Narrative Point of View in Louise Erdrich's Tracks - MIUSE

Anthony Piccolo
It Comes Up Different Every Time: Narrative Point of View in Louise Erdrich‟s Tracks
Pauline‟s narrations, though, are generally more problematic (or, as I prefer, more
ambiguous) for the reader. Take, for example, Pauline‟s account of the events in
Argus. Fleur arrives in Argus and finds a job at Kozska‟s Meats, a butcher shop.
Since wages alone will not be enough to earn the money for the tax payment on her
land, Fleur involves herself in the nightly poker games with the three butchers: Lily,
Tor, and Dutch. Fleur, the better card player, slowly lures the men in over a number
of weeks until one night she wins big and takes them for all their money. In a
drunken fury, the men take their revenge by attacking and (maybe) raping Fleur.
Pauline‟s account leaves room for doubt. Pauline also works at the butcher shop with
her younger cousin, Russell, doing odd jobs. As such, she can provide first-person,
eyewitness account of what transpires. The men pursue and catch Fleur in the
smokehouse, at which point Pauline tells us:
I closed my eyes and put my hands on my ears, so there is nothing more to describe
but what I couldn‟t block out: those yells from Russell, Fleur‟s hoarse breath, so
loud it filled me, her cry in the old language and our names repeated over and over
among the words. (T 26)
Although, earlier, Pauline has said that she “knew everything [that happened in
Argus] . . . what they did to Fleur” (T 16), her eyewitness account becomes closer to
circumstantial evidence. Her eyes are “closed” and she covers her ears with her hands;
yet, we are told, she “couldn‟t block out” the yells and cries. Russell, the other
possible witness, has been struck by Dutch and left “shouting and bawling in the sticky
weeds” (T 26). What he sees or hears afterwards we are not told. Pauline holds
back on exactly what she sees or hears; her account is, at best, ambiguous. The
events of the following day, though, would seem to indicate actions motivated by
knowledge that Fleur has indeed been raped by the men. On the morning after the
attack on Fleur, Argus is struck by a tornado. The butcher shop and much of the
town are destroyed. The men have taken shelter in the thick-walled, ice-filled meat
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