While you’re free to write about anything in Tracks that interested you, here are some prompts to get you started thinking:
- What do the “tracks” of the title refer to? Are there literal “tracks” in the novel? How do tracks work as a metaphor? Why do you think Erdrich chose this title?
- Discuss the structure of the novel. Why does Erdrich choose two alternating narrators? How does this form relate to the novel’s content?
- What are we to think of Pauline Puyat? Is she simply crazy? Are we to feel any sympathy/admiration for her at all? What does her function in the novel seem to be?
- Look at Erdrich’s prose style. How would you characterize it?
- What are we to think of Fleur? Why doesn’t Fleur tell her own story? Why does she hasten her own destruction at the end?
I loved this novel. I found it interesting and surprising at every turn. I firmly believe the narrators are the reason why it worked– especially with the character of Fleur. I think Fleur is like Gatsby in a way. The fact that she is larger than life and makes interesting choices can only be compelling if the reader is observing her from a different preceptive. It is also the reason why Pauline is interesting– because we get to see what is in her head. Pauline’s character’s arc was unpredictable. I don’t personally think she is crazy for crazy sake, but much like Merricat the environment changing around her and the pressures of a changing world may have pushed her to a point of psychotics break. I think the novel beautifully aligns the reader to Pauline as she studies Fleur at the beginning of the novel and then slowly turns the dial so by the end when she wants to baptize the stillborn child the readers– or at least me- are repelled. I think the idea of survival is a crucial element in this novel and I firmly believe that every character represents a certain type reaction to change. Nanapush discusses the past and the great ones, Fleur keeps her self on the outskirts, other reject the new way, some embrace it. Thus I think Pauline’s role is to show what happens when the pressure becomes too much and someone must seek salvation or relief. If “being native” and believing in the old ways brought these issues than being Christian should relieve it? I also think having Pauline make these choices as a person who is mixed with both native and white is also a strong choice maybe making a commentary about identity when world collide. I am interested to discuss how children are used in the novel and how there is much anxiety about babies– who’s the baby’s father, is the baby health? Who is raising the baby? is the baby going to school? I loved the imagery and the metaphor of the card game in this first part of the book setting up the novel’s characters under the guise of who gets to “win the round.” This creates a form of dramatic irony for the reader. I also think Erdrich also does a beautiful setting characters up in homey warm moments contrasting to their cold environments leaving the reader to think about what “tracks” are left behind after the history has been told.
1. Fleur is a witch, she is othered by the community, she totally fits into ecofeminism. She has done absolutely nothing wrong in her entire life. I totally think she is magical. None of them deserved her.
I loved how much larger than life she is and how she exists outside of the patriarchal/colonial system that is trying to encroach on her existence. It was gut wrenching when she loses her magic, she felt so powerless then and she doesn’t seem powerless anywhere else. I’m going to think about her for awhile.
I hate Pauline so much that it feels hypocritical. She’s like the smell of something rotting that your nose can’t get used to. She scares me in a way, I think, because of my religious background and how I’ve heard her message before out of people I trusted.
There is something so perverse about her, especially when she didn’t help Fleur when she was attacked and then again, when she does whatever she does with Sophie and Eli. I think she’s evil, but then am I the othering force calling her a witch? So conflicted.
What a beautiful and heart-breaking novel. Even if you didn’t know any history, the opening phrase makes clear the path we are on, the tracks we are following. And that was my first impression of the title: that we would be following the trail left by these people forced from their homes. The novel seemed to me almost a mirror image of Song of Solomon: in that novel, we saw the consequences of being uprooted, un-homed, un-named; here, we see these losses in progress.
There were 2 uses of “track” early in the novel that stood out to me, suggesting references to the title. In Chapter 2, Pauline says “No one knew yet how many were lost, people kept no track.” Tracks here are records – not simply transient paths in dirt or snow that can be followed, but something more permanent, an accounting. In the next chapter, Nannapush says that Margaret does not want to touch the newspaper, not wanting “…the tracks rubbing off on her skin.” Here, tracks are a mark – specifically, a mark of the white world. There’s something parallel here – the mark we leave in the world, the ways the world mark us. Both of these kinds of “tracks” seem at play throughout the novel.
