Louise Erdrich “Tracks”, Book Review Example

Louise Erdrich is renowned for a group of novels that focus on a particular area of an Ojibwa Indian reservation in Eastern North Dakota and the nearby imaginary small town of Argus, that tell the story of four major mixed Indian families. The novel “Tracks”, which is one of them, was first published in New-York in 1988. It is set in the twelve-year period from 1912 to 1924, generally on the reservation but in part in fictional Argus. It illustrates the phenomenon of traditional Ojibwa culture’s and values’ degeneration caused by the growing domination of whites over the land and the lives of Erdrich’s Native American characters. The novel tells the story of the same families depicted in Erdrich’s previously written novel Love Medicine. The author illustrates how time-honoured Obijwa practices are disappearing, while tribal members are losing their land to commercial companies.

The novel focus on the story of Fleur Pillager, a strong and severe woman, who encounters fiercely the changes imposed on her native Ojibwa, and still is crushed at the end. Fleur has an unexplained ability to survive death while bringing others into fatal circumstances. She is a bright mysterious character, who attracts attention of each human being meeting her.  Her story is narrated by two other characters: Nanapush, a tribal elder and trickster figure, a pure blood Ojibwe who stayed alive despite the tuberculosis epidemic of 1912, and Pauline Puyat, a mix-blood young woman whose primary wish is to be white and who consequently abandons her Indian heritage. The two characters provide two radically different outlooks on racial identity. Their only common feature is belonging to Native American society. However, their attitude to own origins is totally unlike, and thus leads them to two diverse finales.

Nanapush, one of the narrators, is regarded as an elder in the tribe even though he is only 50 years old. His whole family has died out while the consumption epidemic in1912. He is the one to rescue a young woman Fleur Pillager, whom he discovers almost dead in her remote cabin in the woods where she as well is the lone enduring member of her family. Eventually, Fleur becomes a kind of adopted daughter to Nanapush. They both struggle, ineffectively as it turns out at the end, to hold on to their lands as the neighbouring territories are being sold out by other families to lumber and logging companies.

Pauline, the second narrator of the book, is a white-Indian girl. She abandons her family as a teenager to work in the basically white town of Argus. Lonely, friendless and embarrassed about her Indian heritage, she is fascinated by and envious of Fleur at the same time, whose physical fineness attracts much male attention. Being weak and unstable herself, she is attracted to Fleur’s strong personality. Pauline is somehow dark, she finds relief and pleasure in observing people pass away and dealing with their dead bodies. As the novel progresses, Pauline finally renounces her relation to Indian culture, turns to the convent and becomes a catholic nun. Whatever she does is devoted to Christian religion and what she is mostly thinking of are the new techniques of flagellation. She ultimately seems to go mad in her bizarre, mythical religious passion.

Nanapush is a generally honest storyteller. He is telling Lulu, Fleur’s daughter and now a young woman, the chronicle of her family background. His motives are to influence her treatment of her mother and to prove she should not detest Fleur for abandoning her as a child. Nanapush’s narration is both trustworthy and easy to read. The reader experiences a sense of identity with Nanapush since as the novel move forward we discover more and more about him. For instance, the readers eventually find out he knows many medicines. He also uses a lot of nice tricks to make life easier for those he is concerned about. In contrast to Nanapush, Pauline’s purposes in narrating her chapters are not so obvious. It feels like her major motive is not to provide the reader with the chronicle of true events she participated in, but is rather to rationalize, excuse or give an explanation for her own obsessive, over-enthusiastic, even murderous actions. In fact, she seems more willing to misrepresent the truth than to expose it. Pauline seems confused and mentally ill, and consequently the reader has a hard time putting trust in everything that is said in her chapters. The reader is unwilling to believe Pauline since one observes how she lies to herself constantly. For example, the young woman confesses to killing Napoleon Morrissey. Nevertheless, she then continues persuading herself she was not involved, arguing her innocence by the fact that the devil, as she beliefs, shows itself in many diverse shapes, and that the body of Napoleon was just the preference for the day.

