4/18/11

Please turn in your papers as soon as possible. Also, please make sure that I can return any assignments to your email with revisions (some students Saint Paul's accounts are full, so messages are returned as undelivered). All assignments are due only as attachments to my email at raphaeljohncomprone@gmail.com.

3/1/11

Here is a New York Times book review of Erdrich's The Plague of Doves (by Bruce Barcott):

NewYorkTimesReview 

Some important facts from this book review:

* Erdrich's novel is not unified by one particular theme, but expresses multiple points of view from the perspective of different characters whose age, race, and gender vary

* Erdrich's protagonists have rich inner lives and are observant of details

* Erdrich captures the tensions between whites and Indians

* Erdrich is capturing the lives of people in a small town in one of the least populated states, the imaginary town of Pluto in North Dakota

* A murder ties together the novel's different characters and illustrates the troubled past of the town of Pluto; in 1911, a murder occurred, leaving dead two parents, one 8 year old, one four year old, and a teenage girl

* the rough justice that occurred, the lynching of the Indians as a result of the unsolved murder (at the time, Indians were a convenient scapegoat), represents a traumatic scar in the history of the town

* Evelina, a sixth grader, falls in love with Sister Mary Buckendorf, unaware that the Buckendorf family (Sister Mary Anita's great-grandfather) participated in the lynching of Indians in 1911, which her grandfather Mooshum survived

* Evelina is torn between her bisexual impulses throughout the novel, and she is also drawn to Corwin Pearce, her classmate

* the town of Pluto has a traumatic history and is slowly dissipating itself, strangled by the tangled threads of the history of the lives of its inhabitants

* Pluto is a small white settlement on the western edge of the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota; it is also a metaphor for a small town that is dying, haunted by the tensions of its past

* Here is a passage from The Plague of Doves:

DOVESCHAPTER 

* The doves are certainly symbolic, particularly because they are considered to be a plague by the townspeople; they could be symbolic of the lack of purity in the town

Another review, this time by Michiko Kakutani: REVIEW 

* The surviving baby of the 1911 murders, Cordelia, has an affair with the Judge in the novel, who is married to Evelina's aunt Geraldine

* Here is yet another review of the novel: guardian 

* Billy Pearce: Corwin's uncle, the founder of a church/cult and a man with untiring sexual energy

* another point: the theme of mixed blood--Evelina has ancestors who were part of the lynching party as well as ancestors from the Native American side (Mooshum)

* Evelina, the daughter of an Indian mother and a white teacher, represents a hybrid character, caught in between the tangled threads of history

* Washington Post book review: book review 

* Important questions to think about for your paper: what is the role of storytelling in the novel? How do the doves symbolize the tangled and often traumatic past of the inhabitants of Pluto?

* Judge Antone Bazil Coutts and Evelina Harp are the main characters in the novel

* Evelina's father's adoptive father was one of the lynchers, yet Mooshum, her maternal grandfather, could have become one of the victims

* Evelina's great uncle, Shamengwa, plays the fiddle, which is later taken up by Corwin Pearce; the fiddle becomes a symbol of history as it is eventually broken into pieces when Shamengwa dies

* art and storytelling function by tying together a community, but also evoke the traumatic threads that tie the characters in Erdich's novel together

bostonglobebookreview

I will put some quotes up soon from the novel and ask some more questions about the novel. This should give you some material for your paper, which should be 3-5 pages in length.

2/15/11

Fortunately, I have healed enough to walk, so I am returning to class.

2/14/11

You should read at least half of the book by this point. You should highlight certain key passages in your analysis of Erdrich's novel. We will focus on symbolism in her novel as we analyze her work.

Here are some interesting passages to discuss in The Plague of Doves:

1/14/11

Please purchase Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves and begin reading the book as soon as possible. We will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10-10:50 a.m. in RH 136 (my office).