Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Chapter 3 – Wild Geese

- The chapter tells the story of how Nector and Marie got attracted to each other. Even if at the
beginning of the chapter Nector’s feelings are about Lulu, a sudden altercation with Marie turns
into erotism and he now thinks about Marie.
- Nature is predominant in this chapter as the two characters are placed in the middlfe of the
road, in the openness. Weird is that Nector carries two dead geeses the entire time to pin Marie
down, and in the end of the chapter he offers them to Marie, instead of roses. Moreover, Marie
is described in terms of nature, in connection to nature: “pale as birch” (tree that doubles back
and springs up, whips singing), she has eyes like “a wounded mink’s”, and caws “like a crow”.
- The fact that this “love story” takes place in nature is there because this way their erotic story
must be seen as in a broader context. For some this could a superficially love since he has forgot
about his crush on Lulu so quickly but the way he talks about Marie (as mentioned above) shows
that he is actually paying attention to her. Primal love over lust.

Chapter 7 – The Plunge of the Brave

- Water as the main symbol of the chapter that captivates reader’s attention:
 First time occurring the moment Nector poses for the old female artist as jumping naked off
a cliff. The moment is called Plunge of the Brave=bravery / noble savage. The degradation of
this action and the fact that he is a dead Indian a movie makes Nector to go home.
- It’s clear that Nector’s favourite book is Moby Dick as he often quotes the famous line “Call me
Ishmael” and he sees himself as Ishmael who escaped the aggression a great whale. He, himself,
is trying to escape from the female’s artist picture.
 2nd time occurring: “The river wasn’t done with me yet. I floated thourgh the calm sweet
spots, but somewhere the river branched”.
- We then see 17 years of Nector’s life passing in an instant in connection to the image of water
through a monologue (“What they call a lot of water…. Very quickly I would be smoothed
away”). As water erodes the environment, Nector himself has been eroded by time who carried
him so rapidily that he wasn’t able to notice the things around him (“There was less of me”). IN
other words time is symbolized by water and when he realizes that time has eroded him he is
motivated to get back in touch with Lulu before it’s too late.
 Water occurs again: their affair (Lulu and Nector): “I was full of sinkholes, shot with rapids.
Climbing in her bedroom windows, I rose. I was a flood that strained bridges.”--- Interesting
is Nector’s transformation via water terms, and that unlike Marie who holds Nector down,
Lulu “could run with me, unfolding in sheets and snaky waves”. The lives of the two aling
with each other.
 Water again: for the first time in the chapter, water means death (slinece, cold)=grave,
when Nector dives to the bottom of a local lake trying to drown himself, but water pushes
him back up.
- Important to notice is that even if Nector’s life is engulfed in waters and that he’s reborn out of
water the entire chapter takes place during summer and an opposition between Nector’s life
and the real world is created. Water vs conflagration and destruction=> Lulu’s house is
accidentally burnt down by Nector.