hugeness up here, the flat world tipping, no end to sky and earth, shakes me .•• when we finally descend •.• I see everything, the sudden magnification as we swoop, the 0 rushing earth, the carnival and fair- grounds like a painting that smears and c 64 then suddenly focuses as we slow. (336) Dot's "aerial view" reflects the novel's balance between individual perspectives and the blending of all the stories and lives. Furthermore, her narrative distinguishes itself from the third-person telling entitled an "Aerial View of Argus." Although "Aerial View of Argus" presents a wide field of vision, it describes Mary as being "hidden in the aerial view" (58). In contrast, Dot's narrative combines a first person telling with an aerial overview. Rather than concealing Dot, this mixture of grounding in an individual point of view with an expansive scope of sight creates a greater depth of knowledge. It is a perspective that brings Dot back and reunites her with her mother. Unlike Karl, Dot does not literally or figuratively "[leave] everything behind" (317) to assert her independence or identity. Crowned the Beet Queen, she realizes to a certain extent that the approval from the contest is not what she wants or needs. More significantly, however, with this final shift in perspective comes the novel's restoration of the delicate balance between autonomy and dependence, of being internally coherent and being part of a design. Dot affirms her identity through her exodus, but returns home only to realize that she still needs Celestine. As Dot explains, "I

walk to her 1 drawn by her, unable to help myself" (337).

Moreover 1 it is a mutual dependency 1 for Celestine also requires Dot. Although the final image of the novel is not one c 65 of Dot and Celestine together, but of each listening in their separate rooms, Erdrich leaves the reader with the perception that this mutuality opens up the possibility of renewal and transformation: Low at first, ticking faintly against the leaves, then steadier, stronger on the roof, rattling in the gutters, the wind comes. It flows through the screens, slams doors, fills the curtains like sails, floods the dark house with the smell of dirt and water, the smell of rain. I breathe it in, and I think of her lying in the next room, her covers thrown back too, eyes wide open, waiting. (338) Whereas before Dot was disappointed to find that the others did not "wait forever" for her to come back, she now is certain of her mother's "waiting." Finally able to see Celestine and the value of the love she has for her, Dot takes comfort in the knowledge that the path to her mother is clear if she needs to take it. Erdrich ends the novel, therefore, with Dot's understanding of the interplay of her power to act and the "invisible currents" that act upon her. With the security of connection, Dot opens herself to the external world, taking in the scent of rain, listening to the multitude 0 of drops of water formed by the coalescence of droplets in clouds she seeded. 0 66

CHAPTER IV TRACKS Turning the Story Over

The narrative strategy of Tracks differs from Love

Medicine 1 s and The Beet Queen's use of multiple narrators commenting on or contradicting one another to track down the absent story and the mark it has made on the other stories. Instead of a montage of narrative voices, Tracks is composed of a series of episodes told by two speakers, Nanapush and Pauline. No limited omniscient narratives are juxtaposed with their tellings. Although the novel's form is reminiscent of Erdrich' s earlier texts in that the individual narratives could serve as short stories, the sequential and cyclical temporal organization of the nine discrete and coherent episodes of Tracks is distinct. By combining chronological and seasonal time, Erdrich creates a temporal dynamic: the years move forward without any gaps, while the returning seasons create a circular configuration to the narratives. While time accumulates, years building on years, a repeating pattern can be discerned. This dynamic of narrative • progression and return reflects the novel's blending together 0 72 address creates a sense of urgency and importance to his words, communicating that his story extends beyond the limits of the world of the past that they invoke. Nanapush's constant reminders to Lulu to "listen" to his words suggest that the effectiveness of his story will be judged in the understanding it promotes in her and the course of actions she eventually chooses. In contrast, Pauline does not address her sections of the novel to any named audience. She uses the first-person in her narratives because they serve as the space for her personal confessions. Her tellings are replete with details of her sufferings and declarations of an unswerving faith in her own purpose -- to acquire power and influence: Some saints endured burning pitch or red- hot tongs. Some were torn asunder by lions, or like Perpetua, exposed to a mad heifer that flourished its hooves. There was Cecilia Predictable shapes, these martyrdoms. Mine took another form ... If the history is written of my endurance, let it report that I never toppled, never gave way to fury ... (152) Pauline's story is linked with no one. Not a participant in a creative exchange, she speaks into a void with the singular 0 purpose of justifying her actions. By distinguishing between the aim of the narrators' tellings, Erdrich sets her focus on 0 73 the different purposes story power can serve. Parallels and differences between the two speakers and their story strategies surface. Each teller works to gather different threads of stories to explain why and how a change was wrought. His/her narrative focuses on particular events, describing the shifts in personal vision that they produced. Indications of the outcome of the events at the start of a telling gives an individual narrative a circular pattern. However, although the reader has this sense of the ending of a story as it begins, the telling alters its significance. These indications of the consequences of the events come in the form of a literal revelation of the outcome or in a metaphor introduced at the start of a telling and re-invoked at its conclusion. Nanapush constructs his circular narratives with both metaphorical indications and a knowledge of the result of events. His tellings are consistently self reflexive. The narrative found in Chapter Three exemplifies the form a "return" takes in his tellings. This narrative explains the reasons for Lulu • s name, how "through Fleur Pillager ... the name Nanapush was carried on and won't die with [him]" (34). Nanapush begins his account by telling Lulu that he only "gave [his name] out once": My girl, listen well. Nanapush is a name that loses power every time it is written and stored in a government file. That is why I only gave it out once in all those 0 74 years. (32) The end of the telling hooks back with this start, re-creating the act of giving his name to Lulu: "Nanapush," I said. "And her name is Lulu" (61). In Nanapush's tellings, the circularity of a story reflects an ability to make connections, a coming to knowledge. Accordingly, the change in his perspective is coupled with the metamorphosis of the significance of offering his name. To have his name written in a government file is not exclusively a "loss" as he once believed. In this case, he has gained Lulu to pass his name on to. Moreover, his story is structured to reveal to Lulu the multiple factors which caused his decision to give her his name and have it written in the church records. He uses his narrative to detail how Eli's and Fleur•s stories merged, the unknowns surrounding Lulu's paternal line, and the strange arrival of the bear to mark her birth. All of these factors are woven together in the explanation he offers for what "(gave] him the chance to pass his name on" (32): I didn't speak immediately, but thought about his question first. I persuaded myself that Eli might not come back, and then even if he did, who knew for certain about his being the father? ... I thought about how Margaret had jeered at 0 my abilities. I thought about the after noon Pauline ran her mouth. I thought about 0 75 my wives I had the opportunity to speak

now and the right. I had kept a good blaze

going ••. There were so many tales, so many

possibilities, so many lies. The waters

were so muddy I thought I'd give them

another stir. (61)

