This thesis paper illuminates nature and its relationship to the characters in LouiseErdrich’s novel Love Medicine. Now more than ever, there is a need for literatureanalyses that explores nature with a critical lens; it is a need brought forth by thecontemporary world, namely, the global environmental crisis. Nature is both preciousand omnipresent, and some cultures have a deep respect for this simple truth. Such isthe case with some of the Ojibwe people in Love Medicine. This thesis explores theclose relationship with nature evinced by some of the Native American characters inLove Medicine. Moreover, it illustrates the construed idea and portrayal of westernsocieties as destructive and exploitative.

Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine is a novel depicting a world of authentic Native American experiences for readers to immerse themselves in. Erdrich creates this immersive setting with an unconventional sense of pace, realistic handling of characters, and clever choices of narration. The question of how this unique type of writing creates effective storytelling can be answered by analyzing its effects through the use of narratology. This essay outlines narratological features and effects in Love Medicine through the use of structuralist concepts. By utilizing terms out of Genette’s structuralist framework such as time, events and narration, defining the methods applicable to this novel, the scattered pieces of Erdrich’s narrative come together to describe its underlying structure with greater clarity.

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<p>The essay studies the character Marie's search for empowerment in Louise Erdrich's <em>Love Medicine</em>. As a mixed-blood she has difficulty to find respect within the white community because she is considered Native American Indian. However, the Native American Indian community sees her as ´dirty and lowlife´due to her whiteness. She tries different strattegies to form an identity and to find love, power and respect. In the convent she wants to be the best Catholic and find respect within the white community whilst later in life she returns to her Native American Indian tribe where she searches for respect throught marriage and motherhood. The theory used is sociology of religion.</p>

The Native American characters in Love Medicine and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian experience prejudice from other Native Americans and suffer from internalized norms and values. This study examines whether or not the prejudice the fictional characters in Love Medicine and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indianexperience and express as Native Americans unite them as a community or not. It also investigateshow they view white society andif the Native American characters have prejudice against the members of their own tribal community. The analysis is partially based on postcolonial theory and focuses on terms such as internalisation, acculturation and prejudice. The thesis found that the communitiesare united on the premises that they conform to the Native American norms but any deviation from these norms has the potential to divide them.

The essay studies the character Marie's search for empowerment in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine. As a mixed-blood she has difficulty to find respect within the white community because she is considered Native American Indian. However, the Native American Indian community sees her as ´dirty and lowlife´due to her whiteness. She tries different strattegies to form an identity and to find love, power and respect. In the convent she wants to be the best Catholic and find respect within the white community whilst later in life she returns to her Native American Indian tribe where she searches for respect throught marriage and motherhood. The theory used is sociology of religion.

