"Love Medicine" and its Male Characters

Paper Summary:

Louise Erdrich's "Love Medicine" follows the lives of several Native American families through five decades, with the main theme of the novel being the struggle between continuity and change. The paper shows that despite the novel's focus on the women in the novel, the brothers Eli and Nector Kashpaw have great symbolic weight as embodiments of the tendency toward preservation and change.

From the Paper:

"Eli, on the other hand, was "the old bachelor of the family" and his only child was the wild, wayward June whom he adopted (8). Unlike Nector, Eli did not participate in propagating the tribe. He often sought solitude in the woods and this choice could have no issue except for June, who died. June's sons, who repeat the modern/traditional dichotomy of Nector and Eli also fail in these roles as June had failed in the role of mother. King -- who married a white woman and moved away -- was a weak man of no character whose modernity did nothing for the tribe and less for himself. Lipsha had traditional gifts but lost them when he cut corners and botched the love spell."

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