His story exposes elements not visible in Lulu's knowledge of

the outcome -- that she has his name.

Pauline' s "returns," however, are exclusively

metaphorical. Consequently, it is never quite clear to the

reader whether she recognizes the pattern of her narrative.

The story of Pauline's re-naming is an example of one such

coming back to the beginning of a narrative through an image.

Chapter Eight opens with a description of her "boiled hands,"

scalded in her failed attempt to cause a miracle. It details

Pauline's healing, her "shed[ding] a skin with [each] dirty

wrapping" removed, and her disfigurement as "the new flesh

grew ... [tight], with no give to it ... so that [her] fingers

webbed and doubled over" {196). The conclusion of the

narrative brings the reader back to the opening image through

a description of Pauline's taking the name Leopolda. The image

of "shedding skin" now refers to her loss of self:

I asked for the grace to accept, to leave

Pauline behind, to remember that my name, 0 any name, was no more than a crumbling skin. (205) 0 76 Although she recognizes her stories as a process of enlightenment, her bizarre observations and conclusions about

the reasons for her shifts in vision suggest that she is unable to see the shape of her story. Her increasing madness

as the narratives progress confirms it. The circularity of her story and its connections reflect, thus, a slipping into a world of fantasy rather than a true coming to knowledge. Nonetheless, the return to the start in the cycle of any of the stories is not a backward movement for the reader. Like

Nanapush, he/she can see the links and witness how story backtracks through the incidents leading up to the outcome, bringing together the multiple voices and stories whose contact created the change. There are other subtle similarities and contrasts between

the two speakers and their tellings. Pauline and Nanapush (initially) identify themselves as the last in their

respective clans and of the few remaining witnesses to momentous events in the shared history. Both speakers try to establish the authority of their tellings on the basis of

their knowledge of the incidents. Nanapush explains to Lulu:

In the years I'd passed, I saw more change than in a hundred upon a hundred before. My

