It Takes Two
In a jumble of short stories, all of which are under the “umbrella name” Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich brings about the story of two families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. This dramatic novel has multiple aspects visible to the reader, ranging from Native American culture to specific chapter analysis. Yet, when looking at the story with a panoramic viewpoint, it is plain to see that this story’s breakdown can be simplistically wonderful through the breakdown of characters. Although there are over twenty-two characters, a protagonist and antagonist “battle” seems to occur every page. This “battle” can happen with any matchup between characters, objects, and culture. It is imperative that the reader knows it is possible to have
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Lulu Nanapush Lamartine, or Lulu, is the mother of many and the wife of few. In some situations, she is the protagonist of this story because she has a very strong antagonist. Her antagonist is not a human nor an object, rather an ideology. She has sex often. She has many children, but no steady husband. The beginning of the story titled “The Good Tears” states, “No one ever understood my wild and secret ways. They used to say Lulu Lamartine was like a cat, loving no one, only purring to get what she wanted… And so when they tell you that I was a heartless, a shameless man-chaser, don’t ever forget this: I loved what I saw” (272-273). This is Lulu speaking of herself. She knew that she “loved what [she] saw” and that she was married three times. Nector Kashpaw, Henry Lamartine Sr., and Moses Pillager, all of whom she had different reasons. Nector was her first love, for the story states, “He was my first love. We were young. Some nights we’d talk behind the mission dance hall, and by midnight we’d have set the date” (273). This quote shows that she once had real …show more content…
The reader first discovers Marie in the second chapter of the story, when she is talking about herself and her goal: to get in the convent. The story states, “So when I went there, I knew the dark fish must rise. Plums of radiance had soldered on me. No reservation girl had ever prayed so hard… I was going up there to pray as good as they could. Because I don’t have that much Indian blood” (43). This quote shows how sure she is that she will be accepted into the convent. She believes that race does not matter because she is not even that Indian, and because she has prayed harder than anyone. Then in the next paragraph she discusses her personality at her young age of fourteen. She says, “I was ignorant… The length of sky is just above my ignorance” (43). This little quote is a prime example of diction and a tad bit of irony. Erdrich uses “The length of sky” to show the amount of ignorance she has, but the style of wording has a slightly Native American tone to it. The use of natural things seem to make it so. The irony is shown because it was just sentences earlier where Marie stated, “I don’t have that much Indian blood” (43). This can show that even if she does not think she is Native American, she still is. Her antagonist in this situation is what she is trying to get in to. Not only does the covent reflect her attitude towards her Native American culture, for they had many gods and
April was a fair-skinned Metis. She never felt that she fit in to either culture. “How was I going to pass for a white person when I had a Metis sister?” (p. 49). She believed that her Metis heritage led to nothing but bad choices and it would only damage her future. She believed that the white society was classy, rich and they were treated with more respect. The family she was born into was one of alcohol abuse, parties and neglect. She hated everything about her Metis background. Her sister Cheryl on the other hand, was happy to be who she was and proud to express herself as a Metis person. Cheryl would defend the Metis traditions under any circumstance. She tried convincing April of the importance of their culture, ancestry and history. Cheryl sent April many letters, assignments and essays written by Metis people in hopes of changing April’s thoughts
O'Brien's writing style is so vivid, the reader frequently finds himself accepting the events and details of this novel as absolute fact. To contrast truth and fiction, the author inserts reminders that the stories are not fact, but are mere representations of human emotion incommunicable as fact.
Peters almost dismissal through the closing of his eyes of Anna’s love for story making allows for a distancing and ultimately a deep seeded feeling of isolation and disunity.
Born and raised in a family of storytellers, it’s no wonder that this author, Louise Erdrich became a prolific writer. Louise was born in Little Falls, Minnesota. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, near the Chippewa Reservation with her mom, who had Native American roots and her dad who was of German descent. Her parents encouraged and challenged her at an early age to read, also to write stories and even paid her a nickel for each one that she wrote. Lorena Stookey states that Louise Erdrich’s style of writing is “like William Faulkner, she creates a fictional world and peoples it with multiple narrators whose voices commingle to shape her readers’ experience of that world” (Stookey 14). Louise writes this moving story “The Shawl” as she is haunted by the sorrows of the generations of her people, the Anishinaabeg. I initially saw this tale as a very complex reading, but after careful reading and consideration, saw it as a sad and compelling story.
The reader is put in the middle of a war of nerves and will between two men, one of which we have grown up to learn to hate. This only makes us even more emotional about the topic at hand. For a history book, it was surprisingly understandable and hard to put down. It enlightened me to the complex problems that existed in the most memorable three months this century.
Conflict is an important part of any short story. The short story, “On the Sidewalk Bleeding,” contains three major conflicts: man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. himself. In this essay, I intend to explain, prove, and analyze these three struggles.
