Throughout history, people have been unjustly wronged. African Americans were enslaved, women were oppressed, the Jews were murdered, and the Native Americans were robbed. A common feeling that lives among these betrayed people is revenge. Fleur, a Native American becomes possessed with revenge in Louise Erdrich’s book, Four Souls. Fleur Pillager’s love for her land and thirst for justice lead her on a journey that tangles the two, and everyone involved. What will remain when love and revenge collide, and both want control of the heart? Louise Erdrich’s novels often depict the trials and hardships Native Americans have faced throughout time. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe, and grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota (McCay, Deroche). She was born of German and Chippewa blood, and her parents taught for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in their hometown. She attended the Wahpeton Indian Boarding School, and later went on to study at Dartmouth College and Johns Hopkins University (McCay, Deroche). She writes with themes of revenge, redemption, strength, parenting, and humor. She is a poet, novelist, and proud Native American and allows that to influence …show more content…
She conspires to find and kill John James Mauser, the grandson of Jack Mauser, the man who stole her land. Before she leaves, she claims a tribal name for herself, Four Souls. This name carries the weight of ancient history and her ancestors before her that will alter her journey, and herself. Fleur sets out on her journey, and enters the city where she finds Mr. Mauser’s house. Luckily enough, Polly Elizabeth, John James’ sister-in-law, hires Fleur to be their laundress maid. Fleur works diligently, quietly studying the house and its floorboards to plan her attack. She skillfully observed the family, “From the bottom of the house, Fleur listened up through its pipes and registers. She got to know the house that way…” (Erdrich
When she has hit rock bottom, on page 155 realizing that the “word” on the stamp in fact says “Bonepenny”. This moment flips her mindset rather than her original thoughts to “leave it to the police” and to “get on with her life’s work” (Bradley, 152). Bradley uses the highs and lows of Flavia’s attitude to demonstrate how women in the 50s in England can be equal and accomplish anything they put their mind to. Many women in this society don’t chase their dreams or have the jobs and skills they desire. Bradley establishes Flavia as the narrator of the novel to inspire young women and children that the “boundaries” set by society can be broken through and remade.
I believe Erdrich book moves away from stereotypes and describes nineteenth-century Native Americans as individuals with rich traditions and customs. Erdrich is able to describe the Native American culture during the Westward Expansion of the United States in a realistic and sympathetic way through the eyes of an Ojibwa Indian girl. She also personalizes this story with her own drawings as a testimony of her Native American family roots.
As in life, throughout Louise Erdrich’s novel, Tracks, the Anishinaabe people suffer myriad violations inflicted upon them by the brutality inherent in settler colonialism: forced relocation to ever-shrinking land, environmental annihilation, depletion of life-sustaining fauna, rampant disease, taxation, bureaucracy, residential schools, false and racist narratives, the Catholic church, alcoholism, and so on. Hence, to suggest the book’s characters operate within a framework of trauma is an understatement. Amid the evolving disaster, although narrators Nanapush and Pauline Puyat often occupy the same spaces and share some characteristics, such as being talkative, sexual, and prone to visions, they perceive their worlds through disparate lenses, and develop along divergent trajectories. While Nanapush is nurturing, community driven, and generally life-affirming, Pauline is self-serving, opportunistic, and energized by death and violence. Whereas Pauline is the face of assimilation,
Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver is a collection of writings and correspondence with his attorney Beverly Axelrod from his time in the Folsom State Prison in California in 1965. Eldridge Cleaver was convicted of drug crimes and then convicted again later after he committed a series of rapes against black and white women. Within Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver details his pursuit of self-discovery and the pursuit of knowledge and new ideologies within the prison system. In addition, Cleaver explores the social system and race relations of black and white people during the Civil Rights Movement. Cleaver renounces his actions as rapist and converts to a Malcom X follower and later a Marxist revolutionary.