girl, I saw the passing of times you will

never know. I guided the last buffalo hunt. 0 I saw the last bear shot I axed the last birch that was older than I, and I saved the 0 77 last Pillager. (2) Similarly, Pauline claims she has insight because she knows about what happened to Fleur at Argus and Fleur's activities at Matchimanito, since she is "about the only one ••. who ever goes to visit her" (31) . Pauline professes her unique understanding of events in comparison to those of nameless others: [Fleur's story] comes up different every time, and has no ending, no beginning. They get the middle wrong too. They only know they don't know anything. (31) Notably, Nanapush assures the reader that he is "careful with his known facts" {39) by being cautious when telling events he has not witnessed. While he bases his trustworthiness and the accuracy of his accounts on experience, Pauline's credibility relies on the lack of other witnesses. Because no one else knows for certain the circumstances surrounding Fleur's trip to Argus or who fathered Fleur's child or what Fleur is doing at Matchimanito, her accounts cannot be disproved. Accordingly, she consistently reproduces unnamed and unseen voices to testify to the truthfulness of her perceptions and stories: Alone out there, [Fleur] went haywire, out of control. She messed with evil, laughed at the old women's advice and dressed like a man. She got herself 0 78 into some half-forgotten medicine, studied ways we shouldn't talk about. Some say she kept the finger of a child in her pocket She laid the heart of an owl on her tongue ••• (12) Unlike Nanapush who is an eyewitness to most of the events he details, Pauline' s sightings are often entangled with a conglomeration of rumours which cannot be verified. Erdrich uses these parallels and distinctions between tellings to point out how stories interweave. The larger story only becomes "visible," its "design spring(ing] clear" (34), after all accounts are juxtaposed and blended. Each narrative contributes to the outcome of the novel. As Nanapush describes it, stories are "all attached ... hooked from one side to the other, mouth to tail" (46). Brought together, the contact of the narratives creates many beginnings and endings, just as they record the births and deaths, separations and re-unions that mark the interaction of the characters. "Turning the story over" by reading these voices in dialogue, the reader sees the many sides and connections between the narratives. He/she tracks the bridges Erdrich builds between them to locate Fleur's story. Although there are many rumours, unknowns, and possibilities in the novel, the reader must know the stories and the speakers to see the many angles to the tellings. The novel is a complex web of interconnecting stories, 0 79 where although narratives do not always overlap, the speakers are in contact with one another and comment on stories that they have exchanged. For example, Pauline's version of Fleur's story at Argus is retold to Margaret Kashpaw and Nanapush in Chapter Three. This time, however, the reader does not hear Pauline's story. Instead, hejshe listens to Nanapush's critique of the story and of Pauline as she tells it: As her lips moved, her eyes skimmed from wall to floor, never meeting anyone's glance, so anxious to be believed She'd known Fleur, she said, she'd worked with her in Argus There was the butcher shop, the cards •.. In describing the things she had not seen her fingers wandered in the air ( 52-3) Pauline uses her narratives to equally criticize Nanapush and his stories, calling him a "smooth-tongued artificer" and "an arranger of secrets" (196). Like Nanapush, she adds others' stories to her own, however changing their significance in the context of her story. An example of Pauline' s narrative encompassing and transforming one of Nanapush's tellings is the story in Chapter Six of the "buffalo expedition" that Nanapush guided in his youth. Instead of envisioning the death of the buffalo as part of the larger "contrary" movement of loss (167) that Nanapush associates it with, Pauline recognizes the occurrence as a metaphor for her "gathering" of 0 80 souls in what she sees as Christ's great plans for her (139- 40). This juxtaposition and blending of stories permit the reader to see how stories are manipulable and consequently, the importance perspective plays in perception. The interaction of voices offers him/her, then, a scale by which to measure the accuracy or inaccuracies of the information found in the tellings. Erdrich' s dedication to Michael Dorris which prefaces the novel reflects the connection between people and stories: "The story comes up different every time and has no ending but always begins with you." In the frame of her novel, Erdrich's naming of the speakers in her narratives shows that there may be countless beginnings and endings to stories, but at each story's source is a person and his/her vision. Accordingly, speakers both "retell events and recreate them how they come out depends on people's memories and who does the telling" (Holt 152-3). Story springs from speakers whose character, vision, and intentions mark the events they detail. Even in the novel's form which does not provide titles for the individual narratives, the names of the speakers set the tellings apart as products of two distinct narrators. Nanapush and Pauline are different kinds of tellers because they have their own separate personalities and visions. In contrast to Pauline who conglomerates nameless voices and rumours in her tellings, Nanapush provides the names of the characters from whom he gathered information. He tries to 81 access the source of a story, emphasizing the importance of the narrator's role in framing an account: "Wait," [Nanapush] said, "how'd you get to know this?" (48). As he does for Pauline's tellings, Nanapush prefaces any story in his telling which is not his own with descriptions of the teller's character and possible explanations for the conclusions drawn. He opens his listener's eyes to the act of telling. For example, Nanapush renders Eli' s strange account of his meeting with Fleur at Matchimanito along with a sketch of Eli's state of mind: [Eli] was, as you remember, only nineteen around this time. So what he told me, coaxed out by warmth and our fill of meat, by exhaustion and by his great relief in coming back at all, might have been a fresh mind at work, a young man who took in too much, too fast, who overspent his own heart, who could not bear to face his downfall, who imagined, who was lost in the spirit, and both disgusted with his betrayal and desperate for Fleur. (105) Because Nanapush's aim is to use his tellings to bring people together, he tries to give his listener a sense of the individual behind a story. Having a knowledge of who is speaking can shed light on causes for the effects of an event in a particular story. 0 82 By noticing the similarities and dissimilarities between tellings and listening to the comments each speaker makes about others and their stories, the reader realizes how important the interaction of people and stories is in creating significance. What makes Nanapush's telling radically different than any of the other narratives found in Erdrich's novels, is that at its centre lies an exchange -- a narrator telling a story to a listener. In contrast to the other novels which present narratives of characters who shun contact and communication, Nanapush' s sections offer interaction as a bridge in language to restore disrupted and broken lives. Language and talk are essential to life -- to regaining strength and re-visioning. Accordingly, Nanapush equates talking and story with the power to revive, bringing the kind of meaning and direction necessary to continue: During the year of sickness, when I was the last one left, I saved myself by starting a story. One night I was ready to bring to the other side the doll I now gave Eli ••. I got well by talking. Death could not get a word in edgewise, grew discouraged, and traveled on. (46) Silence and a lack of interaction only spreads divisions, as it has ruptured ties between Eli, Fleur, and Lulu, and aggravated the "feud" that "divided [the community] down the middle, through time" (109). Nanapush calls on Lulu to go to 0 83 her estranged mother and talk with her (210) because he recognizes language as a means of uniting people, like a "vine that .•. twines the timbers and [draws] them close" (33). Through his words, he tries to "put things into a proper order" (167), bringing meaning and connections to the other stories. Power comes from the ability to recognize how stories interact and interconnect. While Nanapush reveals to Lulu how all the characters came into contact and how their stories fit together, Pauline builds a world of fantasy and false links: "What people said in fact was far different from what I had them say in fantasy" (73). Knowledge of many stories gives Nanapush a wide field of vision to understand how they mix and merge. Unlike Nanapush who in his age and experience has encountered numerous stories, now "squeeze[d] in the corners of his brain" (46), Pauline's inexperience and aversion to interacting with others prevent her from recognizing the pattern of the stories. Because she holds herself apart, she cannot envision how her own story interconnects with the others' stories. She loves the rumours and the gossip because it permits her the power to shape a story's meaning for her own purposes, and to fit it into her vision without having to know the stories or the people behind them. Both speakers, however, try to reveal links between stories by skilfully integrating other characters' voices and stories into their own. Although Nanapush and Pauline are the 0 84 only narrators, the voices of Eli, Margaret, Lulu, Fleur,

Damien, and other minor characters are reproduced in their

narratives. For the most part, voices are included in a

narrative to corroborate with the speaker's account, creating

credibility through the concordance of voices or filling in

the gaps of a happening that the speaker has not witnessed.

Nanapush understands how words and stories "taste of the

context and contexts in which [they] [have] lived" and are

"shot through with intentions and accents" (Bakhtin 293).

Although he knows the gossip and rumours, he is, thus, wary of

the power words can accrue:

That's how the tales started, all the

gossip, the wondering, all the things

people said without knowing and then

believed, since they heard it with their

own ears, from their own lips, each word. (9)

One of the most comical incidents in the novel comes in the

form of a story told in Nanapush' s voice, but rendered in Pauline•s narrative, a tale that reflects how words gather

significance and cause effects. In the story of the girl

caught in the flood in Chapter Six, Nanapush amasses

references to water and its accumulation: "In the old language

there are a hundred ways to describe water and he used them

all its direction, color, source, and volume" (149).

