Loss In Louise Erdrich's Tracks

As Louise Erdrich says in her book, Tracks, “We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall”, I believe this quote foreshadows the sense of loss that each character feels throughout the novel (Erdrich 1). Every main character has dealt with some sort of loss, and it has changed them to be who they are and how they act within the society. Loss was such a powerful theme throughout the story that you could see it in how the characters acted and you understood why the characters acted the way that they did. I strongly believe that the actions of each character was based solely on the theme of loss. The book starts being told by one of the two main narrators, Nanapush. Nanapush had suffered much loss, but he tried to hide it. He had had 3 different wives and a beloved daughter named Lulu. He loved his daughter very much, and now he has no one. Everyone he had was killed when the sickness struck. After Nanapush rescued Fleur he told us, “We needed no food. / I learned later that this was common,

Pauline’s sense of loss is because her ancestral heritage is different and she was not from a specific clan like other people were. She wanted a stable background, a name to be called that was proud, certainly not a Puyat. That is why she wanted to go south with Dutch. She wanted to become a somebody. Pauline tells us, “We were mixed-bloods, skinners in the clan for which the name was lost” (Erdrich 14). Going to Argus did not help Pauline, though. She was practically invisible there, too. Pauline felt lost and unseen, that is why she acted the way that she did. She was jealous of the way men looked at Fleur. That is why Pauline went basically crazy. That is why she used a love potion on Eli and Sophie, why she wanted to have an abortion after she got pregnant from Napoleon, and why she kills Napoleon. It is all from loss of not knowing who you are and people not knowing who you