Summary Of The Leap By Louise Erdrich

In the short story “The Leap,” by Louise Erdrich, there are a few similarities in the first and third time the narrator’s mother owed her her life. In both events, the narrator’s mother, Anna, needs intense trapeze skills to survive and save loved ones. Another way in which the experiences are similar is that the characters have time to think when they are falling. Louise Erdrich presents these bookend events to capture our attention at the beginning of the story and to make us think at the end of the story. The first similarity in the circus and housefire is that the narrator’s mother uses expert trapeze skills to survive and save people she loves. In the circus, the mother twists her body so she is able to grab wire to hold onto. This takes a great amount of skill and she tries to live to save her unborn child. At the house fire, Anna uses her skills to flip off a thin branch and land upside down on the narrator's window.

The narrator explains to us that the mother told her that she would be “amazed at how many things a person can do within the act of falling.” At the circus, Anna’s husband Harry fell from his trapeze bar due to a storm. When she didn’t feel his hands in midair, Anna ripped off her blindfold and looked around. She could have easily grabbed a hold of Harry’s ankles, but she thought that she would also plummet to her death. She knew that she would kill her unborn baby if she tried to catch him. Instead, she used skills to grab a hold an electrified wire to slide down to safety. At the house fire, the narrator experiences how many things you can do while falling. The narrator and her mother jumped through a window to escape from the fire. The narrator, sitting in her mother’s arms, realizes there is actually a lot of time to think while someone is in midair. The narrator wonders if her mother and her will land on the fireman’s