Moreover, the build up of his references to water provokes the

reaction he expects from Pauline -- her inability to control 0 85 her own bodily fluids. Nanapush is able to use other people's stories and words to both provide information and to trap others in humorous situations. However, others' words and stories can also distort the facts of an event and prove to be dangerous, when an individual believes them in spite of what their own experiences prove. Pauline's progressive madness and twisted vision correspond to an increasing reliance on an outside source Christ's words, to create her vision and purpose. Fleur too loses her confidence and her power when she begins to believe the others' stories about her being the sole reason for the events that took place: "In her mind she was huge, she was endless. There was no room for the failures of anyone else" {178). Whereas the knowledge of many voices and stories adds a level of awareness to how forces work together toward an outcome, Erdrich also reveals the importance of establishing a personal vision to examine and reflect on the relationship between others' words and one's own experience. Integrating others' words and stories is especially relevant in narratives that try to make sense of the silence and mystery that surrounds Fleur's life and her departure from Matchimanito. For Pauline, Fleur•s silence and her enigmatic "wolf grin," represent the unknown, the best fuel for gossip. Her narratives do provide information about Fleur's story, filling in many of the gaps of Nanapush's tellings. However, they are not directed toward tracking down the truth about 0 86 Fleur or her motivation. Rather, Pauline is drawn to Fleur and the strange rumours about her precisely because Fleur offers no explanation for her actions. Pauline is attracted to Fleur's impenetrability and inaccessibility, just as she is later enticed by an elusive God. On the other hand, Nanapush and the reader work toward the same end. Regardless of the fact that Nanapush's narrative does not directly address the reader, his efforts to clarify the reasons for Fleur' s disappearance propel him to tell the truth of what he knows about her story. As Nanapush tracks down what drove Fleur from the reservation for his listener, Lulu, he makes connections and offers explanations that are equally useful to the reader's project of trapping Fleur's story. The reader witnesses how Nanapush uses the broadest understanding of the stories available to him to see a situation clearly, even when he is involved in it. He relies on his skill at integrating stories to provide him with the perspicacity that will give him direction and the foresight to envision the outcome of events. Moreover, he draws this power from talking, from using language as his "magic" (J. Flavin 6). His name links him to the mythical trickster figure, Nanapush, "who stole fire" (33); Nanapush of Tracks, however, "rub[s] words together [to] get a spark" (45). He uses language and story as the tool to bring characters together, 0 as he brings stories together. Nanapush does not use language to manipulate or to cause harm; wounding with "pointed jokes" 0 87 ( 117) , he tries to reveal the foolishness of actions and beliefs, many of which are sources of antagonism and division. Consequently, Pauline' s masochistic practices, such as wearing her shoes on the wrong feet, make her the target of many of his jibes: " 'God is turning this woman into a duck' " ( 14 6) . He is "careful with [his] known facts" (39), wary of giving out his name, and sceptical about the stories he hears because he recognizes how words can make things happen. By combining the power of language and story with his knowledge of different characters' experiences and vision, he is able to time his stories, releasing one at the moment when its addition to the other forces at work creates his intended effect. For example, he begins to tell of Clarence's "shame," of Clarence's falling prey to one of his traps, to win himself half of the Morrissey cow: "Remember how we spared the life of that one?" [Nanapush] asked [Nector]. "Sometimes you let a rabbit live until you need him." "What rabbit?" Izear wanted to know. Clarence lowered the gun, motionlessly alert. Then I knew that the Morrissey had not told his shame, which gave me advantage. "It happened this way ••. " I began, turning to include Sophie, and Napoleon ..• "What are you after?" Clarence demanded. "You owe half the carcass, at least," 0 88 [Nanapush] said. (181} Pauline's understanding of story power differs significantly. Although she gossips and speculates with the others, the reader only accesses information from her because he/ she is witness to her intimate confessions. Instead of harnessing the power of story by working with what language can accomplish, she withholds her knowledge from the others as secrets that she owns: "··· my private miracle upon which no sounding trumpet should intrude" (94). Pauline puts all her faith in the power of the unknown, the uncertainty of what happened, rather than try to understand the world through creative exchange and communication. The significance that Fleur's story takes on in Nanapush's and Pauline's tellings gives the reader access to their personal visions. For Nanapush, Fleur • s story could encourage Lulu to reconcile with her mother and re-unite the family -- bring back the happiness and good times they shared together (210). He envisions Fleur as Lulu's connection to the past, to "the invisible, the ones who disappeared." She is also the mother who could advise her on her present life and what she can expect in the future {182}. Nanapush compares Lulu to Fleur in an attempt to get her to see their similarities, instead of focusing solely on their differences: "Your mother both clung to and resisted me, like any daughter. Like you're doing now " (33). He uses his tellings to show how their stories are interdependent: Fleur's story tells the 0 89 reasons for Lulu' s departure for the reservation school. Furthermore, in his narrative, Fleur•s story is a tale of survival that ends in separation because Fleur cannot accept the fact that she is unable to save her premature baby or the land, that "what was happening ••• fell beyond her abilities" (177} to affect the outcome. Nanapush tells Lulu that Fleur would not allow herself to hear his words: "She ran, her hands formed in muffs around her ears" (178), in the hope that she will listen and take his advice. In contrast to Fleur who refuses to see that she cannot prevent what happens, Lulu needs to recognize that she has the power to change the situation between them all: If you wanted to make an old man's last days happy, Lulu, you would convince your mother and your father to visit me ... go out there, forgive her ••• Don't stop your ears! Lulu, it is time, now, before you marry your no-good Morrissey and toss your life away, for you to listen ... (210-8) Nanapush tells Fleur's story, therefore, not only to provide Lulu with the reasons why she was sent to the government school, but to hold up Fleur's story so that Lulu can see her own story and choices more clearly. Through his narratives, Nanapush urges her to recognize how all the stories converge and diverge, creating similarities and differences between them. He tries to open up the field of Lulu's vision to the 0 90 interplay of forces that caused the outcome of events, rather than simply rejecting Fleur as being in opposition to her perspective and her experiences. In Nanapush' s vision of interweaving connections and relationships, Fleur's story can transform Lulu's story; it empowers her because it signifies her links with the past and the family, while at the same time offers her the possibility of effecting change. On the other hand, Pauline initially sees Fleur's story as a model to emulate, just as she later tries to live the biblical story of Christ's temptation in the desert out on Lake Matchimanito: " ... my purpose, which was to suffer in the desert forty days, forty nights " (200). Having little experience of her own and barring herself from any meaningful contact which could increase her knowledge, Pauline seeks a pattern for her life in the tales about Fleur. She believes she is "different" (69) from the others, identifying with Fleur because she too is an "exception": Fleur Pillager is the only Chippewa who can survive death by drowning (11). Pauline desires to be recognized as "unusual" (147), to be "visible,"

