Tracks by Louise Erdrich: Using Humor to See into the Character

In the movie "The Sweetest Thing", the character Courtney challenges her friend to explore how she really feels about her current love interest by saying, "Half of what people say when they're joking is the truth." Though this may not be a proven statistic, it highlights an important aspect of humor: its truth telling ability. In the novel Tracks by Louise Erdrich, the truth telling ability of humor is apparent throughout the book. Not only do the characters in the story exhibit humor purposefully, but the writer also puts the characters in situations which the reader finds humorous, though the characters do not. In Tracks, "The Sweetest Thing", and in everyday life, humor tells the truth we are not always willing to admit to the world.

The greatest displays of humor exhibiting truth can be found in the character Nanapush. Nanapush is an aging Chippewa Indian. He holds true to the old ways and is considered a "trickster," or someone who is a source of humor, in Native American culture. The novel surrounds itself around Nanapush and his life in North Dakota with his adopted family of Margaret, Fleur, Lulu, Eli, and Pauline, who acts as nuisance to them all with her adoption of "white ways". Throughout the novel this make-shift family faces many hard times including harsh winters and the loss of their lands to the government for non-payment of taxes.

They are also caught in many conflicts with the "whites". Tension arises when "whites" attempt to convert them to Christianity, change their system of government and their culture in general. At the end of the novel it appears that the "white" ways have in fact conquered them when Fleur, Nanapush's assumed daughter, loses her land, sends Lulu, Fleur's daughter, to a government school, and renounces Eli, Fleur's assumed husband and Lulu's father. However, Nanapush and Margaret, Nanapush's love interest and Eli's mother, end up living together on Margaret's family lands for the remainder of their days, keeping touch with Lulu so that they might one day take care of her once she gradate from the government school.