Love Medicine 413reservation, specifically hopelessness and the feeling
of worthlessness.
In the first chapter of the text, “The World’s
Greatest Fishermen,” we meet June, who is hopeless,
alone, and defiantly out of touch with her family and
community. She picks up a stranger in a bar, leaves
with him, and has uncomfortable sex with him in
his truck. When she meets this man, June is living
in a hotel room that has no lock on the door, has not
eaten for days, and is wearing torn clothes because
she has nothing else. She leaves her room with the
intent of taking a bus home to the reservation, but
she sees this man as potentially “different.” June sees
herself very much like the Easter eggs she and the
man peel and eat as they sit at the bar—brightly
colored on the outside, if a bit cracked and faded, but
easily consumed on the inside. In fact, during the
encounter in the truck, June sees herself as nothing
more than a commodity. She feels the truck’s heater
on her shoulder, opening like a “pair of jaws,” and
has the sensation of lying vulnerable “before a great
wide mouth.” When his slick down vest presses
against her body, she feels as though she is being
“rubbed by an enormous tongue.” After the man falls
asleep, June quietly exits the truck, falling out into
the snow in a “shock like being born.” Then, feeling
herself pure and new, she sets out to walk home to
the reservation and is never seen again. June sees
herself as a commodity, and a shabby one at that.
In this scene, by giving herself up one last time,
freely and of her own accord, she feels she is reborn.
Erdrich leaves this rebirth ambiguous, though;
although June commits suicide by walking off into
the snow, she is also able to come back as a spirit, in
this book and in others, to help those people in her
life whom she left behind.
Another instance in the text where sex is simul-
taneously a tragedy and a new beginning is Marie
and Nector’s first encounter, which occurs in the
chapter “Wild Geese.” Marie, having just run from
the convent and the tortures of Sister Leopolda,
literally runs into Nector coming up the hill. Nector
has been strolling along thinking of Lulu—think-
ing of her, much as June thought of herself, as an
object to be consumed. He thinks: “She is a tart
berry full of juice, and I know she is mine.” When
he slams into Marie, he is led unwittingly into a
sexual encounter that ultimately leaves him badly
“weakened.” He says, “I am caught. I give way. I
cannot help myself, because, to my everlasting won-
der, Marie is all tight plush acceptance.” Like June’s
encounter described above, this incident illuminates
the reservation women’s general lack of self-worth
and the men’s tendency to take advantage of that
lack. However, it also serves to bind Nector and
Marie—forever, it turns out—in a bond that is both
loving and reflective of traditional reservation values.
While Nector and Marie are definitely bound,
he cannot forget the memory of Lulu, who remains
for him that illusive “berry.” The idea of women as
food, both nourishing and necessary, yet at the same
time a consumable object, reaches its zenith when
Lulu and Nector finally consummate their long-
held attraction. Smearing Lulu with the melting
butter they are supposed to delivering around the
reservation, Nector gives in to his desire, betrays
Marie, and winds up being used himself in the
process. For Lulu, unlike all the other women in the
text, has learned to take advantage of sex. Lulu uses
men, beginning with Moses Pillager, the most tra-
ditional man around, instead of letting men use her.
Lulu goes to Moses when she is young in order to
challenge every rule that surrounds her upbringing.
Moses is “too old” for her, and “too close a relation.”
He is also “bent” in the mind, but he is living as
traditional a life as anyone on the reservation. Lulu
begins her sexual conquests with Moses, going to
his island, seducing him, getting pregnant, and then
leaving the island to have the baby. She will go on
to have a string of boys with different fathers, each
binding her to a different family on the reservation.
Lulu knows her worth; she values her place in the
world as a mother of sons and takes advantage of the
men she encounters, before they can take advantage
of her.
Jennifer McClinton-Templesur vival in Love Medicine
In much of American Indian literature, survival is
a major theme. The concept of staying alive, stay-
ing viable against the odds, drives many aspects of
Indian culture in the contemporary era. In Love
Medicine we see the spirit of survival in several dif-
ferent guises: We see it in traditions, in families, and