Love Medicine By Louise Erdrich Analysis

Love Medicine The book, Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich is instilled with captivating and intense drama that makes the story come alive. From passages of a Chippewa woman’s mysterious death to several family predicaments, this novel allows readers to quickly become charmed in which a deceased person has the ability to tie a story together. Erdrich keeps readers engaged with religious themes and imagery while developing strong yet concealed fragments of symbolism throughout the story. June Kashpaw, a middle-aged Chippewa woman is situated in Williston, North Dakota. She meets a man, Andy, at a bar who buys her drinks and peels Easter eggs for her. After both drinking to the point of intoxication, June almost has intercourse with Andy. June decides to walk back to Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation on foot and falls out of the car and into the cold. While on foot across open fields a heavy, white snowstorm falls and June is unable to make it home that night. It was Easter Day when June’s family received a letter that June went missing in the snowstorm and has passed away.

This is significant is because June grew up in a strong Catholic family and passed away on the day of Christ’s resurrection. The narrator writes, “the snow fell deeper that Easter than it had in forty years, but June walked over it like water and came home.” The quote reflects on religious imagery and by ‘came home’ it was meant as a Christian greeting to heaven. Edrich also had another sneaky significance, which was when Andy was peeling the Easter eggs for June that represented resurrection. The following paragraph is about Marie who is June’s adoptive