72 pages • 2 hours read
Louise ErdrichThe Plague Of Doves
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Interconnectivity and Relationships
Throughout the novel, the author weaves a tapestry of the physical environment through the interconnectivity of its characters. All of the events that occur within the physical location are connected through the familial and sexual relationships between the characters. Antone reflects upon this interconnectivity when he speaks of Corwin Peace’s father, Wildstrand, whose own grandfather was Junesse’s father. “Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected by blood” (115). Through the semi-divine character of Antone Coutts, the author connects all events that occur within this physical location as being inherently linked to blood, implying that the town itself exists within a kind of vacuum. Few external relationships within the location, nor any outsiders, seem to exist, or if they do, they are fairly short-lived. Rather, the people within this geographic location are stuck, both mired in the location itself and stuck to one another, unable to escape their futures as they are bound to the pain of the past.
The character of Corwin Peace most clearly demonstrates this inability to extricate oneself from the past. Corwin’s bad behavior as a youth is repeatedly attributed to the traumatic past of his bloodline: both his mother’s alcoholism and his father’s criminal activity. After Corwin steals Shamengwa’s guitar, Antone reflects on this tendency to link current bad deeds to a person’s troubled past. “Others pitied [Corwin] and blamed his behavior on his father’s spectacular crime, or his mother’s subsequent drinking” (197-196). This emphasis on the traumatic past links blood to a person’s deeds—without suggesting that the bad actions themselves are genealogical in nature and thereby deserving of immediate punishment. Rather, through the interconnectivity of the characters the author constructs an idea of justice as empathetic in place of the common Anglo-Western justice, which is more punitive. The characters are not surprised when Corwin turns to petty crime, but rather understand this the outcome of previous misbehaviors in his blood line. The author therefore mitigates the individual responsibility associated with misdeeds; it becomes the community’s responsibility to rehabilitate Corwin and other characters who act selfishly. Only through the healing power of further positive interactions, such as Shamengwa’s musical mentorship, can heal the pain of the past. In this way, interconnectivity both creates the problems within the community and has the power to heal them.
However, the author does not always remain optimistic about the ability of the present to heal the past. Rather, Erdrich maintains that, much like Antone’s decision with Corwin, the true path to healing requires both knowledge and a semi-divine sense of judgment. Often, the people making decisions that affect the rest of the community do not possess such unique capacities and occasionally end up creating further traumas. Evelina reflects on this realistic approach to communal healing when she is in the psych ward: “[History] works itself out in the living. The Buckendorfs, the Wildstrands, the Peace family, all of these people whose backgrounds tangled in the hanging. I think of all the men who hanged Corwin’s great-uncle Cuthbert, Asiginak, and Holy Track […] Now that some of us have mixed in the spring of our existence both guilt and victim, there is no unraveling the rope” (243). Evelina’s usage of the rope as the methodology by which the community is linked demonstrates the dual potential of this interconnectivity. While all these characters are tied together through relationships, Evelina’s language also reiterates the fact that it was the lynching that tied these characters together in the first place; that is, the interconnectivity exists as a result of violence. However, a rope can also be seen as a lifeline, especially to a person who is drowning, for example. In this way, Evelina suggests that the interconnected history can be responsible for hanging present characters as well as saving them. It is then up to the characters themselves to decide whether the rope will be a lifeline or the method by which they perpetuate further violence.
The Omnipresence of Animals
Animals appear throughout the novel, including the titular doves. Often, these animals appear as a plague, as they go from being relatively invisible to ubiquitous, such as the salamanders and doves in the first section and the bees in the latter section. The idea of animals as plagues also alludes to a different construction of time, as though the events within the novel are predicated by the unusual abundance of animals at a given time. When Seraph speaks to Evelina and her brother about the plague of doves, he says that when the doves “were gone when this next thing happened, he said, and Joseph asked if the prayers had worked to drive them off. Mooshum said that everything had dwindled away by then, even the buffalo, which he’d been told were limitless. Killed off” (57). Neither Seraph nor Evelina acknowledges who killed off either the doves or the buffalos; however, the audience knows from history that the white colonizers are responsible for the elimination of the buffalo. The author suggests that everything used to be grander and found in greater abundance prior to the land’s infiltration by the white colonizers. However, now these animals are limited, and will not appear in the free abundance with which they used to live.
