There are many different themes in, “Love Medicine” a book written by Louise Erdrich. Some of which are poverty, family, racism, and religion. The one that I am going to write about, is love. Love is one of the most prominent themes in this book. It conveys a mother’s love for her children, a wife’s love for her husband, and a son’s love for the ones whom he perceives his parents to be. This is but to name a few examples of love found in the book by Ms. Erdrich. However, there is also the lack of love that this work of literature portrays. There is mistreatment and betrayal, which are examples that are opposite of love. In the beginning of this book, the main character, June Morrissey, dies. The impact her death has on many of the characters …show more content…
So when Marie and Nector are old, Marie is desperate to get her husband to love her unconditionally, and to forget the Lamartine woman. Therefore, Lipsha made love medicine, which was to get Marie what she wanted. But Lipsha messed up the medicine which resulted in Nector choking to death and dying. Nevertheless, what Lipsha and Marie did, was out of love. Marie never hated Lulu, despite the fact that she had an affair with her husband, which resulted in a child who was named Lyman Lamartine. As Lulu got older, she started to lose her eyesight, and eventually went blind. So she had surgery, but she had no way to put the eye drops in that she needed. She applied for someone at the senior’s home that she lived at, and Marie volunteered. Through this Marie and Lulu became great friends. To me, this shows the great love they both had for the same man, that despite what they went through, they were able to look beyond all past troubles and have a friendly …show more content…
So she sort of let that grudge rule her life at times. Out of spite towards Nector, she slept with Moses Pillager, and had a son with him. One day, Nector had to deliver butter to the community, and he asked Lulu to help him since her car had air conditioning. Lulu then drives off into the middle of nowhere, where they end up starting their affair. Nector had put his butter on the dashboard (128), earlier and then when they began to have their affair they rubbed it all over each other. The butter then “becomes a love medicine, or healing oil, in a ritual between Lulu Nanapush and Nector Kashpaw…. just as native medicines were often rubbed on the body. Butter becomes a symbol of their affair.” (Moreau) Lulu is the other character in this book that I believe holds the most love. She became friends with Marie later on in life, despite the fact that Marie married the man she loved. But Lulu also had a great love for her sons and her daughter. And they in turn adored her, and didn’t care about her promiscuity. The love that the Lulu and her children had for one another is one of the purest forms of love there is. They care and love each other despite all their failings and
They all are vastly different and complex. Marie and Lulu’s viewpoints change on each other with the death of Nector so it can be concluded that Nector was the cause of their dislikes. Nector loved both women yet he viewed Lulu as unattainable and Marie as a burden. The different points of view give the reader different perspectives thus enabling him or her to decide who is good, bad, or neither. Through these three characters the reader can also better see the complexity of the love triangle and the psychological aspects behind each character’s motives and feelings toward one
There are several things I found quite interesting about the poems in Marie de France, most all of these works had a message that truly spoke out to me. In “Guigemar” I noticed the knight never truly wanted to pursue a female until he had lost her. When he loses her he realizes how truly amazing it was to have her and is willing to do whatever it takes to get her back. It’s quite amusing how this is still relative in today’s society. I feel not only as a society but as a culture we fail to realize how special someone is until we don’t have them anymore. This can be applied to many areas throughout our lives, weather that be a family member or especially in this case a partner.
Throughout Kaye Gibbon’s novels, each unified character portrays a resemblance to overcome their obstacles through hope. In Gibbon’s first novel, Ellen Foster the main character, Ellen a young child struggles to survive and live a normal childhood. Making matters worse, Ellen’s father was a drunken alcoholic who physically abuses her mother and sexually harasses his own daughter. As a result, Ellen’s mother commits suicide and her father dies from over dosage. As her, own parents abandon their precious child; Ellen was alone in search of a new home and family. As hope motivates Ellen to seek forward and find her new home she begins to believe what an ideal family would be like, “I had not figured out how to go about getting one for the most part, but I had a feeling it could be got”. Similar in Ellen’s case, in Gibbon’s second novel A Virtuous Woman, Jack is in search to regain himself after a heartbreak loss to his wife Ruby who died several months prior from lung cancer. Jack is an old farmer and relied heavily towards Ruby. He is now left on his own, he acknowledges that only hope may lead him back on his tracks and leave all the crucial memories behind.
Marie Lazarre importance in the story was to bring out two different relationships between her lover and her friend through a love triangle which effected a lot of the characters. The adultery changed Marie’s relationship with both Nector and Lulu. Erdrich made a point in making the affair an important part of the novel. She used the infidelity to search the changes in her characters. Mainly, Erdrich showed different sides of Marie to build Marie’s character and eventually have Marie be the person to bridge different relationships between the two people who hurt and changed her the most. In the end, love and friendship overcome any types of hatred or jealously, and Marie’s changes during the infidelity help her reach a better goal in reuniting
The Lais of Marie de France is a compilation of short stories that delineate situations where love is just. Love is presented as a complex emotion and is portrayed as positive, while at other times, it is portrayed as negative. The author varies on whether or not love is favorable as is expressed by the outcomes of the characters in the story, such as lovers dying or being banished from the city. To demonstrate, the author weaves stories that exhibit binaries of love. Two distinct types of love are described: selfish and selfless. Love is selfish when a person leaves their current partner for another due to covetous reasons. Contrarily, selfless love occurs when a lover leaves to be in a superior relationship. The stark contrast between the types of love can be analyzed to derive a universal truth about love.