instead of "blend[in~] into the walls" (16). In the first two episodes of her narrative, she tries to acquire Fleur's power by mimicking her story. She lives out Fleur's powerful phrase uttered after drowning: "You take my place" (11), devoting herself to care for the sick and dying so that "when people saw [her] walking down the road, they wondered who was being taken" (75). However, Pauline does not simply attempt to 0 91 follow Fleur's path. She aspires to "take her place," to become Fleur. In her dreams she seduces Eli, replacing Fleur as "Pauline Kashpaw" (85). She even re-visions Fleur•s experience in the smokehouse as her own: "My shrieks poured from her mouth and my blood from her wounds" (66). Although she no longer patterns her life after Fleur in her final two tellings, she still desires to "take her place." Identifying instead with Christ, she parallels her influence over him with Fleur' s relationship to Misshepeshu. Throughout the novel, Pauline's goal remains the same -- to access the power and respect attributed to Fleur: There would have to come a turning, a gathering, another door. And it would be Pauline who opened it, same as she closed the Argus lockers. Not Fleur Pillager. ( 139) In her last two narratives, she envisions Fleur as the double she must destroy, once again finding reference in her crazy mix of scripture, myths, and gossip. Pauline believes that she is working toward making Fleur disappear. Instead, the reader witnesses how she actually annihilates herself. Striving to

"take Fleur 1 s place" and live another 1 s story, rather than creating her own, Pauline loses her place, her self, and ultimately, her mind.

While attributing significance and power to Fleur 1 s story, both Nanapush and Pauline measure the force of their 0 92 own lives and stories on others. Throughout the novel, Nanapush acts the roles of a gambler and a hunter, using his stories to acquire information and his skill over multiple meanings generated through language play to "snare" his prey with their own foolishness. His extensive knowledge and ability to improvise and integrate stories make him a powerful tracker with keen insight: "I think like animals, have perfect understanding for where they hide" ( 40). He recognizes the creative and healing powers of story, relying on them to survive and to foresee the outcome of events. Yet, although he dupes others, Nanapush does not deceive himself. He realizes that because he is involved in events taking place, he cannot always recognize the signs or the "design" of a story. In his final telling of the novel, Nanapush acknowledges that he could not presage the kind of changes that would come: "I now saw what Father Damien read, looking into a distance I could not have imagined" (209). Because the significance of an event is often "never visible while it is happening" (34}, but seen retrospectively, only after experiences and stories have accumulated, is a knowledge of the complex connections between them possible. Unlike Nanapush who employs story to broaden his understanding of events and his own power, Pauline does not actually alter her perspective through her tellings. In other 0 words, she does not use her experience and knowledge of stories to develop her framework of interpretation. Instead, 0 93 she keeps the same grid of oppositional forces intact throughout the novel --herself against the others/good versus evil/reservation versus outside world/Christ versus

Misshepeshu, etc., even confusing herself in the end about

which side she is on: "Which master had given me these words

to decipher? I must hate one, the other adore" (193).

Moreover, she feels she possesses a thorough understanding of events because she sees herself as both a witness to miracles

and a key figure in a master "plan" (137): "I was their own fate" (75). The only power she believes in is divine power,

whether it be Fleur's hand in the tornado that destroys Argus

or the Virgin Mary's tears that free Sophie from her kneeling position on Fleur•s front lawn. Because she depends on a

prescribed design to life -- in power that is "handed out before birth" (31), she is locked in a pattern that she cannot affect. She faces this sense of helplessness and invisibility

by trying to align herself with "higher power." The reader

recognizes her obsession with mastery and control in her masochistic practices and restrictions on her identity: "He gave me the mission ... [o]nly I must give myself away in

return, I must dissolve" (141). Constantly striving to gain the power of an omnipotent force by emulating it, Pauline is

convinced that in keeping herself separate, she is

uninfluenced by the others and can control them like 0 "puppets": She describes how unseen in the bush, she manipulates Eli and Sophie during their encounter in the 0 94 slough: I drove Eli to the peak and then took his relief away and made him start again. I don't know how long ••• I was pitiless. They were mechanical things, toys, dolls wound past their limits. I let them stop eventually, I don't know how or when ••• As if cut from puppet strings, Eli lunged to the bank ••. (84) Ironically, although Pauline sees herself in command, she is in fact, powerless. Pauline forfeits her own agency by assigning meaning to her life without examining the actual events taking place or referring to her own experience and her connections with others. Erdrich reveals how instead of pulling the strings and controlling the outcome of events, Pauline herself becomes the puppet of divine Providence, both insignificant and at the mercy of its "terrible will": "I do not know why the Lord overtook my limbs and made them clumsy

