Love Medicine

The novel begins with a brief picture of June’s final moments, indirectly introducing the reader to the Kashpaw, Morrissey, and Lamartine families, all three of which have some relation to June. In the opening story, Erdrich emphasizes the imagery and description of June’s corporeality. Her body shimmers and crumbles in metaphorical language that parallels her uncertain, reckless state of mind. Erdrich brings the reader back and forth between corporeality and disembodiment, as if June is not and can never be a physically stable presence in the world. Erdrich leads the reader to question whether June’s death was the inevitable result of risky behaviors, or a by-product of the failing systems around her. Erdrich resists providing a clear answer, as June is both victim and perpetrator of her own disembodiment. As the chapters go on, Erdrich reveals more layers to June, all of which indicate sadness, trauma, and the use of her body to cement herself in the world or with other people. For example, she readily gives her body to sexual encounters, and, as a child, she encouraged her cousins to try to hang her with a noose during a game. Erdrich suggests that June feels that her only access to participating in life with other people is through the sacrifice of her body. This constant, decades-long sacrifice ultimately leads to her death.

When a novel begins with a death, often this death is both a literal plot device that brings characters (such as family members) together, and a symbol of something larger. Is June’s death a warning to her other traumatized family members? Is June’s death a gift, a way of knowing that a loved one is free of corporeal pain? Though the symbolic significance of June’s death is not yet evident at this point in the novel, it serves as the inciting incident of the plot by bringing her disparate family members into the same narrative space and motivating the stories that follow.

After Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the cast of characters, the reader learns, in chronological order, of several important family events that begin to provide some answers to the questions about June and her death, and the complex web of family, social, and institutional forces that influence the Kashpaw, Morrissey, and Lamartine families. The linked story structure of this novel allows secrets to unravel slowly, as the reader moves through time, and helps Erdrich to develop an important theme: The inherited traumas that are recycled through generations. This is an important theme in human psychology, especially in the psychology of communities that have experienced hundreds of years of marginalization that have directly impacted their contemporary life, such as the diverse Indigenous peoples of North America. In structuring her novel as a journey through time, Erdrich helps her reader understand the tragic and loving dynamics between her characters, and positions this understanding in the context of American history.

Erdrich shows that this dynamic is at least partially influenced by the internalization of self-hatred and shame that marginalized communities such as Indigenous American tribes have endured at the hands of majority white governments and culture. The Kashpaw family tends toward both internal and external conflicts: alcoholism, loneliness, emotional and financial instability, leaving and returning, and lots of fighting. These conflicts have their source in a variety of influences such as the Catholic Church, the allocation of reservation land to Indigenous Americans, family drama, living in close quarters without access to other ways of life, and centuries of feeling pushed aside and reviled by more powerful people. Imagery and direct characterizations identify these characters as marked by these various traumas, each in their own way. And yet, the patterns of behavior and conflict that are often symptomatic of trauma remain the same across generations and family units. Through these cycles of violence and self-destructive behavior, Erdrich criticizes the internalization of white supremacy and excoriates the institutions of white supremacy that relegate the Kashpaw family to their cycles of abuse.

It is important to note that within these scenes of violence beats a steady heart of deep love. As much as the characters engage in forbidden romances, abandon their children, or fight with their brothers, and resent one another, they still support one another. There is always a family member around to lean on when life is especially difficult. The love between the family members is enhanced by their resentments; in one another, they see their own failures of imagination and ambition. Marie’s relationship with Margaret is an excellent example of this. Foes for many years, Margaret enjoyed the little power she held over Marie for being more respected by her community than Marie’s family was. As the years went on and Margaret’s son Nector acted more and more like his father, Margaret and Marie became closer. Eventually, they see in one another the forms of their own pain, thus bringing them together through shared trauma and sadness. Margaret and Marie have more in common than they might have supposed, and it is notably sad that they could have been comrades for years. Because Margaret and Marie needed years to see one another clearly and compassionately, Erdrich implies that the other family members who are in conflict throughout these and later chapters could learn from this example. Instead of fighting against one another, the Kashpaw could unify against their shared sadness and stresses. The Kashpaw family loves as passionately as they fight; harnessing that passion could save them all.

Erdrich establishes an important motif in these early chapters: land. Erdrich infuses her prose with specific imagery that describes the landscape of Little No Horse as far more than simply a setting or a space. Instead, the land in this novel is metaphorical of the Native American identity. Characters’ moods shift and wane with the weather, and the same corporeality that June experiences in chapter 1 is shared by all the characters in relation to the land around them. This motif alludes to Native American traditions that have been replaced or diluted by, in this novel, the Catholic Church. This motif also highlights the preciousness of land to the Native American spirit, thus emphasizing the cruelty of the theft of that land by white colonizers.

Marie embodies this tension between traditional and colonial influences. In chapter 1, and in later chapters, Marie is a glue that holds her family together. She is the disciplinarian, the giver of love and affection, and the person who can see the larger picture. No matter what, it seems, Marie does not give up her resolve to keep her family together and keep them on the path to becoming better. She takes in other people’s children even when she is struggling to feed her own kids, she loves without condition, and she is one of the few characters who does not leave her family. She is a source of structure and therefore security. What’s more, her odd relationship with the Catholic Church emphasizes Marie’s standing as a true original within the Native American community. The Catholic Church, established in North America by white settlers and historically used to assimilate oppressed Native American tribes, meets its match in the wild ferocity of young Marie. Her bizarre relationship with Sister Leopolda is simultaneously violent and hopeful. Ultimately, Marie learns that she cannot trust or truly love someone like Sister Leopolda, a woman whose job it is to change Marie and shame her into obedience. Marie’s juxtaposition to the surface saintliness of the nun at the Sacred Heart Convent demonstrates how people from the reservation are viewed in contrast to the people who control the white supremacist world. Marie’s alternative spirituality and wildness is a positive characterization: She defeats Sister Leopolda and asserts her strength over those who believe themselves to be superior to her because of race and history. Thus, Marie becomes both the mother of all Native American family members in the Kashpaw community and a hero against white nationalist culture. Marie is leader and savior, approaching the saintliness she first hopes to achieve at the convent.