Our two narrators and central character are a contrasting triad. Both narrators – both characters who have a voice to tell their stories – are Native American by birth but move at least partially into the white world. Pauline does so entirely, rejecting her culture and history. Nannapush, on the other hand, is reluctant to interact too closely with the white world, rejecting the Pastor’s suggestions to run for office until late in the story, perhaps too late. And Fleur, whose voice we never hear directly, whose story is only told through the others, remains fully Pillager. These are, perhaps, representative of three possible fates for native peoples on this continent: to lose themselves and their culture entirely — turning “white”, and loathing themselves and their culture with the ferocity of any other racist; to uncomfortably move between worlds, watching one destroy the other while trying to save what they can; or to never be able to speak with their own voice, to tell their own story, fated only to disappear.
I found the choice of the two alternating narrators endearing and smart at the same time. In fact, it offers two opposite perspectives on the facts recounted in this complex novel.
Tracks is about the events that involved the Anashinaabe people (Pillagers, Kashpaws, and Pukwans) in the difficult passage toward US policies, which took their lands away from them in favor of the logging companies through unfair taxations and an aggressive, overbearing behavior. The difficult transition wasn’t only on an economic and political plane, but it was intertwined with cultural and religious issues. The alternating narrators are Nanapush and Pauline. Nanapush, a tribal elder, fights to preserve their identity, traditions, and land, while the young, mixed blood —although she eventually discovers to be White— Pauline represents the generation protagonist of the aforementioned, convoluted shift.
I found this choice endearing because the two of them represent each the opposite extremes of the spectrum, and smart because by offering such opposite points of view, Erdrich successfully conveyed the trauma consequent to identity loss and the uncomfortable —to use an understatement— adjustment to the civilization of the winners. In this sense, alternated narrative voices and points of view reflect —and are intrinsically bonded with— the facts recounted. The author could have picked other characters as narrating voices, but I think the choice to pick Nanapush and Pauline in particular has been especially due to their peculiarity. I found Nanapush a charming character. Not only his sense of humor in mocking Pauline’s warped Christian faith killed me, but I found intriguing how Erdrich depicted the remnants, in this character, of the clairvoyance and clairaudience that had always distinguished the Natives’ wisdom and skills, for example when he is able to drive Eli back from hunting when the boy is almost starved to death and frozen, through the smoke of his pipe and the strength of his mind. Or, as it’s described on page 220, when he enters Fleur’s cabin, and Erdrich poetically illustrates his ability to hear the spirits’ conversations. Nanapush is meaningful because through him, the author shows what a waste of catastrophic proportion has been to swipe away their civilization, and how much wisdom got trashed in the name of the stupid logging companies, their money, and the Western hollow materialism. As far as what concerns Pauline, she is such a disastrous character that it’s even impossible to hate her. Belonging to the younger generation, she can’t count on a strong feeling of identity like Nanapush. Besides, up to a certain point, she thinks of herself to be mixed blood. Only ahead in the story does she find out to be White. On top of that, she can’t solely rely on their tradition either, since she grew up in a world where Christianity was well ahead into the process of affirming itself in the Natives’ territories. Nevertheless, at the beginning, when she used to tend to dying people, she seemed to have some sort of shamanic openness to mystical experiences with the other world as much as the old man. But differently from him, the problem in her case was that the religious confusion that the nuns caused her led her to a misinterpretation of the Christian teachings, which found expression in her aberrant behaviors in the name of penitence, and which irreparably corrupted her ability to live healthy mystical experiences. I don’t want to go off topic, but an image that I found particularly intense and meaningful, for a novel whose title is Tracks, is her masochistic habit of miswearing her shoes, as if Erdrich wanted to suggest a way to navigate spirituality with the wrong foot. It might even be interpreted as a metaphor for starting a journey —the rise of the White civilization— on the wrong foot.
I was very interested in the way Fleur and Pauline mirror each other. Both women choose lives of relative isolation: Pauline, desperate to be white because “to hang back was to perish” (14), and Fleur, absolutely uncompromising in her pride as a Pillager. They are equally proud in diametrically opposed ways. I think both women end up harming their communities by their rejection of them. Pauline is obviously harmful to those around her as she struggles to justify her place in the world. Her obsession with Christ and martyrdom functions more as a way of claiming power and uniqueness than as true devotion. She uses Christ as a sponsor and protector just as Fleur is associated as a favorite of the lake monster. Though claiming to humble herself through pain, in reality it is her immense pride that motivates her to separate herself as more devout and pious than others.
While Fleur’s loyalty to her family shows her connection to her clan, her ultimate choice to leave (abandoning her daughter to the government school) hangs over the narrative as we learn that Nanapush is telling this story to Lulu to help explain the cause of her hurt and rage. Fleur’s pride and commitment to her Pillager ancestry and the land they lived on separates her from her already suffering community, and her choices only alienate her daughter from their culture.
