The Plague Of Doves Analysis

A central tenet to Louise Erdrich’s novels are the narrators she employs to tell her stories. Each character from Nanapush to Marn Wolde offer their own perspective to the larger story as a whole and allow Erdrich to create a web of narrative complexity. Paula Gunn Allen argues in The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions that Native American storytelling and storytellers act as mediators between conflicting views or sides (75). Erdrich takes this notion to heart in her novels; they offer the full scope of a story, branching out and backwards in time to provide the necessary details for a reader to fill in the gaps of the story. An idea mentioned by E. Shelly Reid describes the idea of cohesiveness or “wholeness” of narratives and how a reader is “...encouraged to be suspicious of gaps or hesitations” (69). The Plague of Doves

Allen asserts that “the circular concept requires all “points” that make up the sphere of being to have a significant identity and function, while the linear model assume that some “points” are more significant than others” (59). The linear model Allen discusses refers to the Western view of time, where certain points on a linear timeline are more important and therefore more referred to. Using a “linear chronology” disrupts the wholeness of the story and the web Erdrich creates (74). In the Native American view every single point in time is just as important as any other, reflecting on their larger belief that everything is interconnected. To bridge the gap between cultural beliefs and A Plague of Doves Reid states that, “Multiple narrators are part of the hooplike repetition and variation of…” Native American storytelling (69). Thus, the narrators Evelina, Marn, Judge Coutts and Dr. Lochren fulfill this aspect in their telling of the lynch mob story and related