Erdrich wastes no time in calling our attention to the novels most important and reoccurring theme: water. Water is violent throughout the novel, the antithesis of water as a life giving element to the Native Americans. The dysfunction of this community is seen in the first chapter, after June meets a gentleman in hopes of having sex with him but he falls asleep, leaving her with her thoughts and the decision to walk across an open ranchland as it snows. When she exits the warm car, a warm environment, she’s in a sense left safety to her death. She walks across the cold, slushy ranchland in thin boots. Her feet and hands become cold and then numb, as one would if walking bare in snow, but she is competent in the snow and knows what direction to head into. She walks into the storm, into what the reader may visualize as a dark whiteness, an oxymoron, perhaps foreshadowing her death of hypothermia before it occurs. Also within chapter one, King and Lynette and their abusive marriage further perpetuate the theme of water when he tries to drown her in the kitchen sink, , with the drowning of Gordie in the last sentence of "Crown of Thorns," and Henry Jr. also become a victim of drowning. Symbolically, water within religion means new birth; however, within this novel it takes the opposite meaning of death. Here water is perverted and distructive, unlike
At the outset, Atwood gives the reader an exceedingly basic outline of a story with characters John and Mary in plotline A. As we move along to the subsequent plots she adds more detail and depth to the characters and their stories, although she refers back with “If you want a happy ending, try A” (p.327), while alluding that other endings may not be as happy, although possibly not as dull and foreseeable as they were in plot A. Each successive plot is a new telling of the same basic story line; labeled alphabetically A-F; the different plots describe how the character’s lives are lived with all stories ending as they did in A. The stories tell of love gained or of love lost; love given but not reciprocated. The characters experience heartache, suicide, sadness, humiliation, crimes of passion, even happiness; ultimately all ending in death regardless of “the stretch in between”. (p.329)
However, the easily overlooked similarity is the concept of love. This emotion is merely overlooked. Through this similarity, it becomes evident that love not only is something yearned for by humanity, but also a temptation so strong it can blind us to reality. This blindness can cause the pain of death. Love can cause people to do crazy things, and if you are Lieutenant Cross, even make you treat a pebble as if it were a tongue. Frank’s love for Mary Ann, as innocent as it may seem, exists as a love for a married woman. Love and lust are dangerous beasts, ones that we as readers must be weary of, for if we are not, we may find ourselves sharing the same fate as Frank, death by
...en she goes home to her family and friends, her attitude toward Indians in general changes greatly. At first, living with Indians is the most appalling thought that she could ever have. Over time, she realizes that she must somewhat befriend them in order to survive adequately. In the end, she even appreciates the Indians, and the experiences she has had with them. Her captivity also brings her closer to God, because during every hardship, she turns to her faith to help her through it. Her time with the Indians also gave her the affliction that she had always hoped for. Mary lived in prosperity before, and had too many comforts of the world around her. The journeys with the Indians give her a kind of reality check, because she sees that not everyone lives in prosperity as she did. The biggest lesson that she learns is to “look beyond present and smaller troubles, and be quieted under them, as Moses said, Exodus.xiv.13, Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.”
It has been said of Anton Chekhov, the renown Russian short-story writer, that in all of his “work, there is never exactly a point. Rather we see into someone’s hear – in just a few pages, the curtain concealing these lives has been drawn back, revealing them in all their helplessness and rage and rancor.” Alice Munro, too, falls into this category. Many of her short-stories, such as “Royal Beatings” focus more on character revelation rather than plot.
Within every story or poem, there is always an interpretation made by the reader, whether right or wrong. In doing so, one must thoughtfully analyze all aspects of the story in order to make the most accurate assessment based on the literary elements the author has used. Compared and contrasted within the two short stories, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, and John Updike’s “A&P,” the literary elements character and theme are made evident. These two elements are prominent in each of the differing stories yet similarities are found through each by studying the elements. The girls’ innocence and naivety as characters act as passages to show something superior, oppression in society shown towards women that is not equally shown towards men.
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.
In other works of fiction where the oppressive circumstances of protagonists usually arise from failures of society and within the specific individual there is often an optimism to the extent that it is suggested that progress might eventually lift the individual or mankind beyond the scope of the type of situations depicted. In Washington Square', however, James' depiction of Catherine's tragedy could well be interpreted, at a universal level, as our susceptibility to the manipulative and domineering elements in human nature combined with those factors which drive us with passionate longing for another. Our hopes for an enlightened perspective of Catherine's situation diminish as she confronts an environment of emotional, psychological and motivational disregard and cruelty displayed in numerous situations of dialogue, interviews and conniving. We recognize, however, that Catherine's sufferings are intrinsic to human nature as she is depicted also as a protagonist who displays substance and a willingness to develop her perceptions of human behaviour at the cost of being isolated physically, psychologically and emotionally.
Several different elements are necessary to create a story. Of all the elements, the conflict is most essential. The conflict connects all pieces of the plot, defines the characters, and drives the story forward. Once a story reaches its climax, the reader should have an emotional connection to the both story and its characters. Not only should emotions be evoked, but a reader should genuinely care about what happens next and the about the end result for the characters. Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” is the perfect example of how a story’s conflict evolved the disposition of its characters.