In general, I was very interested in the way interpersonal conflict within the tribe splintered and weakened their efforts to retain their home and culture.
I found this novel challenging to read because of the dual narrative structure and the magical realism. That said, the prose is so incredibly beautiful that I enjoyed the novel for its language alone.
I think Tracks symbolize the journeys of the characters. They are always in motion, trying to survive the cold and hunger. Often, when Fleur and others trek outside, they leave tracks in the snow. Given that the land and nature are so central to this story (and Native American culture), to me the tracks symbolize the act of communing with the natural world and its bounty. Animals of various types are always around, and they leave their own tracks, which the families use to track the animals for food.
I did not like the character, Pauline; everything she says seems like a fabrication. I think she is meant to serve as a counterpoint to the character of Nanapush, as each represents different generations, values and belief systems. Pauline reminded me of the pious women from the Middle Ages who demonstrated their faith in extreme ways.
Erdrich’s prose style is breath-taking. I was moved by the way she paints pictures of the natural environment and the ways in which humans and animals interact with their environments. Likewise, her renderings of the struggles of the characters – fighting bitter cold, starvation, childbirth and violence – were quite powerful.
I have gone back and forth about this book all weekend – and this week.
I will start by saying I did enjoy it. The spirituality and superstition elements in the novel were really intriguing and was what kept me moving. I found I, personally, wasn’t finding a deep care for the characters themselves, except maybe Fleur. I left with a lot of questions about who am I supposed to trust?
It was an interesting choice to show the story from Nanapush’s and Pauline’s perspectives, especially because they both seem to be completely unreliable and makes me question everything from both ends. Erdrich intentionally sets up the reader with opposing versions of a story or event; it felt to me an exploration of gender roles/norms not only during that time but possibly in native American culture. Fleur (as Suz states above) is a treasure and none of us deserve her – and I felt the same way. She was called a witch or believed to be cavorting with lake monsters because she refused to live within the mold her community placed on her.
The title was one I pondered over for a while, too. I read it as physical tracks – calling back to how the characters interact with the land and nature around them, the physical act of Native Americans being moved from their lands (where we start the novel). I also read it as, for lack of a better metaphor, ‘railroad tracks’ or ‘rail tracks.’
Fleur is the reason. It seems women are meant to obligate certain roles in society and act a certain way and stay on the track where they were meant – and Fleur defies all of that. And even Pauline is looked at as unusual or different (and not in a good way).
I will continue to sit in my mixed feelings. The prose was beautiful. Erdrich’s ability to tell a story is incredible. I was deeply invested in the spiritual/superstition and magical elements of the story through and through.
I am intrigued by Pauline’s character, she’s complex and not easily defined; she might be my favorite character of the novel. Erdrich crafted a sympathetic and condemnable character with Pauline, the kind of character that serves to emphasize the complexity of the narrative and defy attempts to define reality in binary terms of good or bad. How I read it Pauline is clearly suffering from survivors guilt following the assault of Fleur; the sympathy I feel for her witnessing the assault is mired by the fact that she did nothing to stop it; however, Pauline is described as a small and slight girl of fifteen, what could she really have done to stop four men? This “failure” to act torments her to the point of having daily night terrors, and it is not just her failure to save Fleur but her compliancy in the death of the men that torment her. There is just no winning for Pauline, she feels blame for inaction and then for the action/inaction that results in the deadly justice that the men face after they take shelter in the meat locker. Being so consumed by guilt and self-hatred it does not surprise me that Pauline turns to religion with such a zeal that Catholic nuns worry about her ardor; she is desperate to repent and feels cursed by her sins, not merely burdened by them. Also, I think her desperation to be seen as white, as not an Indian, is a concerning sign of her lack of self-acceptance. In some ways I get her desperation to separate herself from her heritage, the first chapter details how bleak the prospects on the reservation are for the tribes. From the number of deadly plagues and the threat of land being taken away constantly hanging over them I don’t find it surprising that Pauline would want to distance herself from a future that, as far as she’s seen, only ends in death, starvation, or at best stagnation. So, no I would not say that Pauline is “crazy,” or even that her more extreme actions or beliefs are entirely beyond comprehension. Instead, I pity her and wonder at the amount of trauma that she experienced—and I don’t think Erdrich describes it all—and I wonder how she could possibly be expected to be “normal.”