Over the course of E. Pauline Johnson’s life, which lasted from 1861 to 1913, the treatment and status of First Nations Canadians began to shift. While Pauline Johnson wasn’t as affected by the treatment and status of First Nations Canadians, due to her move off of the Six Nations Reservation because of her father’s death in 1884, she made gains for her people as she ascended to fame. Pauline Johnson made accomplishments for First Nations Canadians in her life and work, those included her poetry, acting, and lifestyle. Even after Johnson’s demise, her name and work lives on because of her talent and charisma. Johnson was raised in a privileged home, where libraries full of books were a norm and reading was strongly encouraged.
An Ojibwa Pride “Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place to love and be irritated with.” (“Where I ought to Be: a Writer’s Sense of Place”). Whenever she 's at a place, she loves to write, she feels inspirational. Louise Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a band of the Anishinaabe.
You see the ripple effect of the family falling apart without Geraldine Coutts, Joe cannot stand to see his once beautiful strong mother drift away from reality after the attack. Louise Erdrich shed light to a grim reality for Native Woman. If reading off the statics does not enrage you then reading the “Round House” will. Here are some of the statistics concerning Native Woman to the US Department of Justice: American Indian women residing on Indian reservations
“A Simple Heart” describes the life of Félicité, a woman who has spent a majority of her working life serving a middle-class woman named Madame Aubain. The entire story is told through the eyes of a third person narrator and is told in the past tense to show that something was. There is also a strong sense of world in this story because Flaubert uses a large amount of detail to describe the setting and actions of the character. For example, Flaubert put a lot of detail into how he described the Aubain estate. Flaubert also uses detail to describe the world around each character, since there is not a lot of dialogue.
The author of The Red Convertible Louise Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota in 1954. As the daughter of a Chippewa Indian mother and a German-American father, Erdrich explores Native-American themes in her works, with major characters representing both sides of her heritage. In an award-winning series of related novels and short stories, Erdrich has visited and re-visited the North Dakota lands where her ancestors met and mingled, representing Chippewa experience in the Anglo-American literary tradition. In addition to her numerous award-winning novels and short story collections, Erdrich has published three critically acclaimed collections of poetry, Jacklight (1984), Baptism of Desire (1989) and Original Fire: New and Selected Poems
In her early life, she was influenced by her father when it came to learning. As a young girl, she had many childhood events and a great education that impacted her life. Born in White Sulphur, WV, she was like a walking and talking robot. Her parents were a huge contribution to her success. Her father wanted her to have such a good education that he moved to a different school.
Louise Erdrich, author of “The Red Convertible,” is the daughter of a German-American father and a Chippewa Indian mother. They were both employed at the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school and from an early age, Louise was encouraged by her father to write stories. She says that “my father used to give me a nickel for every story I wrote” (Madden 241). After years of writing, Louise received the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012 for her novel “The Round House.” “The Red Convertible” follows the brotherhood of Lyman Lamartine and Henry Junior and illustrates the symbolization of the red convertible.
Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.
She studied at the University of Toronto and got her masters at Radcliffe College in Massachusetts. She is one of the most influential writers of her time, and has won many awards in her field.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie both examine the relationship between Indians on a reservation and their non-Indian neighbors. Throughout these novels, Indian and non-Indian relationships are punctuated with systems of white supremacy, which manifest both in non-Indians’ ideological belief in their supremacy, and in the material disparity between Indian and non-Indian communities. In The Round House, white superiority is primarily expressed in ideological measure, while The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian focuses largely on the material sphere, but the themes are not mutually exclusive. The Round House focuses primarily on the convoluted relationship between Indians and non-Indian neighbors.
In all the different tribes, none of the women are seen as less than the men, however in European culture at the time, the women were seen as weak and lesser beings. Gunn Allen tackles this issue using ethos logos and pathos by appealing to the readers through logic, emotion and her personal experiences. With Ethos Gunn Allen makes herself a credible source by mentioning that she is a “half breed American Indian woman. ”(83) making her story worth paying attention to rather than if it were a story by an outsider who truly has nothing to do with the American Indian women.