Mauser by Louise Erdrich
What Seems Hard to Believe Turns out to be Believable and Satisfying
Mauser, by Louise Erdrich, is a short story that is so well-written and packs so many emotions (love, heartbreak, infidelity, corruption, lust, rage) into so few pages -- taking a highly unlikely set of personalities and dynamics and making them actually seem highly likely, believable -- it leaves the reader frustrated and yet entertained at the same time. Clearly, Louise Erdrich has created a piece of fiction that is both realistic and unbelievable. The story causes a reader to wonder: how could a woman -- though obviously emotionally unsettled while going through the anguish and heartache of being dumped by a man who works in the same place as she does -- take such risks to help a guy who was very flaky, married, and dangerously lackluster in his values? But in the end, in the last scene, that flaky man, whose job was partly sustained through false reports regarding the weight of gravel in his truck, gets his punishment, meets his own negative karma, as he is buried in his own gravel.
What was there about this...
Louise Erdrich's poem, "Dear John Wayne," describes assimilation and immigration into a culture defined by racism. Elements of poetry, including diction, image, tone, metaphor, irony, theme, and symbol all play a role in Erdrich's description of culture and racism. Ultimately, "Dear John Wayne" describes white culture's extortion of land and culture from a Native American perspective. The poem begins with a description of group of young Native American men lying on
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. Specifically, it will make a claim about the connection between food and conflict in the novel, then support the claim with evidence from the book and personal analysis and interpretation. Food is a very important element in "Love Medicine," and much of the food references in the novel also revolve around conflict, which is a central theme in the novel. Food and conflict often
Tracks by Louise Erdrich It is easy to forget within the pride of patriotism that the United States is a post-colonial culture. Through the devaluation and near extinction of the cultures that once thrived within the confines of what some now consider the greatest country in the world is the story of so many colonized people from all over the world. Though not the only theme within Louise Erdrich's Tracks, the
His mother chose to leave him behind for reasons best known to her and not only that; she also tore him away from two little girls who had been such an important part of his life. This completely changes his personality and when as an adult he loses his wife, he connects his childhood experience to this negative experience and becomes an alcoholic. Thus we can say with some
Tracks Louise Erdich What are the strategies that Erdrich uses to pull the reader quickly into her story? Louise Erdrich pulls the reader into her novel Tracks by using two strong narrators, Nanapush and Pauline Puyat, who are hostile to each other and represent opposed points-of-view, although neither is exactly 100% honest. The story opens during the tuberculosis epidemic of 1912, which "must have cleared all of the Anishinabe (Ojibwa) that the
Ultimately, Karl finds within the society that knows him a willingness to accept him for what he is. It is no longer necessary to hide behind jokes or trickery. He needs not change his sexual identity nor his sense of himself to establish a more mature affiliation with those around him. When reentering the society at Argus, Karl is able to do so still as himself, with a sexual identity
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