11 (157). Her lack of self-reflexivity and her efforts to have absolute control over the outcome of events destroy what could bring her reference and foresight her own experiences, identity, and ties with others. Without a personal vision, she is left with no direction outside of "Christ's fathomless purpose" (205). Her progressive madness is, thus, the story of a loss of control -- a slow cut-off from her own experience and the understanding that reality is shared with others. c 95 Nanapush has a different vision of how power operates, one that reflects the structure of the novel itself. As with the individual tellings which are coherent and can stand alone, Nanapush recognizes the separateness of experience. Although he often uses the pronoun "we" in his tellings, he simultaneously asserts the importance of his own witnessings: "I guided the last buffalo hunt. I saw the last bear shot" (2). His character is high spirited, and strongly self-aware, remarking to Lulu that "[he] [knows] what's fact, and (has] never been afraid of talking" ( 4) . He recognizes his own strengths and skills -- his power to cause effects. His naming of Lulu and ceaseless struggle to "find a ledge to kneel on, to reach through the loophole" (225) of bureaucratic policies is what finally "draw[s] [Lulu] home" (225). Nanapush changes the pattern of departure created by death, Eli's running off, and Fleur' s leaving. He brings about Lulu' s return, and consequently, the possibility of healing and renewal. Nanapush

tells Fleur 1 s story with the hope to once again cause a change, this time by using his narrative to give Lulu a sense of direction and an understanding of how all the stories came together to culminate in her own and Fleur' s departure. However, even in his telling to Lulu, he acknowledges that the power of his story is limited. Nanapush recognizes that Lulu has to choose whether she will continue to live divided from 0 her mother or whether she will visit her and forgive her. Nanapush comprehends the power of language, but he also 0 96 discerns the personal experiences and choices that incite actions. He does not expect to control events or people; rather, he uses his words to try to influence them. When Eli goes out to hunt for moose, for example, Nanapush' s words guide him: Now the song gathered. I exerted myself. Eli's arms and legs were heavy, and with out food he could not think ..• I feared that he would make a mistake ... Do not sour the meat, I reminded him now, a bold

heart moves slowly. (102) He recognizes Eli's will, only hoping that his teachings will steer Eli toward the right decisions at a time when his severe hunger puts him at a disadvantage. As with his tellings to Lulu, Nanapush uses story to instruct, never denying his students free will, encouraging them to develop their instincts and personal vision. Nanapush balances his influence and story power with the forces of other stories and other characters' desires and actions. His skill at blending the voices and stories together to tell the story of Fleur Pillager reflects an understanding of how, as Paula Gunn Allen describes it, "weaving [separate experiences] into coherence and therefore significance, [brings] a sense of wholeness ••• which constitutes direct and 0 immediate comprehension of ourselves and the universe of which we are integral parts" (Smith 18). Nanapush takes strength c 97 from the coherence of the integrated stories, but also understands the consequences of their interdependence: An individual and his/her words do not always have the power to effect change. Nanapush explains this dynamic of simultaneous independence and dependence of people and stories: Power dies, power goes under and gutters out, ungraspable. It is momentary, quick of flight and liable to deceive. As soon as you rely on the possession it is gone. Forget that it ever existed, and it returns. I never made the mistake of thinking that I owned my own strength, that was my secret. And so I never was alone in my failures. I was never to blame entirely when all was lost, when my desperate cures had no effect on the suffering of those I loved. For who can blame a man waiting, the doors open, the windows open, food offered, arms stretched wide? Who can blame him if the visitor does not arrive? (177) He accepts his own agency, making judgments and decisions based on his understanding of how the stories come together. At the same time, he recognizes the complexities of what happens when people and stories interact. As with the 0 individual narratives functioning together in the novel, in Nanapush's vision, coherence and unity of all the stories does 0 98 not erase their differences. Rather, the power of language and story is the power of transformation, of bringing a variety of people and their stories together in creative contact. The Nanapush of Tracks has the potency and the "fire" to "steal hearts" and effect change precisely because words can deeply penetrate and transform other lives and stories.

0 c 99

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION

In Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks, Erdrich structures the narrative "unities" in a way that emphasizes the fluidity inherent in the interplay of people and events. Her starting place is always a story; behind that story is a name which refers to a character whose vision controls its narrativity. Individual perspectives are profoundly personal and idiosyncratic despite common or shared experiences. Yet, visions as disparate as Nanapush' s and Pauline' s share a similar trait: each is anchored in a speaker's subjectivity- in the primacy of his/her own words and stories. Through these self-reflexive narrative "unities" that explore how individuals negotiate their own role in effecting change, Erdrich strives to reveal how story, language, and identity coalesce. In his essay "The Man Made of Words, " N. Scott Momaday comments on the relationship between words and identity: ... [I]n a certain sense we are all made of 0 words •.• our most essential being consists in language. It is the element in which we c 100 think and dream and act, in which we live our daily lives. There is no way in which we can exist apart from the morality of a verbal dimension. (49) Erdrich moves beyond, however, any limiting or static concept of identity. As Lipsha remarks in Love Medicine, "Belonging [is] a matter of deciding to" (255). While the primacy of a character's own story can reflect the strength of a firmly grounded sense of self, Erdrich does not chain identity to genealogy, names, or even personal experience. For this reason, Lipsha in Love Medicine, Dot in The Beet Queen, and Nanapush in Tracks -- characters who see the snare of creating identity through isolation or setting borders around the self, surpass personal boundaries and enrich their own perceptions and experience by blending their stories with others'. Attributed with the power or "magic" of words (Flavin, J. 9), Lipsha and Nanapush recognize that like language, people are transformative and creative. They represent the pervading vision of the novels -- the dissolution of boundaries can strengthen identity and permit renewal. Through a strategy of dual or multi- perspectivity, Erdrich links this vision of fluid identity with narrative progression. The reader does not concentrate on a single limited viewpoint. As the narratives accrete, he/she instead 0 observes a process of merging and changing perceptions even within a particular tellers group of stories. Erdrich links 0 101 this process of consolidating stories and drawing together disparate perspectives with a coming to knowledge. Speakers return to pick up the thread of a story, re-working connections and disclosing significant patterns that they recognize through the act of storytelling itself. For Lipsha, Dot, and Nanapush whose concepts of identity incorporate multiple kinds of vision, this accumulation of facts and stories widens the scope of their perception and deepens their knowledge. For characters like Nector, Sita, and Pauline who impose rigid boundaries and restrictions on personal identity, the inability to reconcile oppositional and chaotic visions or the ambiguities and contradictions of their own identity, distorts their vision, ultimately leading them into madness - the severance from any shared reality. As with her speakers, Erdrich permits each narrative "unity" to retain its various individualities. However, she also creates a calibrated harmony to the unboundedness of each text. The dynamic interaction between Lulu' s boys in Love Medicine reflects this play of narratives. When a shot went true, their gangling legs ... shifted as if a ripple went through them collectively. They moved in dance steps too intricate for the noninitiated eye to imitate or understand. Clearly they were 0 of one soul. Handsome, rangy, wildly various, they were bound • • • by the simple, 0 102 unquestioning belongingness of part of one organism. (85) Interrelationships unify the stories both thematically and structurally. This harmony is, however, an exchange that exacts transformation. Once interaction between characters and stories occurs, they are never entirely separate or independent. Yet, rather than focusing solely on what may be lost, Erdrich envisions how their union can make each more significant and powerful. Through the overlap and interpenetration of stories, she shows the reader how change and renewal is generated by contact. Accordingly, characters who choose not to interact with others or refuse to recognize their connection and role in this web of relationships are shown as destructive forces. Not strong enough in their own personal identity, these characters see only inwardly. As Pauline' sfLeopolda' s sight is described in Love Medicine, " ... the place where [Pauline's/Leopolda's] eyes moved [was] [deep], as if she stared out the wrong end of a gun barrel" ( 4 6) • They exist in tension with the overall narrational movement, a dynamic which combines circularity with linearity -- a simultaneous looking forward and backward, a vision both inward and outward. Their voices are heard in the dialogue of narratives, but Erdrich establishes them as reminders to the reader to maintain a healthy scepticism and awareness of how 0 a story can become a vehicle through which many forces flow. Comprised of a series of narratives that refer back to 0 103 the making and the effects of story, Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks are novels about storytelling and story power. Through the concurrent boundedness and unboundedness of the narratives, Erdrich appropriately focuses on how language and story are mediums of transformation and generation -- both creative and curative. Metaphors and themes circulate, crossing back and forth between narratives and voices, casting off and casting on meanings. By structuring connections and contradictions in language and story, Erdrich strives to show the reader how this power is manipulable. A story told by different tellers can lead down divergent paths: Told by

