Critical Analysis of Louise Erdrich’s The Red Convertible
In what way can a Native American describe his and his brother’s life that has been interrupted with white American values? Louise Erdrich, an American author whose Indian roots are evident in her writing, tells such story of two brothers who experienced life of delight and desolation through an automobile. The red Olds, as described by the narrator, is a red convertible that centers the whole story in Louise Erdrich’s The Red Convertible. We are taken to the life of Lyman and his brother Henry from which the red automobile symbolized both their happiness and their misery. The car depicted how both brothers have been happy to share joyful moments when they drove it together. However, the ideals of the car also brought them misery as Lyman lost his brother to death as the latter lost his identity. To sum, the red convertible depicts the life of Native Americans in the reservation who tries to take possession of white American ideals of wealth yet realize that it is not who they are after all.
Louise Erdrich starts her short story with Lyman as the first one to own a car in his community, the Reservation. The author also goes on to describe how Lyman owns the car with his brother Henry “until his boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought out my share” (Erdrich, 103). It was not until later in the story that the reader would understand that the narrator meant that his brother dived off the river, died, and then the car went with him as Lyman pushed it off, too. The reader would not realize what had happened to Henry at first because the narrator shifts the mood of his story to the excitement of how they first brought the car. No one is to ask them why they had brought the car. They had the money (cash for Lyman and check for Henry). All reasons are left out especially when they saw the car “reposed, calm and gleaming, a FOR SALE sign in its left front window” (Erdrich, 104). Such depiction of the car would only illustrate how this new generation of Native Americans like Henry and Lyman are all but amazed with the representation of wealth that the White Americans implied to them. The car, the red Oldsmobile, has to represent the wealth and luxury that white Americans have instilled to these natives. The characters of the story also provide evidence as to how this car is represented as a source of happiness for them. The summer before Henry went to the war in Vietnam is described as a happy moment for both the brothers.
Then the demise of Henry starts to unfold when he went home from the war. When he came home, though, Henry was very different, and I’ll say this: the change was no good (Erdrich, 107). The changes in Henry were all too difficult to handle. He was mean and jumpy. The war made him a changed man. Lyman thought that the car could bring him back the joy just like the old times: “I thought the car might bring the old Henry back somehow. So I bided my time and waited for my chance to interest him in the vehicle” (Erdrich, 109). When Lyman wrecked the car, it all represents Henry’s desolation as well. Although Lyman is not the source of Henry’s unhappiness, the wrecked car represents how Henry lost the sense of joy; and Lyman wanted to signify it to his brother that this car is like him: destroyed and a “piece of junk”. As Henry was fixing the car, the author may have to imply that he is recovering. The narrator seems to depict such implication as well especially that his brother spends little time in the TV and more time in fixing the car. Again, it is from this thought that the readers are brought to the significance of the car to perhaps repair Henry and bring the happiness back to the brothers’ lives. However, this was not the case especially when Lyman says, “he was such a loner now that I didn’t know how to take it” (Erdrich, 110). These lines would have to suggest the deeper meaning of the car at this moment of the brothers’ lives. The car was the symbol of Henry’s desolation at this state. Henry’s fixing of the car may have to represent his recovery, but this was not the result after all. The car only made Henry lonelier and even more isolated from the rest of his family and the community. The car, just like him, does not belong to this Native Indian neighborhood. It was all too foreign, all too white. The car’s red color represents Henry as an Indian in the outside but still the car’s engine is like Henry being another person (perhaps a White) in the inside. Henry, who went home after the war, became a different person that he lost his identity as a Native Indian. Just like this red Olds, Henry no longer belonged to being an Indian whose ties to the family and friends are close. He was a loner, and the fixed car brings back how the car also represents its seclusion from the community.
Louise Erdrich’s The Red Convertible represents happiness and sadness of two brothers in an Indian reservation community. In the beginning, the car represents the happiness that two brothers share as the car can take them to places and made them laugh together. As the story unfolds, however, the readers are to realize that this car represents the lives of two brothers being wrecked by their possession of an American symbol of wealth and happiness. This was a story that reveals how a Red Olds represent the Indians like Lyman and Henry who lost their own values after possessing a red convertible.
Works Cited
Erdrich, Louise. “The Red Convertible”. In Growing Up Ethnic In America: contemporary fiction about learning to be American. Ed. Gillan,M.M. & Gillan, J. New York, NY: Penguin Books. 1999.