Love Medicine

Discuss Erdrich’s style. How does she write against traditional Western ideas of language? Use examples from the text to explain your answers.


Louise Erdrich weaves a languid tale of Native American culture in a contemporary world with a starkly different approach to style than the traditional Western format. While her literary work is defined as a novel, it can also be perceived as a collection of short stories that share similar themes. Erdrich uses multiple perspectives and characters to tell the story of a diverse culture living in present day society.

Love Medicine is made up of fourteen stories, told by seven characters whose lives seem to overlap in both small and large ways. Each character is vastly different from the next, with their own past and present life events but they all share one thing in common: their Native American heritage. Erdrich is able to demonstrate different personalities and characteristics of many individuals but maintains the cultural background. This multi-perspective writing style is extremely different from the traditional solitary perspective and has its benefits. While the large amount of characters might become confusing, it is interesting to gain multiple points of view about one specific event. For example, the reader gets to witness both Nector and Marie’s day on the hill below the convent. We are shown both sides of the story, which adds a great deal of dimension. The audience is able to feel as if they are getting the entire story, which is sometimes difficult when a character is depicting an event in first person. It is easy to trust the narrator or a third person perspective who remains unbiased but when the reader is asked to believe a character’s rendition of a story, one might prefer to take it with a grain of salt. This depth is not only interesting but much more creditable.

In addition to the multiple perspectives, Erdrich strays away from the traditional writing style with an incredible accuracy to Native American dialect. She writes in a very fluid and lyrical manner throughout the entire novel but emphasizes the poetic language in the dialogue. Erdrich received countless letters complimenting her on the exactness of the Native American’s language. While not all characters tell their stories in first person, the lyrical tone of each chapter provides a rich and realistic account of the lives of these Native Americans, which was very impressive to critics and readers alike.

Erdrich was also able to draw connections from character to character but still focus on their personal events and endings. In a traditional novel, there is only one ending and it lies on the very last page. This is not so in Love Medicine. Each character comes to their own conclusion and at very different parts of the novel. Even so, Erdrich places Lipsha’s story at the very end of her novel because his conclusion acts as not only the end of a personal journey but the claim to identity that weaves throughout the entire novel. When Lipsha gets into his brothers car to “cross the water and bring her home”, he is realizing and accepting his culture in addition to taking his mother’s spirit back to the reservation where they both belong.

Even though it is difficult to decide whether this literary piece is a novel or a collection of short stories, it is a powerful step away from the traditional Western writing style. Louise Erdrich explores new and powerful avenues and by doing so, has created a innovative and multi-dimensional masterpiece.


WORK CITED.

Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1984. Print.