"Love Medicine"

Paper Summary:

The paper explores the problems in categorizing the novel, politics raised within it and the main characters. It studies both the internal and external conflicts in the novel and looks at the use of setting and imagery.

From the Paper:

""Love Medicine" by Louise Erdrich is a novel that defies categorization. It is part Gabriel Garcia Marquez fantasy-fiction, part Hemingway's down-to-earth working man's (and woman's) fiction, part Normal Mailer's political-fiction. Erdrich chases the story of two families " the primarily the Kashpaws and the secondarily the Lamartines " through decades and generations of interactions and experiences. The two families' lives intertwine and intersect at several points, and the lynchpin to all of the stories varies between Marie and her granddaughter Albertine. The stories take place primarily on and around Indian reservations in North Dakota, and the Native American themes are present throughout the work. Erdrich does not overtly politicize "Love Medicine," but her background thematic structures lean heavily on the mistreatment of our Native American population and the unfairness of the reservation and allotment systems. The novel switches narrators often, which lends each character a unique and powerful voice. Erdrich's general structure is to deal with a character in one chapter, and then give that same character his or her own narrative voice in the next chapter. These perspective switches allow us to create our own view of a character before that character has a chance to narrate and either modify or strike down entirely our view. Erdrich uses this structure to give her characters several layers and forces the reader to identify with characters who would otherwise be distant and a bit daunting."

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