Captivity By Erdrich
Louise Erdrich, the author of the famous poem titled Captivity, tells a
story
about a married mother who has been held captive by a tribe of Indians.
The poem
uses a wide variety of literary elements such as sympathy,
guilt,
submissiveness, and tentativeness. The two main themes of this first
person,
six-stanza poem, are love and fear. Erdrich also uses tricksters,
which are
supernatural characters found in the folklores of various primitive
peoples.
They often function as culture heroes who are given acts of sly
deception. In
this poem, the narrator’s captor takes on the role of a
trickster. In most of
Erdrich’s writings, she uses multiple characters as
tricksters and this
reflects on her Native American Heritage (Smith 23). One
of Erdrich’s main
writing tactics is the use of "historical ‘captivity
narratives’"
(Wilson and Jason 2716). One of the interesting facts about this
poem is that it
is based upon a true story. Erdrich gives us that feeling of
truth and captivity
before the poem begins. "He (my captor) gave me a
bisquit, which I had put in
my pocket, and not daring to eat it, buried it
under a log, fearing he had put
something in it to make me love him,"
(Erdrich, 26). This quote came "from
the narrative of the captivity of Mrs.
Mary Rowlandson," (Erdrich 26). Mrs.
Mary was held captive by the
Wampanoag Indian Tribe in 1676, when Lancaster,
Massachusetts was
demolished (Erdrich 26). The first stanza brings a strong
feeling of some
sort of imprisonment or captivity. "But he dragged me by the
ends of my
hair," (Erdrich 26). The narrator at this point is experiencing
fear from her
captor, however she also feels passion and love when she looks
into his face.
"I could distinguish it from the others... I feared I
understood his
language, which was not human," (Erdrich 26). Also, there is
irony in this
stanza when her captor saves her from the cold waters of the
stream (Wilson
and Jason 2715). In the second stanza, the tribe is pursued by
white men who
have "guns loaded with swan shot," (Erdrich 26). However, the
tribe is put in
danger because of her child’s cries, which are from
starvation. In my
interpretation of the poem, she cannot "suckle" her own
child because she is
so nervous and confused (Erdrich 26). Luckily for the tribe
and captives,
there is a woman who feeds the child "milk of acorns," (Erdrich
26). In
the third stanza, the narrator is to the point of starvation as she
tells
herself not to take food from his hands. "I told myself that I would
starve/
Before I took food from his hands," (Erdrich 26). I believe that
Louise
is trying to reflect the quote used before the poem taken from Mrs.
Mary
Rowlandson, trying to give the reader a sense of hidden desire.
However, going
against her will to not give in to her captor, she eats the
fetus of a deer that
her captor gave to her. "He had killed a deer with a
young one in her/ And
gave it to me to eat of the fawn," (Erdrich 26). The
way that the narrator
describes her meal is delicate, however Erdrich tells
us that it is a fetus;
that paints a distasteful picture for the mind of the
reader. At the end of the
stanza, Erdrich is very vague about what happens
and leaves it up to the reader
to decide the outcome. I felt that the
narrator was tentative when she said,
"That I followed where he took me./
... He cut the cord that bound me to the
tree," (Erdrich 27). In my
interpretation, this is where Erdrich uses the
literary element of
submissiveness. I personally think that she slept with her
captor because the
next and last stanzas of the poem she feels guilty. In the
fourth stanza, the
narrator is frightened and hides herself in fear from God
because she knows
in her heart that she has sinned. "After that the birds
mocked./ Shadows
gaped and roared/... He did not notice God’s wrath./ God
blasted fire from
half buried stumps./ I hid my face... fearing that he would
burn us all,"
(Erdrich 27). Perhaps she is in a bad lighting or thunderstorm
in this
stanza. She also notices "her captor neither notices or fears God’s
wrath,"
(Wilson and Jason 2715). The last two stanzas take place at her house
later
in her life after being held captive. This indicates that the climax of
the
poem is in the fourth stanza. Although she is home and doing well,
the
element of guilt is present when she longs for her captive experience and
her
husband. She also does not feel at home when she says that she sees, "no
truth
in things," even though she has food for her child (Wilson and Jason
2715).
The narrator says, "‘I lay myself to sleep’ and ‘I lay to sleep’,
two
lines that echo the prayer taught to children," (Wilson and Jason 2715).
In
the last stanza, she is perhaps in a dream taking her back to her
captivity with
the Indian tribe. She feels that she is "outside their
circle," however she
then finds herself as a part of their chants and lives
(Erdrich 27). "And he
led his company into the noise/... I could no longer
bear the thought of how I
was./ I stripped a branch and struck the earth/ To
admit to me/ And feed me
honey from the rock," (Erdrich 27). Louise Erdrich
uses her native history and
background to describe some of the elements in
the narrative poem. I agree with
Claudia Egerer, author of Fiction
(In)betweenness, when she describes the way
that Erdrich writes fiction.
"First person voices are construed as subjective,
implicated as they are in
the telling of their own story... their double
function as narrators and
narratees," (59). Captivity reflects this exact
statement. Without a doubt,
Louise Erdrich creates life and history through
Captivity and it’s
complexity.