Charactor Analysis Fleur Pillager

The novel Tracks, while an entertaining read, is (as I’ve learned) far more than a simple novel. The book perplexes me with its symbolism and layered and difficult to discern metaphorical references. I am accustomed to reading books wherein characters are simply people, birds, bears, the wind, etc. Surprisingly, I did “get” the underlying story; Nanapush was telling Lulu about her family her people and what portents the future held for them all but, the symbolism was not clear. Only after hour upon hour of research, reading and pondering thereon did I gain a modicum of understanding of the importance of symbolism in Native American culture, story telling and, literature; their Anglo-American counterparts a largely devoid of metaphorical and symbolic elements. This is a clear indication, though her name, Louise Erdrich leads one to believe she is Anglo-American, is actually a Native American and of the Ojibwe People. In fact, Harold Flett reinforces this deduction in Aboriginal Symbols and Practices: “There are many symbols, practices and customs, some of which are well-known to many people and some which are known only to a few. … To achieve full understanding of some of these symbols and practices, one must personally experience them or be led to enlightenment through traditional teachings of an elder.”

“[Louise] Erdrich is the oldest of seven children, was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, on June 7, 1954. The daughter of French Ojibwe mother and German American father, Louise Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Erdrich's large extended family lived nearby, affecting her writing life from an early age. … Her grandfather was tribal chair of the reservation and her parents taught in the Bureau of Indian Affairs School (Bedfords.) In an Reader’s Digest interview, 1991, she explains "The people in our families made everything into a story. They love to tell a good story. People just sit and the stories start coming, one after another. You just sort of grab the tail of the last person's story: it reminds you of something and you keep going on. I suppose that when you grow up constantly hearing the stories rise, break and fall, it gets into you somehow. The exposure to storytelling had a prodigious influence on Louise's shaping and creation of plot …” (McNally). Erdrich grew up with a clear understanding of the symbolism and humor with which her family (and the Ojibwe) related recent and historical events; her novels provide a written form of Ojibwe (oral) history. Erdrich manages this “ by telling the plain stories of people and their lives without pity, judgment, opinion or romanticization. She uses her Chippewa [Ojibwe] heritage to examine complex familial and sexual relationships among full and mixed blood Native Americans as they struggle with questions of identity in white European American culture” (Project)

Tracks is not Louise Erdrich’s first novel. She has written (as indicated after the book’s title page) ten novels as well as three volumes of poetry, two children's books, and two works of non-fiction. “Her works have appeared in the New England Review and Redbook as well as such anthologies of Native American writing as Earth Power Coming and That's What She Said: Contemporary Poetry and Fiction by Native American Women. She has published two collections of poems, Jacklight (1984) and Baptism of Desire (1989). Her [first] novel Love Medicine (1984) won the National Book