The author’s temporal association with the animals also links the animals themselves to stories, as stories are the way in which the characters conceptualize time within the novel. Often, the animals help save the humans from dying, such as the turtle and the terrier during the failed expedition in the second section. In other sections, the animals offer a link to spirituality, such as the bird of the Holy Spirit who enters Marn and the snakes which imbue her with superhuman powers. Although the animals save, they also represent the omnipresence of death throughout the novel, as all characters struggle to survive in the interconnected web of violence that they have woven through their tangled histories. In the penultimate section, Antone imagines his house and pictures himself walking to the graveyard, which he believes is now full of bees: “[They] were busy in the graveyard right now, filling the skulls with white combs and the coffins with sweet black honey” (291). Even where the presence of animals is not necessary to the narrative arc, the author constructs their appearance as inherent within the very geography of this location. Animals, like Nature itself, become omnipresent, as unavoidable as death itself. Animals, like Antone’s bees, are explicitly linked to death here, especially when they form a group or horde. In this way, the humans must battle a barrage from Nature, although Nature also saves them at times. The hordes of animals, which come in cycles, then demonstrate the impending doom humanity faces and its very struggle to survive, often in spite of its best efforts to eradicate itself.
The Problem with Religion
Throughout the novel, the author presents religion as inherently separate from spirituality. Religion works as a form of oppression, often within the Anglo-Christian context wherein the Catholic religion seems to be forced upon the Native Americans. Many characters, such as Seraph Milk, rebel against this forced imposition of Anglo-Western religion. When Holy Track and Seraph hide from the townspeople, Holy Track stuffs himself full of the Communion wafers in an attempt to save himself. “He forced himself to keep down the spirit bread by breathing hard and concentrating on the presence inside of him. Father Severine had explained his soul to him. Now, he told Mooshum, it made sense that the bread he had eaten would feed this soul, and increase its strength. He thought he would need this strength” (66). However, much like the crosses nailed to Holy Track’s boots, this appropriation of the colonizer’s religion cannot save Holy Track. Catholicism represents a war against the body, as Holy Track finds the Communion wafers at odds with his system. Indeed, he must force himself to consume them, believing that they will give him strength. However, Holy Track does not understand that his salvation cannot lie in Anglo religion, primarily because Anglo religion is preternaturally biased against the native populations. Religion itself is always presented as problematic, especially Catholicism, as it requires a sense of morality that allows for the violence enacted against Holy Track and the others. In this way, Holy Track’s deference towards religion ultimately becomes his own undoing, as the crosses on his boots can easily be followed by the townspeople, who take him from the church.
Similarly, the character of Marn also finds problems with Anglo religion, despite being white herself. Her husband, Billy, is a cult leader and Native American, yet has appropriated some semblance of white religion, which corrupts him. In light of her husband’s continued abuse, Marn reflects on the futility of religion to save her and other victims. “Grass, water, summer fireweed and thistle, come save me know, I thought. I didn’t call on god, though. He was on my husband’s side” (164). Instead of being a palliative measure and a guiding force, Marn believes that white religion lies at the heart of her husband’s abuse. It seems as though the Christian God always sides with the oppressor; therefore, when Marn seeks succor, she does not turn to religion. Rather, Marn turns towards the spirituality associated with nature to free her of pain. She repeats the names of various plants, gaining both relief and power from naming them. In place of the violence that seems inherent within religion, Marn finds that nature, even the violence of her snakes, offers her a different measure of spirituality that allows her to rebel against her husband. Whereas Christianity seems to side with the victimizer, the author presents nature and any spirituality therein to be associated with the victim empowerment. In this way, the author offers a spiritual alternative to the rigid structure of Anglo religion through Nature’s panacea.
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