410 Erdrich, Louise
Indian” to ever lock these pieces in place, the agent
turns Lipsha’s luck to bad. Henceforth in the novel,
all of Lipsha’s trials are attributed to this action.
Everything from his destroyed bingo van and his
failed love affair to his skunk spray and food fight is
blamed on turned luck.
While it is convenient for Lipsha to blame all of
his negative experiences on a source outside him-
self, he also attributes positive events to good luck.
For instance, his very survival is considered lucky
because his mother, June, abandoned him when he
was an infant. His rescue and subsequent upbringing
by Marie Kashpaw hinged on good luck, positive
happenstance that he never converted into personal
will. Characterized by potential and high ACT
scores, Lipsha underperforms and fails to direct his
own course. Instead, he searches for signs of chance
that foretell his next move. His grandmother’s mail-
ing of his father’s wanted poster is a sign to come
home, while a visitation from his mother’s ghost
predicts future material gain. After he sees June’s
apparition, Lipsha wins the bingo van and countless
cash winnings as he plays the cards she leaves with
him. He feels more connected to the inner powers
of his spirituality and becomes a reservation healer.
Like Nector’s pipe, June’s visit makes things happen;
only these events are positive due to their source.
June, Lyman, Shawnee, Fleur, Redford, Alber-
tine, Gerry, and Zelda, similarly, have chapters
devoted to their experiences of luck. Through these
characters, Erdrich complicates Lipsha’s simplistic
view of fate by presenting situations where luck
comes to those who do or do not deserve it or by
showing how luck may be consciously crafted.
Finally, luck appears to be a matter of perspective.
The plane crash that grants Gerry his most recent
freedom is good luck, while June’s rape is bad luck.
Lyman gambles away significant winnings and Nec-
tor’s pipe because he is manipulated by a belief in
luck, but Fleur wins her ancestral land back through
luck that she manipulates. Shawnee and Zelda exem-
plify pure personal determination masquerading as
luck. Through these myriad examples, Erdrich com-
plicates the distinctions among fate, luck, and design
and forces readers to consider the result of denying
personal responsibility for one’s choices.
Erica D. Galioto
identity in The Bingo Palace
The characters that populate The Bingo Palace all
struggle with the universal complexity of personal
identity, and Louise Erdrich shows how it is impos-
sible to fully account for how a person comes to be.
Nonetheless, she uses the Little No Horse Saga in
part to illustrate the powerful hold memory has on
personal identity. The pasts of Lipsha, Zelda, and
Lyman determine who they have become, but by
reconciling their memories, they can change.
Lipsha lives to early adulthood believing the
story that his guardians Marie and Nector Kashpaw
tell him: His mother, June Morrissey, was well-
intended but wild, and she understandably turned
him over to the Kashpaw family. Having lived with
this explanation through childhood, Lipsha makes
his peace with it and forgives his mother for the
decision that separated them. As part of his personal
history, this fiction dominates his identity; however,
his lack of direction and feeling of being lost point
to a deeper uncertainty within his being. His per-
sistent emptiness suggests his own ignorance about
his past. Upon his return to the reservation, his aunt
Zelda, in a drunken state, tells him the truth. Lipsha
always feels that Zelda knows him on a deeper level
than others, and as the keeper of his unknown secret,
now he learns why.
Her admission removes Lipsha’s comfort with
his own waywardness and pushes him to complete a
quest for a more spiritual identity. Zelda reveals to
Lipsha that he was not presented to the Kashpaws
by a reluctant June but, rather, saved from intentional
drowning by Zelda herself. She describes with great
detail how June had secured a bundle before throw-
ing it into the slough and leaving. Zelda then recalls
wading into where the gunnysack was thrown and
using physical exertion to drag it out of the water
and to the land. Weighed down by rocks, the bundle
concealed baby Lipsha. Throughout this painful rev-
elation and immediately following, Lipsha tries to
hold onto his identity even as he feels it shattering.
Disbelief pervades him as he repeats “No mother”
over and over. Lipsha denies that it was him, denies
that it was June, and fearfully grips the fiction he
has believed for so long. As it slips away, he fades
into a visit from June’s ghost and begins a spiritual
journey. He searches for answers and embarks on