Huvudsyftet med avhandlingen är att förstå hur människor tänker om och hanterar kärlek, sexualitet och hälsa i sina vardagliga liv på landsbygden i nordöstra KwaZulu Natal i Sydafrika. Målet är att förstå vad kärlek innebär för dem, men också hur större samhälleliga processer påverkar erfarenheter av kärlek, hälsa och relationer. Studien baserar sig på sex månaders etnografiska fältstudier bland framförallt åtta familjer. Data samlades in genom deltagande observationer och öppna intervjuer. Vid sidan om familjerna intervjuades tio örtdoktorer. Materialet består av 60 bandade intervjuer och cirka 340 sidor fältanteckningar. Analysen visar att man talar mer om kärlek i termer av respektfulla handlingar och en social ordning än om kärlek som en känsla. Kärleken är visserligen känslofull, men talet om respektfulla handlingar som kännetecknet på kärlek visar att invånarna ser sig som djupt beroende av varandra. Individen definieras av en väv av relationer där även förfäderna, både levande och döda, ingår. Kärlek mellan två individer hänger därför intimt samman med släkten och relationer i närsamhället, vilket skapar tillhörighet men också utsatthet. Kärleksmediciner tillverkade av örter utgör en möjlig väg att stärka ett förhållande eller att vinna någons kärlek. Berättelser om kärleksmediciner visar emellertid vad människor drabbas av och vad som anses vara ett omoraliskt agerande, vilket ger förklaring och lindring i svåra situationer men också lyfter fram att strukturella omständigheter under vilka människor lever behöver förändras. Kolonisation, apartheid och under senare år demokratisering har inneburit radikala förändringar för kärleks- och familjerelationer. Män, och fler och fler kvinnor, försörjer sig som migrantarbetare, vilket har lett till en uppsplittring av familjen mellan stad och landsbygd och skapat nya slags försörjningsnätverk. Förändringarna har lett till svårigheter med att visa kärlek i handling och till efterfrågan på nya sorters handlingar som bevis på kärlek. Arbetslöshet och sjukdomar utgör dock det allvarligaste hotet mot kärleken. I brist på effektiva åtgärder mot aids åberopar människor en tydligare moralisk ordning och försöker finna alternativa vägar att skydda sig. För att lyfta fram både det individuella och det gemensamma ansvaret för sexuella relationer och för att stärka flickors position har invånarna skapat en ritual för att kontrollera flickors oskuld, som en preventiv snarare än en diagnostisk åtgärd. En välkänd historisk ritual som lyfter fram oskuldens och kollektivets betydelse används i en modern strategi för att försöka hejda spridningen av aids och göra kärleken möjlig. Studien lyfter fram hur både inomstatliga och västerländska projekt som syftar till att förbättra zulufolkets situation grundar sig i perspektiv och föreställningar som är främmande för dem, och ibland krockar med deras sätt att uppfatta kärlek, relationer och sexualitet. Invånarna ser ömsom nya möjligheter, ömsom försöker de bevara sin tidigare moraliska ordning, men framförallt transformerar de sin specifika förståelse av hur samlevnad fungerar till dagens behov och villkor. / The main purpose of this study is to investigate how people think about and manage love, sexuality and health in their daily lives in northeastern rural KwaZulu Natal. The goal is to understand what love means to them, as well as how bigger social processes influence experiences of love, health and relationships. The thesis is based on six months of ethnographic field studies concentrated around eight families. Data were gathered through participant observations and open-ended interviews. Ten traditional healers were also interviewed. Data comprises 60 tape-recorded interviews and about 340 pages of fieldnotes. The analysis shows that people speak about love in terms of respectful actions and a social order rather than in terms of love as an emotion. Certainly love is about feelings, but the view that respectful actions are the primary signs of love reflects the way in which people see themselves as deeply dependent on one another. The individual is woven into a web of relationships where even the ancestors are an integral part. Thus love between two individuals is intimately connected to the family and to wider social relations in a way that creates a sense of belonging but also vulnerability. Love medicines made from herbs offer one way to strengthen a relationship or win somebody’s love. However, stories about love medicines reveal what trials people face, what they see as amoral actions, and in addition provide explanations and comfort as well as point out that structural circumstances under which people live need to be changed. Colonisation, apartheid policies, and more recently democratization have all led to radical changes for love and family relations. Men and increasingly women have been drawn into migrant labor, dividing families between rural and urban areas and creating new types of support networks. These changes have obstructed individuals’ ability to show love through actions and also led to individuals expecting new types of actions as proof of love. The most serious threats to love, however, are unemployment and sickness. In the absence of effective measures against aids people refer to a more distinct moral order to find alternative ways to protect young people. To emphasize both the individual’s and the community’s responsibility for sexual relations, and to strengthen girls’ position, Zulu have created virginity testing as a preventive ritual more than a diagnostic measure. An old tradition that emphasizes the status of virgin girls and the significance of the collective is used in a modern strategy to try to combat the spread of aids and to make love possible. The study emphasizes how both South African and Western projects that aim to improve the situation for the Zulus are grounded in perspectives and ideas that are unfamiliar to them, and sometimes collide with how they perceive love, relationships and sexuality. The interviewees sometimes see new possibilities, sometimes try to preserve their old moral order, but most of all work to transform their specific understandings of love and life to meet today’s needs and conditions.