Native American Myth in 'Love Medicine'

Louise Erdrich's Use of Landscape to Deconstruct Myth

Sep 30, 2008

Erdrich's seminal novel highlights the American stereotypes associated with Native American culture, using the landscape of the reservation to subvert such assertions.

Erdrich deconstructs the mythologized portrayal of the ‘Indian’ instituted by the pioneers’ conception of a “country covered with forests and ranged by […] savages,” (President Jackon’s message to congress, December 6th 1830)which opposed the governmental policy of progressive industrialisation, by thematically centring the passage and novel as a whole on the assigned space of the reservation.

However, the imaginative landscape of the reservation in Love Medicine allows the characters to positively reject the novel’s representation of contemporary American values.

Idyllic Description

The portrayal of Native Americans as “savage hunters” immersed in Eurocentric popular culture has led to a defining association with the uncultivated plains and wild forestry of the frontier.

Love Medicine perpetuates this notion in Lulu’s emphasis of the reservation’s agrarian scene but reclaims this relationship by usurping its negative and fatalistic implications through its internal perspective and idyllic evocation.

The personal and pleasurable response to the scene is demonstrable through the first-person perspective of the narrative which emphasises the playful action of the “ducks” (Love Medicine, pp. 68-9) as they “barrel down” and the expanse of “grass” in comparison to the memory of “sidewalks” and “cracked slabs” filling the town in which her government school was situated.

Similarly, the juxtaposition of “glitter” with “slough water” and the romantic image of clouds that “roll […] whiter, whiter” (pp.68-9) emphasises the beauty of the landscape their her own eyes.

Empathy with Nature

Despite Lulu’s emphatically voyeuristic perspective established through the repetition of “saw” and “watched,” Erdrich establishes a connection between the reservation’s residents and its nature beyond its passive apprehension.

The “leaves of the poplars applaud” her return and the extended analogy between the “run of [her] life” and the river suggests a reciprocal identification. As this metaphor is sustained throughout Love Medicine, it is infused with cultural significance above Lulu’s individual voice and provides a consistent perceptual framework within the novel’s use of accretive time.

The “curve” of her mother’s body is also synonymous with the river, reflecting Erdrich’s impression of the mother as the “boundary of personal geography” which reveals the inherence of the natural connection in suggesting it stems from birth.

Rejecting the Myths

Erdrich’s rejection of integration and acculturation in her insistence on racial difference and geographic distance may be a reclamation of the traditional Eurocentric conception and portrayal but it also perpetuates such conclusions, even in a sympathetic interpretation.

Love Medicine has been criticised for its “Hollywood” ending where Lipsha intends to return “home” (p. 367) in a reflection of Lulu’s earlier actions. Although the final idealistic description of the river at this point somewhat undermines Erdrich’s attempt to accurately represent Native American experience, the formulaic resolution can be interpreted as the inevitable result of the novel’s definitive celebration of the dispossessed culture in its opposition to external American ideals.

The copyright of the article Native American Myth in 'Love Medicine' in Modern American Fiction is owned by Alice Woolliams. Permission to republish Native American Myth in 'Love Medicine' in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.