Character Clues

Character Analysis

Speech and Dialogue

It's always good to let characters speak for themselves, right? Even though a lot of characterization happens via internal narration in Love Medicine, the characters do tell us a lot with their dialogue as well. One particularly shocking example comes when Marie interrupts the game in which young June was going to be (jokingly) hanged. Instead of being grateful, June is mad—so mad, in fact, that she addresses Marie as "You damn old bitch" (5.1.43-47).

Aside from the fact that June appeared totally eager to die as part of that game, her speech here definitely tips us (and Marie) off that there's a lot of pain and anger under her normally placid exterior—even more than Marie suspected, it appears.

Actions

Love Medicine's characters tell us a lot with their swagger (or lack thereof, as the case may be). Exhibit A: We get a pretty good sense of Beverly Lamartine's strengths and weaknesses when the narrator tells us about Bev's profession selling workbooks:

The wonder of it was that he had sold any workbook sets at all, for he was not an educated man and if the customers had, as they might naturally do, considered him an example of his product's efficiency they might not have entrusted their own children to those pages of sums and reading exercise. But they did buy the workbook sets regularly, for Bev's ploy was to use his humble appearance and faulty grammar to ease into conversation with his hardworking get-ahead customers. (5.1.18)

By telling us about "Bev's ploy," the narrator indicates that what Lamartine lacks in book smarts, he makes up for in being crafty—in fact, his big skill is working that humble appearance to his advantage.

Family Life

Given that this is a family drama, you probably won't be shocked to hear that Erdrich uses family relationships to tell us a lot about the characters. For example, we get a really good sense of who Albertine and Zelda are—and what makes them tick—from their abusive, passive aggressive relationship.

Albertine introduces us to that relationship when she receives a letter from her mother about June's death… which Zelda sent too late for Albertine to attend the funeral, of course:

Far from home, living in a white woman's basement, that letter made me feel buried, too. I opened the envelope and read the words. I was sitting at my linoleum table with my textbook spread out to the section "Patient Abuse." There were two ways you could think of that title. One was obvious to a nursing student, and the other was obvious to a Kashpaw. Between my mother and myself the abuse was slow and tedious, requiring long periods of dormancy, living in the blood like hepatitis. When it broke out it was almost a relief. (1.2.2)

Both women feel a lot of pain and resentment when it comes to their lives and circumstances, and that definitely comes out in the way they interact.

Direct Characterization

Even if the characters aren't that inclined to tell us about themselves, sometimes the narrator obliges. Take, for example, when the third-person narrator is telling us about Lulu Lamartine and her, er, reputation:

… most of her life Lulu had been known as a flirt. And that was putting it mildly. Tongues less kind had more indicting things to say. (6.1.13)

Of course, Lulu is a lot more interesting and complicated than this sexy innuendo would suggest, but the narration does nonetheless tell us something important: Lulu likes men and provokes some gossip as a result.