Nanapush in Tracks, Fleur 1 s story gives Lulu reasons to reconcile with her mother; told by Pauline, it justifies her own decision to be estranged from Fleur and the community.

Erdrich 1 s novels, however, move beyond any faddish enthralment with linguistic ambiguities or unreliable narrators. Language play and narrative overlap are elements in story that Erdrich uses to reveal the character behind a discourse. As Tzvetan Todorov notes, "a choice and a construction will always preside over [a narrative's] appearance; [it] is always a discourse, not a series of events" (55). Erdrich addresses the revisionary aspect of discourse by exploring the interconnectedness of a teller and the telling of an event - focusing on who is speaking and for what purpose. Although the 0 truth of what actually occurred may appear to have more than one version, the best "hunters" or "fishermen" -- Nanapush and 0 104 Lipsha, understand the transformational powers of language, and are adept enough at integrating multiple points of view that they are able to bring together the threads of the absent story. Such characters recognize the connection between identity and story -- how story is "a vehicle through which [one] asserts selfhood" (Flavin, J. 6). The result is that they are careful to establish the character and thereby, the motivation behind a telling. As Nanapush comments, "I think like animals, have a perfect understanding for where they hide" {Tracks 40) . Although gossip and speculation may be inherent in what Kathleen Sands identifies as an "anecdotal

form of storytelling" 10 in the novels, Erdrich always balances the ambiguity of gossip and the unreliability of certain tellers with these "hunters" or "fishermen" who are tricksters enough to question and subvert the words of other characters, quick to point out the control a story has exerted over an individual's response and credulity. The reader comes to trust them simply because they measure persuasive argument by • knowledge rather than conjecture and speculation. Because story can plot out different patterns, meanings, and connections between events and people, Erdrich presents it as a powerful influence on individuals' choices, decisions, and vision. However, she also emphasizes how story does not determine the actions or vision a character finally chooses. 0 Lulu comments to Lipsha after telling him the story of his parentage in Love Medicine: c 105 " You never knew who you were. That's one reason why I told you. I thought it was a knowledge that could make or break you." Again [Lipsha] sat there in total silence. "Well," [Lulu] said, "make or break?" (245) Erdrich strikes a balance between self-determination and the unbounded possibilities of chance, a dynamic similar to the texts' structural interplay of narrative individuation and connectedness. Stories can offer the understanding necessary to comprehend the depths of life, but speakers must use their own narratives to penetrate chaos. Knowledge from shared stories and connections can bridge the gap between understanding and limited experience, but characters must create their own framework to bring order and meaning to their lives. The stories of June, Adelaide, and Fleur can evoke a variety of reactions and serve as a catalyst for numerous stories and events. Therefore, characters must make their own connections and establish personal purpose and meaning - actively resist being swept along by the current of other people's visions, as Lipsha resists at the conclusion of Love Medicine. In the fictive reality of Erdrich's novels, the relationship between cumulative power and the power of individual narrative is played out in speakers' explorations of how much an event or contact with other stories and people c has shaped and reshaped their lives, identity, and vision. In c 106 a 1991 interview with Vince Passaro, Erdrich comments on this question of agency: The sense that the past is past and the the future is possible. We try to grapple with time - the impact of history. What creates the present. (43) In interpreting the past and imagining the self in relation or connection to others, characters measure how much their own stories bear directly and indirectly on the outcome of events, developing a sense of their potential to make things happen. Characters like Mary and Sita in The Beet Queen, and Pauline in Tracks equate power with control, ascendency, and possession. They react to what they perceive as a lack of agency in their own lives by seeing patterns as fixed and identity as bounded. All three are paralysed by belief in a disembodied logic that exerts total control over their lives. Mary and Pauline respond to this sense of helplessness with a self-consuming desire to identify with "higher power," to manipulate events, people, and even natural phenomena. Erdrich consistently represents this obsession to control a chaotic universe as tragic and destructive. These characters are not identified with the expansive and generative possibilities of language. Although to different degrees and consequences, they regard interaction, process, and mixture in terms of a battle c between mutually exclusive worlds. Because they place themselves outside the interplay of people and events, the c 107 transformative power of their storytelling limits potential

experience and understanding. Erdrich uses their narratives to

reveal how such visions can spawn blight and separation,

thereby establishing the distinction between language and

change as regenerative powers and language and change as

forces of annihilation and oppression.