Whether one of the two characters lies is still an open question. It is possible that one is inclined to believe Nanapush better, since he is nice, smart and smooth tongued. However, Nanapush’s and Pauline’s doubtful trustworthiness is one feature common between them, even though they are depicted as conflicting and harsh enemies. For instance, here is what Nanapush says about Pauline: “… She was given to improving truth….schemed to gain attention by telling odd tales that created damage. That is all to say that the only people who believed Pauline’s stories were the ones who loved the dirt.” (Erdrich 39) At the same time, Pauline describes Nanapush as “the smooth-tongued artificer…. He had manufactured humiliations, traps. He was … the arranger of secrets. Not one flare of belief lit his mind.” (Erdrich 196)

In Louise Erdrich’s novel, humour serves like great universal medicine. As the Chippewa tribe fight for their material, spiritual, and cultural endurance, the power of Native American humour has a profound effect on human existence. In “Tracks”, it is revealed through the characters of Nanapush and Fleur. Pauline, who is on the contrary the tragic, self-tormenting figure, leads herself to a complete self-destruction perfectly unable to perceive Nanapush’s unmerciful humour aimed at guiding her away from her path toward insanity. Through his role as trickster, Nanapush attempts to push Pauline, torn between her Chippewa heritage and her yearning to deny it, toward a new vision of herself, one that will stop her continual practice of self-mortification in denial of her heritage and come back to occupy her proper place within the tribe. Unfortunately Nanapush’s efforts to influence her with the help of survivalist wittiness, which can turn the young disturbed irrational woman from the abyss of self-torturing, do not succeed with Pauline. Rejecting her true identity she also rejects the healing force of humour and, instead, prefers a path that guides her away from the tribal community, as well as from finding true joy in life, which could cure and deliver her from profound depression she suffers.

Erdrich’s novel has certain purposes, that could be presented as three major ones: the first one is to present interpretations of Native American culture, for instance the significance of oral tradition; the second one is to illustrate the invasion of white people into Native American social life; a third one, and the one point actually highlighted by the dissimilarity between two narrators in the novel, is to examine the gap between Native Americans who value and struggle to hold onto the reputation and customs of their past and those Native Americans who have failed to remember their rich history and are now attempting to live in a white man’s society. The contrast between Nanapush and Pauline is more than obvious. Nanapush, who is mature, smart, humorous and caring, is devoted to his origins, he cherishes own ties with the past, remains loyal to own culture, and let it preserve despite all mishaps. He goes through all kinds of misfortunes, and nevertheless saves his sense of belonging to the world. Pauline, depressed, lonely, constantly suffering, dissatisfied, has rejected her own racial identity and chooses a life of religious slavery. She is doomed to live an unhappy life of a miserable woman, frustrated and disappointed. Her sadness is heartbreaking, yet she formed her reality with her own hands. Thus, the reader believes Nanapush because he is obviously wise and able to defend those he loves. On the other hand, Pauline is always uncomfortable around the other characters and is inclined to put herself in socially troubled situations that influence the reader’s attitude negatively and prevent one from liking Pauline’s character.

“Tracks” is probably Erdrich’s most political and most sad novel. It is based on historical facts related to land captures, and illustrates a critical and tragic moment of cultural transformation. It has bright and lyrical language, difficult, well-drawn characters and provides several points of view. As most Erdrich’s novels usually are, “Tracks” is about Native Americans who involve themselves in both Indian and non-Indian worlds. Her characters are neither wise, mentally talented spiritualist, not tragic sufferers of racial discrimination. Rather, they are normal, intricate human beings, who experience emotions, develop enmity, and sometimes hatreds, who trip over hilarious and unpredicted predicaments, and who are much involved in contemporary American life.  They are frequently mixed-race, yet still able to form their own individuality even though their reality embraces two cultures. Characters in “Tracks” are striving to find out who they are and where they originate from and to outline identities for themselves, thus exploring such broad subjects as matters of survival, belonging and home. Erdrich’s novel is a fine exemplar of modern American literature, and is a one worth reading indeed.

Works Cited

Erdrich, Louise. Tracks. 1st ed. New-York: Harper Perennial, 1989.