Narrative Voice In Louise Erdrich's 'The Shawl'

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How would you perceive it? I pushed my sweet old grandma and she broke her hip. Would this sound like a bad thing to do? What if I were to say that I pushed my sweet old grandma out of the way because a semi was very close to hitting her? Sound a little bit better right? Everyone always jumps straight to conclusion and doesn't ever think of other possibilities. In the story “The Shawl” Louise Erdrich uses narrative voice to suggest that you should always look for more than one outcome. In “The Shawl” Erdrich breaks the story down into three separate stories that connect in the end. In the first story the wife had cheated on the husband and ran away with her two daughters. One was just a baby, the other was a 9 year old wearing a red shawl. No one had seen what exactly happened when she left. The husband had created a story in his own head how “Aanakwad had thrown her daughter to them (the wolves)” when he had found the red shawl covered in blood (Erdrich 2). The father was mad at his wife for what she had done, so he saw it as his wife threw their sweet little girl to the wolves. Was this really what happened? Well the husband actually never knew what happened, he just assumed the worst. Since the husband kept repeating this story over and over the son only could picture “Aanakwad swing the girl lightly over…show more content…
You always have to have an open mind, especially for things that you are set on. In "The Shawl" Erdrich hides the narrators voice so that you learn that you shouldn't jump to conclusions. The brother of the girl that died had been told for years one way of the story, so he had always believed it that way. The son had showed him of a different perspective, and opened his mind. There was never a true answer to which story was the actually one, but there is no need for it. If the story has taught us anything, it's to always keep an open mind and never assume the worse out of something. There will always be another
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