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

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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 Our lite Notre reference The author has granted an L'auteur a accorde une licence irrevocable non-exclusive licence irrevocable et non exclusive allowing the National Library of permeHant a la Bibliotheque Canada to reproduce, loan, nationale du Canada de distribute or sell copies of reproduire, preter, distribuer ou his/her thesis by any means and vendre des copies de sa these in any form or format, making de quelque maniere et sous this thesis available to interested quelque forme que ce soit pour persons. meHre des exemplaires de cette these a la disposition des personnes interessees. The author retains ownership of L'auteur conserve la propriete du the copyright in his/her thesis. droit d'auteur qui protege sa Neither the thesis nor substantial these. Ni la these ni des extraits extracts from it may be printed or substantiels de celle-ci ne otherwise reproduced without doivent etre imprimes ou his/her permission. autrement reproduits sans son autorisation. ISBN 0-315-94367-X Canada i 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. c c iii 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. c V 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. c c vi 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 c 1 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.
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