These characters also use their belief in "higher power"

or a fixed pattern to escape responsibility for their actions.

They do not recognize how in eluding responsibility, they

participate in their own oppression and devastation. However,

Erdrich again counteracts such destructive visions through the

characters of Nanapush, Lipsha, and Dot. These are the same

characters who recognize or who gradually come to recognize

identity as an unbounded and expansive self with the power to

merge. They are able to navigate the complexities of the

interrelatedness of people, events, and stories because they

equate power with language, experience, knowledge of stories,

and the ability to re-vision and improvise. Lipsha and Nanapush are skilful gamblers who can read the patterns in

crimped cards, scrutinize motives, and above all thrive in a

chaotic universe of chance and possibility. These are the

characters who survive and continue because they formulate

their own subj ecti vi ty while remaining in the "game" -- in the

shared narrative space. They keep their sanity by maintaining c a balance between the power of other people and other stories to shape choices and the power of their own story to change c 108 and create options. The universality and depth of Erdrich's explorations of

the role of the individual in society in both effecting and

being a product of change moves Love Medicine, The Beet Queen,

and Tracks beyond the fictive reservation and small town world

of North Dakota, and confronts contemporary concerns with

achieving selfhood in a global and fluid society. The novels'

dual or multi- perspectivity and narrative interaction

communicate the need for a plurality of voices, emphasizing

that one individual or subject cannot define the meaning of an

experience. However, Erdrich also encourages the reader and

her characters to accept agency, and with a knowledge of many

stories, to make judgements. As in the novels' harmony of

individual narratives, she celebrates mutuality and

interaction, envisioning transformation and renewal not

brought about through false connections or isolation, but

through self-reflexivity and contact.

c c 109

NOTES

Louise Flavin and Victoria Walker describe Erdrich's use of different points of view and the novels' episodic qualities as "Faulknerian" (L. Flavin 56) (Walker 37).

2 When identifying Love Medicine's literary antecedents, Claire Crabtree refers to Eliot's experimental use of multi perspectival narration (50). Marvin Magalaner compares Erdrich' s multi-perspectivity with Woolf' s six speakers in The Waves, distinguishing between Erdrich' s "fluid mixture of voices, of speech patterns, grammatical inflections, and of points of view" and Woolf 's speakers who "speak in the sophisticated, literary voice of Virginia Woolf" (97).

3 Kay Bonetti recognizes a traditional mode of story "cycles" in Erdrich work. Paula Gunn Allen identifies these "cycles" as a category used by folklorists for "a number of stories that cluster around a more or less central theme and often feature particular characters and events" (Spider Woman's Granddaughters 4). In Laura Coltelli's 1990 interview with Erdrich and her husband Michael Dorris, Dorris refers to Erdrich's use of "story cycle in the traditional sense" (44). c 4 Several of the individual narratives appeared as c 110

short stories prior to the novels' publication. Some examples are Love Medicine's "Scales" which was published in Best American Short stories of 1983, Chapter 5 of Tracks which appeared as "Snares" in Best American Short Stories of 1988, and "Fleur" (also from Tracks) which won an 0. Henry Prize in

1987. s Diana Brydon describes the "central activities of post-modernism and post-colonialism" as "the bringing of differences together into creative contact .•. for literary cultural and political project[s]" (191). In addressing the critical "cult of authenticity" that often follows the works of Native writers, she argues that "all living cultures are constantly in flux and open to influences

from elsewhere" (196) and that "differences" within the texts should not be judged by "myths of cultural purity" (196).

6 Nor a Barry and Mary Prescott perceive a "holistic vision" in Love Medicine by recognizing the stories as synthesized through a re-working of "Paul Gunn Allen's notion of complementary, gender-based ritual traditions" which emphasize "complementarity" and "continuance" of traditional patterns (123).

7 James Stripes identifies the tellings of Tracks as c "historical dialogues" (26) of assimilation and traditional values. Catherine Rainwater argues that the "textual evocation c 111

of various conflicting codes, or antithetical strands within associative fields, produces in the reader an experience of marginality" (406). Both critics designate two "authentic" narrative identities, assimilationist and traditionalist, associated with a framework of interpretation -- Western European or Native American. s Nanapush's understanding and experience often crosses genders: "I am a man, but for years I had known how it was to lose a child of my blood .•. I recognized the signs in Fleur, but Margaret did not, for she had not lost one child in all her twelve ••. " (187}.

9 Catherine catt attributes the Chippewa Trickster figure with qualities characteristic of Erdrich's Nanapush: "Trickster's character will always remain ambiguous and paradoxical. His acts make all things possible - both good and evil; he will never represent one thing to his observers"

(75).

10 Kathleen Sands claims that "the source of [ Erdrich • s] storytelling technique is the secular anecdotal narrative process of community gossip, the storytelling sanction toward proper behaviour that works so effectively in Indian communities to identify membership in the group and insure c survival of group values ••• " (14). Although gossip and speculation pervade the novels, there is also much emphasis in c 112

the narratives on finding out the name -- the character and motives behind a telling. In my readings, I differentiate between named speakers drawing conclusions about the events and gossip as an unnamed and unverifiable voice.

c 0 113

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