There are cultural significances to the idea of “love medicine” and how the idea of love comes in different packages. In addition to these cultural images, the significance of “love medicine” can be seen between many separate characters within the novel, however I am going to focus on the following sets of characters: June and Gordie Kashpaw then Lulu Nanapush, Nector Kashpaw (and Marie Lazarre).
Throughout the first couple chapters of the book, we have learned that a man named Leonard Inkster and his son Stewart have experienced a tremendous loss. Stewarts mother had died of cancer. And after two years of mourning,
Sisters Stories in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and Tales of Burning Love." MELUS 24.2 (Summer 1999): 89-105. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.
She proclaims her husbands love throughout the story, I feel, in an attempt to bind the disconnection she feels with her husband.
The characters in this novel are impacted by the conditions of the Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota on which they live. The issues of domestic violence and poverty continually plague the characters in this novel, as they do in real life. Along with conflict, traditional customs and beliefs unite the characters in the novel Love Medicine. For example, the death of June Morrissey, Albertine’s aunt, brings the Kashpaw and Lamartine families together, all back onto the Reservation. On the night of this gathering, King attempts to drown his wife Lynette, who’s white, in the kitchen sink (Erdrich 41). Albertine hurries form where she is outside to see what’s going on and she tries to pull King off of Lynette but isn’t strong enough ( 41). She eventually bites King’s ear and he releases his grip on Lynette (41). The fact that King was horribly drunk caused this incident, he’s usually quite drunk. As a result of this chaos, the pies that had been made for the next day had been destroyed and Albertine describes her attempt to put them back together, “I worked carefully for over an hour. But once they smash there is no way to put them right.” (Erdrich 42). This symbolism represents the hopelessness that many people feel when destruction occurs. They don’t feel that
Meursault introduces Marie to the story in a rather casual way, by saying that she is “a former typist in our office whom I’d had a thing for at the time” (19). However, not long after, they seem to be in a very serious relationship, and it seems as if they have known eachother for years, so it is curious that they supposedly had not seen each other since they used to work together. Marie and Meursault seem to have a very physical relationship, and we never really see them connect on an emotional level with each other. This could be one reason why Meursault is never able to share his feeling towards her with her, because maybe he is only attracted to her physically, and not on a more personal level; “A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so. She looked sad” (35). Meursault uses nearly this exact same line when he is speaking of Maman; “I probably did love Maman, but that didn’t mean anything” (65), which could possibly show that he really is not capable of loving, if he can not even say that he feels love for his mother. Maybe it is not only that Meursault can’t express his feelings, but maybe he really does not have feeling the way that most people do. Later on in the story, Marie “came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to” (41). Meursault’s indifference about something as life changing as marriage really proves how unusual he is. For most people, marriage is something that is a huge life decision, and something you dream of all of your life. I becomes clear that Meursault does not realize the big deal about marriage at all when he says; “Then [Marie] pointed out that marriage was a serious thing. I said ‘No.’ She stopped talking for a minute and looked
Presented with many obstacles and complications to overcome, we know that Hermia is the protagonist in the play. She has relations with almost all the characters in the play. The first and most important relationship is her love, Lysander. From the very beginning we see that Hermia loves Lysander with all her heart and soul and he loved her the same. The only tragic flaw in their relationship was when Puck put the magic juice in Lysander's eyes and he fell in love with Helena. Hermia felt sad and rejected when that happened. But when Puck finally realized that he had made a mistake and corrected it, Hermia and Lysander were in their heavenly bliss of love once again.
Edna found herself questioning whether or not she ever truly loved her husband. In the 1800's women were expected to be married with a family. This is where infatuation played a role in the relationship between Edna and her husband, Léonce. Some examples of infatuation are when he/she get with someone just to spite a family member or friend, or when the relationship is prolonged, the passion and excitement that was once there is now lacking. In the case of Edna and Léonce, Edna thought that being married would conform her more to her society, and when she received the disapproval of both her sister and father that gave her an even higher inclination to marry Léonce. Love to me is having a family and being supportive of each others decisions. Edna and Léonce have half of that, they together have two children. Back then the women were supposed to be a mother-woman but Edna on the other hand was...
She seems torn between being a good wife/colon, and the desire to return to her family and hometown and leave Rycker altogether. “Love is dangerous” applies to Marie in the way that she was party to a loveless marriage with a man who neither respected her nor valued her boundaries. This lack of affection caused her to become attached to the first man that showed her any kindness: Querry. Her unrequited love for him caused her to claim that her budding child was a product of Querry in an attempt to rid her body of Rycker’s presence. She thought that by saying the baby was Querry 's’, she wouldn’t have to face another Rycker in the form of her child. This proves to be a very significant accusation when it prompts the dramatic slaying of Querry by
In my opinion, I think that Hermia is the one that speaks more completely, eloquently, and most compassionate in this play about love then any other character. .". Now much beshrew my manners and my pride If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied. But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy, Lie further off, in humane modesty. Such separation as may well be said becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid, so far be distant; and good night, sweet friend. Thy love ne'er alter till thy sweet life end." (Act. 2 sc. 2 54-61) This clearly shows Hermia's most eloquently thought out words when she talks about love to Lysander.