Faulkner and Erdrich: The Role of Family

The concept of family plays an important role in the novels of Faulkner and Erdrich. The idea of family pride, ties, and traditions is inescapable, and almost every character is affected by these ideas to the point of obsession. In Absalom, Absalom!, it is family pride that takes a poor white child and turns him into one of the most powerful men in the South. That same family pride ties him to his destruction, but the traditions of those still living will not allow such a tragedy to die. In Love Medicine, family pride is what binds these Native Americans their reservation. It is not blood ties, but relationships forged between foster parent and adopted child that bring into continuing conflict the old traditions of the Ojibwe and the new traditions of the Catholics. Both these novels show the important role family pride, ties, and traditions play in one's life.

Family is the significant driving force in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! It is family pride that makes Thomas Sutpen, a child born into a poor white West Virginian family, into one of the most powerful and feared plantation owners in the South. It is his anger over the abuses his family suffered that allows him to formulate a plan to attain all that his family was denied through strength of will and not fortune of birth: "He had been too successful, you see; his was that solitude of contempt and distrust which success brings to him who gained it because he was strong instead of merely lucky" (82). Sutpen is painted as a villain because his determination and will comes at the cost of other people's suffering.

But, it is the familial blood ties of one failed endeavor that destroys his second marriage. It was his current wife Ellen who initiated the engagement between their daughter Judith and the mysterious Charles Bon that brings the tragedy to its climax. One can only speculate about the motives of Sutpen's firstborn (secret half-breed) son, Charles Bon: "He (meaning Bon) must have known or at least suspected this all the time; that's why he has acted as he has" (267). Either way, it is Sutpen's own pride that forces him to destroy his household rather than submit to a secret failure: "it's the miscegenation, not the incest, which you can't bear" (285). It was his complete rejection of his first wife's possibly non-pure line that brought their son to his doorstep.

It is the tradition of the South that a woman be a lady. But it is the transgressions of other men that turn that lady into a ghost. And that is why a gentleman must be responsible for a lady. This is how Rosa Coldfield brings Quentin Compson into the story. Rosa Coldfield is a lady, a Southern belle who has been transformed into a ghost by her dealings with Thomas Sutpen. It is Quentin, in his role as Southern gentleman, who takes responsibility for her and allows the lady to speak of the ghosts that still haunt her.

In Erdrich's Love Medicine, family is a compelling force that binds everyone together and refuses to let them go. It is Lulu's pride in her husband, a man she did love despite her indiscretions, that allows her to fight for her family's land: "The Lamartines lived all their life on that land. The Lamartine family deserves to stay"(284). It is her strength of will that keeps her family together, no matter the forces that try to tear them apart or discredit her and her rights.

Family ties forged by blood and need are what keep people together despite the circumstances that try to tear them apart. Marie Kashpaw takes in all the children of the reservation who have been abandoned. She does this out of a desperate need to be loved, most likely due to her own husband's obvious indiscretions. In addition to her five blood children, she takes in June Morissey, her dead sister's daughter, and Lipsha Morissey, the girl's son born out of wedlock. She tries to keep them together, and, not matter what they do, they are bound to the reservation.

But family traditions are in conflict: the old ways of the Ojibwe and the demands of the Catholics make life difficult for all on the reservation. Although the older generation is firmly immersed in the Ojibwe way, it is the obligations imposed upon them by the acceptance of Catholicism that almost succeed in tearing these families apart. It is the new way that young look upon marriage and relationship that brings this dispute to a head.

The importance of family pride, ties, and traditions are made apparent in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Erdrich's Love Medicine. Family pride can lead a man to achieve what everyone believed was impossible; it can also help a woman fight to keep the land on which she raised her children. Family ties have brought blood-related children back to their parents, an act which has the potential of destroying or strengthening a household. Family traditions are almost always in conflict with the ways of the present: Southern traditions cannot allow the past to die even when all the players have died and Ojibwe traditions cannot co-exist with those of the Catholic ways of marriage. Both Faulkner and Erdrich show the important role of family in one's life, for better or worse.