Tracks Louise Erdrich Characters

As Time’s Change
All hope is gone for an entire community’s heritage. A tribe with much passion and sorrow is coming to an end, Louise Erdrich writes in the novel “Tracks” about how one day the Native American culture will be lost due to individuals who relinquish their heritage also from uncontrollable deadly illnesses along with the new governments and policies from the White man consuming their land. All this is ripping the Anishinabe Tribe from their traditional ways and to extinction. The characters roles play within each other throughout the whole novel, how the bond between Nanapush and Fleur correspond with keeping the tribe alive but mostly the characters foil between Fleur and Pauline, will be explored within this essay, how their

Pauline describes her as a magical being or a witch of some sort who gets her power from the lake Matimanito and its monster they call Misshepeshu. She possesses magic from the land, has a special connection to nature. Some say this is when she drowned in that very lake but survived. Pauline goes on to say, “Even though she was good-looking, nobody dared to court her” (Erdrich 11) this was because the people were frightened of the lake and how Misshepeshu obviously had a desire for Fleur. Every man that encountered fleur would end up dead, the village determined it had to be from her powers. When the two girls worked at the shop in Argus Pauline was always in Fleurs shadow watching the male coworkers watch her, this went on every day and unto the nights, every night in fact, when the men and Pauline would play poker. Pauline, who was never noticed by the men would sit in the corner and watch “I melted back to nothing” (Erdrich 19) against the board of the back room of the butcher shop. Then there was on a night when the men were tired of Fleur winning the same amount every night, that they drank more than the usual amount and attacked her out back, Pauline being Fleurs little shadow saw it all, “That is when I should have gone to Fleur, saved her” (Erdrich 26) but Pauline couldn’t move in terror just “closed my eyes” (Erdrich 26) tried to ignore the sounds. From that moment on Pauline felt that she “was

Nanapush’s home was taken, even Fleurs land was auctioned off due to betrayal, leaving the Pillagers land and all who lived there homeless. Fleur being the tenacious woman she is she did what she felt has the only thing she could do, after trying to drown herself again, Fleur said her goodbyes to Nanapush, and her dear Eli who she felt betrayed her since it was his mother and brother whose land was paid off and not hers with the money they all earned, and took off walking with her belongings in