The Twin Sisters In Louise Erdrich’s Tracks

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The Twin Sisters in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks Fleur Pillager and Pauline Puyat are the main female characters in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks. Being female roles, Fleur and Pauline have similar points and different ones. Both of them are the powerful medicine women; however, while mentioning being Indian American mothers, the attitude of Fleur and Pauline are totally contrast. Although the two female characters don’t have the same kinship, we still can view Pauline and Fleur as the twin sisters, according to Paula Gunn Allen’s idea of “twinning in American Indian spiritual traditions with that of complementarity, of duality that is not the same opposition, a concept of balance that perceives the integration of two diversities as creating a whole” (Sarve-Gorham167). Therefore, Fleur and Pauline can be called the twin sisters. Erdrich intelligently arranges the twin sisters to show the two different and contrast attitudes toward the Indian tradition and the native culture. Fleur actively makes herself involved in the Anishinabe traditional world but Pauline is pessimistic in being a part of the traditional maternal tribe. Being an American native, Fleur is more suitable to represent the Indian culture than Pauline; being a mother, Fleur can shows more maternity than Pauline; being a medicine woman, Fleur’s power is more active and indigenous than pauline’s; being a native tradition keeper, Fleur’s attitude is more active and optimistic than Pauline’s. Although Pauline and Fleur are not the real twin sisters but there is a symbolic twin-hood relationship between them due to their encounter in Argus. Both Pauline and Fleur are young Indian women working together in a butcher shop and both have been recently orphaned. For Pauline, enthusiastic and warm Fleur is just like her sister, taking care about her so much, and that is the reason why Pauline likes to follow
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