Pauline And Nanapush In Louise Erdrich's Tracks

In her novel Tracks, Louise Erdrich shows the lives of a small group of Anishinaabe people. Two different narrator’s Pauline and Nanapush, the tribe elder, tell the story of the woman Fleur Pillager. They tell this collection of short stories through the years about Fleur to her daughter Lulu. Fleur Pillager is a very curious and mysterious character. She was found nearing death in the beginning of the book by Nanapush in a house where her family members were already dead. Many times in the novel, Fleur Pillager is compared to a powerful creature that resides most famously in North America, the bear. Through the symbolism that connects this powerful creature and Fleur, it shows how Fleur’s culture is dying out with Lulu.

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In the Middle of the delivery of Lulu, a bear enters seemingly “answering her call” (Erdrich 59). This once again shows a very strong connection between the bear and Fleur. She calls the bear to her to lessen her pain through her painful birth. After the bear comes, she seems to speed up the delivery and save the baby. “So I know that when Fleur saw the bear in the house she was filled with such fear and power that she raised herself on the mound of blankets and gave birth” (Erdrich 60). Nanapush then states that the bear “Left no trail either, so it could have been a spirit bear” (Erdrich 60). This statement leads the reader to presume that maybe this bear was the spirit of Fleur. Like Fleur the bear lives close to nature and was pushed back due to people, colonization and clearing of forests for houses, and towns. The bear at the time of its death and appearance in the birth house was drunk. “That she-bear had broken into the trader’s wine” (Erdrich 58). In this short paragraph featuring the bear, its characteristics are very humanized, if Erdrich didn’t tell the reader that this drunk creature was a bear, many might assume that it is human. This further exemplifies that this bear is Fleur’s spirit. The bear might be depicted as drunk in this paragraph because alcohol back then would be used to lessen pain, her spirit could have found the alcohol and tried to take the pain

Pauline shot the spirit bear when it entered the house while Fleur gave birth to Lulu. Pauline then shot it in the heart, the most vulnerable part of an animal of that size. Lulu is the last of the Pillagers, like the bear is the last of it’s own kind in the wood around Fleur’s house. Maybe the death of the last bear, which is a symbol of the Pillager family, shows that the death of Lulu’s culture is connected to her birth. Her birth according to the novel, leads to the end of bears and the end of the Pillagers culture. Her personality also leads the reader to the assumption that the culture is dying with