Another temporal bridge to which the narrator refers is that of her feeling of oneness with her mother’s stillborn child, whom she considered a “less finished version” of herself. In her youth she sat at the child’s grave, watching her tombstone, which seemed to grow larger with time, “the edge drawing near, the edge of everything,” closing, then, the gap between her and the child. This theme can also be seen in the various circular implications that permeate the story, such as the narrator’s own return from her “failed life, where the land is flat,” to her childhood home, and in her mother’s return to a more dependent state. Anna’s blindness in old age is reminiscent of her blindfold trapeze act of her earlier years, as well as her leap onto the burning house. In an act of redemption, perhaps for the first child who had died, she provided onlookers with the kind of spectacle that she had once performed for crowds—an impossible feat that she made look easy by hanging by her heels from the rain gutter and smiling after she landed. This time she succeeded where earlier she had failed, and she saved her child.
A more pervasive but less obvious theme is that of preparation and anticipation. Throughout the story the narrator is preoccupied with harbingers, ignored warnings, and signs of impending doom, as well as with the choices that people make to prepare for the future. She couples this theme with that of acceptance of fate, recognizing that individual choices are often lesser evils, and bring with them negative consequences that must be endured. During the fateful circus performance, the images of the approaching storm, unperceived but deadly, are vivid. The narrator contrasts the way that New England storms can come without warning to those in the West, where one can see the weather coming for miles. She also emphasizes the circus crowd’s ignorance of the signs that could have been seen—“the clouds gathered outside, unnoticed.” The thunder rolled, but it was drowned out by the circus drums. During the trapeze leap and the fall itself it is clear that Anna had time to think consciously to decide what her future would contain. Her grasp on the hot metal wire burned all the lines off her palms, leaving her with “only the blank scar tissue of a quieter future.”
Louise Erdrich’s smooth-flowing narrative makes for deceptively easy reading. The story can be read on several different levels. On its most basic level, it is a pleasant story of a daughter doing her duty by an aging parent whom she loves and respects. On a deeper level, it is a commentary on to what one owes one’s existence and what one makes of it. On yet another level, it speaks of the moments of decision in each person’s life, and the ways in which one uses these moments to change the courses of one’s own and others’ lives. Such multiple-depth interpretation is typical of short stories in general, but the simplicity of Erdrich’s prose makes her story both more accessible and more obscure. The cleanness of language and vivid beauty of her images make the deeper meanings easier to understand once they are perceived, but the romantic voice relating the tale belies the more profound messages. Similarly, the repetitive use of key words such as “preparation” and “anticipation” makes her themes easy to follow, but her matter-of-fact storytelling seems to imply a naïveté that is not the case. The addition of prosaic detail and conjecture on the events being told lends credence to the fantastic.
by
lovelyv20 (student)
