Survival Dilemma Of The Native Americans:A Traumatic Study Of Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine

Louise Erdrich is one of the most important writers in contemporary American literature.Her first novel Love Medicine was published in 1984 and catapulted her to the front of Native American Renaissance.The book has brought a lot of appraisal and won many rewards for its rich heritage of Indian culture and details of the living conditions of the modern Native Americans.Critics have done a lot of researches on Love Medicine from various perspectives,such as narratology,religion,eco-criticism,post-colonialism,identity,character analyses,feminism etc.However,few critics have studied it from the perspective of trauma.Based on the trauma theory of Freud,Judith Herman,and Cathy Caruth,this thesis classifies the traumas in Love Medicine into three kinds,individual trauma,war trauma and culture trauma.By analysing a series of traumatic experiences and symptoms of some characters and the Native culture in the novel,it is found that their traumas are caused by family,marginalized culture as well as the war.Through the writing of trauma,Erdrich depicted a world in which the Native Americans are struggling between two cultures,condemning the crimes committed by the federal government and white colonists.Facing the survival dilemmas,the traumatized Native Americans in the novel try to find their identity through returning to their traditions or finding balance between two cultures.The characters who are not healed are the ones who can neither find identity in the traditions nor in the white world.Through the analysis of the novel,the thesis concludes that Love Medicine is a trauma novel which is deeply marked with Native American history and the culture.