Abandonment in
&nbs= p; As a child, June Morrissey Kashpaw, the character = whose death scene opens Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, was abandoned by her alcoholic mother, Lucille. She lives alone in the woods, no o= ne knows for how long, surviving off pine sap and grass and the buds from trees. Eventually, she is bro= ught to Lucille’s sister Marie, who takes her in and cares for her as if s= he were her own child; indeed, June becomes so special to Marie that “It wasn’t long before I would want to hold her against me tighter than a= ny of the others” (87). Ho= wever tight she holds her, Marie cannot erase the wound of June’s abandonme= nt. Even as a young child, June seems to have a death wish, exhorting her young cousins to hang her in the woods during their pretend game of "horse t= hief" and cursing Marie when she puts an end to the game just in time. June goes on to abandon others throughout her life, almost pathologically. She abandons Marie by going into t= he woods to live with Eli, her uncle. She abandons both her children, King and Lipsha= , even going so far as to attempt to drown Lipsha= in the slough before giving him to Marie, as she herself had been given so long ago. She abandons her husband= Gordie, who then descends into an alcoholic madness, = where he is visited by her ghost, just as many other characters will be throughout t= he Little No Horse series. It is as though June, by continuing to leave those who love her in increasingly dram= atic fashion, is making sure she was missed, as she was decidedly not as a nine-= year old child foraging in the woods.
&nbs= p; While June might be the most dramatic case of abandonment in the novel, other characters are motivated by this theme as well. Marie feels abandonment throughout life. She is neither Indian, = nor white, and must face the stigma of her family the Laza= rres, hated by all on the reservation. In an attempt to find belonging, she goes to live at the convent where she is abused by the sadistic Sister Leopolda. As Marie battles Leopolda, she feels abandoned by God as the devil, or the “dark fish” tri= es to take her soul. Marie escap= es this horror, and literally runs into Nector, her future husband, on her run from the convent. Nector= and Marie marry, have many children, but can never really be said to have made a life together. Marie props up= the worthless Nector, running the household, gettin= g him involved in tribal leadership, and generally creating a situation whereby he need do nothing—only to be abandoned by him in favor of Lulu, her long time rival.
&nbs= p; Lulu herself has been scarred by abandonment—the abandonment by her mother, Fleur. However, unlike June a= nd Marie, Lulu was abandoned “for her own good.” Fleur, fearful of the atmosphere o= n the reservation as the U.S. Government’s policies increasingly impoverish= ed and tied the hands of the tribe, sent Lulu to boarding school. When she returns, it is clear that= no good came from that move. Lulu spends the rest of her life using her considerable charms to move from man = to man, forcing herself into a position in which she will only be the abandone= r, and never the abandonee. Mose= s, Beverly, Nector, and certainly other unnamed me= n who are the fathers of her children are left in succession as Lulu cuts a swath through life. Her children, however, remain with her always, indicating that Lulu prized above all the mother-child bond that she felt Fleur had broken.
&nbs= p; Finally, in what is possibly the most widely anthologized section of Love Medicine the chapter entitled "The Red Convertible," both Henry Jr. and Lyman must deal with intense feelings of abandonment, feelings which drive one of them to suicide. Henry Jr. has return= ed from the Vietnam War traumatized by what he has seen and done. Like many Vietnam veterans, he fee= ls as though the country for which he risked his life abandoned him when the war became so unpopular. Lyman, f= or his part, worshipped his older brother, and feels that the loss of that vital connection, damaged when Henry returns and severed when he drowns himself in the river, has left him alone in the world. However, Lyman turns his feelings = of abandonment into work, becoming a driven, workaholic businessman in the process.
&nbs= p; So many of the characters in this novel feel the effects of abandonment, just = as American Indians as a whole were abandoned by the United States government. Some, like Marie,= were just written off as unworthy; others, like Lulu, were abandoned for "t= heir own good." In Erdrich's narrative, abandonment and the different ef= fects it has on human beings illustrate well the depths of pain generated by those betrayals.