The Red Convertible by Lois Erdrich

When reading we often harness particular threads of thought or lenses of critique to gain entry into the implied historic or legendary nature of literature. To accurately process a tale in the light in which it is presented, one must consider the text from multiple viewpoints. Taking into consideration the psychological circumstances of the presenter/author/narrator, we can get a view into how our personal experiences can create bias in interpretation. By placing the elements of the story into the web of relationships used to interpret the external world, we bring a view of the text from the external perspective. All of these factors are at play in the relations between the perspective within a text, creating a form of reality with its own historic and mythic properties. Characters have their own histories and structures, expressed or not, and their perception in the fictional world they reside exerts influence outward to the reader of literature. This influence can create a sense of immersive reality that renders the reading experience to be mythic truth, based in facts but not emotion or direct perception, a somewhat distanced portrayal of events. However it can also be an expression of perceptive truth, events are experienced much they would be in real life – confusing and disjointed. To look into these problems of perspective, I will use examples from “The Red Convertible” by Lois Erdrich to demonstrate how Lyman’s narration style is representative of psychoanalytic concepts, showing how he deals with the situations presented in his life.

Oftentimes the lens we use when interpreting any art is based on our interpretation of the truth of the story – if a story is perceived as historically accurate, we look at the story as co...

... middle of paper ...

...Lyman’s perception, through the narrative, leads readers to believe that Henry is the problem, that he is being resistant to Lyman’s well intentioned attempts to return him to safety, for his own unaware good. In essence, Lyman hijacks the reality of the story, by taking the historical elements of their relationship, and presenting them in a way that removes the emotional wave of experience. With all of the examples of repression and displacement, as well as selective memory, readers can see that perhaps “The Red Convertible” represents how we often place our experiences into mythical status as a way to repress the bad portions of experience. That even the grotesque sublime that occurs in life can be stripped to its core and retold in a way that makes it appealing, and thus controllable, as opposed to the unstable reality that actually surrounds and influences us.