Trickster Figures in Louise Erdrich´s - Love Medicine -

von Jennifer Künkler

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0 (A), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Institute for English Philology), course: Proseminar: Native American Literature, language: English, abstract: Louise Erdrich's novel Love Medicine reveals a lot about Chippewa(1) culture: it is a story of love and hate, of violence and peacefulness, of isolation and inclusion, interwoven with typical aspects of Chippewa cultural heritage and mythic elements. Within the space of her novel, she allows traditional Chippewa myths of transformation to meet, contradict and relativize each other.(2) One of the most important figures in Native American tradition is the so-called "Trickster" and it is particularly this individual Erdrich makes use of in Love Medicine in order to form her protagonists. Reading the novel as a variation of traditional Chippewa Trickster Tales, this paper makes an attempt to describe and analyze the trickster-ego in some of Erdrich's characters. It will begin with a general description of the tricky Nanabozho in Chippewa oral tradition and then continue with connecting typical traits of the legendary trickster with persons in Erdrich's fiction. The major emphasis is placed on Gerry Nanapush, Lulu Lamartine and Lipsha Morrissey although several other characters do certainly show typical aspects of a trickster as well, such as June, Old Man Nanapush, Sister Leopolda, Marie, Moses etc. [...] _____ 1 There are three principal designations for the Chippewa: Anishinaabeg, Ojibwa and Chippewa. Vizenor reveals that Chippewa and Ojibwa are contemporary labels used by white Americans to designate these peoples, whereas they refer themselves as Anishinaabe: Gerald Vizenor, The People Named the Chippewa: Narrative Histories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984) 13-14. For this study I have selected Chippewa because Erdrich prefers this variation. 2 cf. Joni Adamson Clarke, "Why Bears Are Good to Think and Theory Doesn't Have to Be Murder: Transformation and Oral Tradition in Louise Erdrich's Tracks," Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 4.1 (Spring 1992): 32.