The Shawl

Authors who use ambiguity open their texts up to multiple interpretations. Erdrich uses ambiguity in “The Shawl” in her characterization of Aanakwad and her 9-year-old daughter. In the first section of the story, the reader is led to believe that Aanakwad sacrifices her eldest child to save herself and her baby. The narrator suggests in the second section that the girl is the “old sort of Anishinaabeg who thinks of the good of the people first” (368) and that she jumped in order to save her mother and young sibling. In each of these interpretations, Aanakwad and her daughter are characterized differently. While Aanakwad seems in the first section to figure as an antagonist and her daughter a victim, the second section not only suggests that the girl is an agent but adds depth to her character through figuring her as the embodiment of an older set of cultural values. The loss and recovery of traditional Anishinaabeg culture is of thematic importance within the story, and this ambiguity has a direct impact on how the reader interprets that theme. It also suggests that Aanakwad, initially figured as an antagonist, is instead a tragic figure, doomed by her love for a man who is not her husband.

Characterization uses description, detail, dialogue, and context to reveal a character’s personality, psychology, and behavior.

Erdrich uses figurative language in her characterization of Aanakwad to give the reader a sense of Aanakwad’s moodiness, quick temper, and emotional volatility. Of Aanakwad, Erdrich writes, “like a cloud, she was changeable” (362). This simile (a figure of speech that uses “like” or “as” to compare one thing to another) uses the image of clouds, which are ever-shifting, to denote Aanakwad’s mutability. Erdrich adds that Aanakwad’s eyes are “flashing” and “full of storms” (362). Here, Erdrich uses metaphor (a figure of speech that applies descriptive words to a person, object, or action that are not literally possible) to illustrate Aanakwad’s quick temper. Erdrich later writes that Aanakwad becomes “a gray sky” and stares “monotonously at the walls” (362). In this moment of characterization, Aanakwad’s stormy temper gives way to ennui and depression and, like the flat, dull sky of an overcast and windless day, she sinks into inaction.

This use of nature-based imagery in service of characterization is a common feature in Erdrich’s work and can also be observed in the novel The Antelope Wife (1998) and the short story “Fleur” (1986). It creates an association between the characters and the landscape that they inhabit, painting a portrait that shows their closeness to nature and the importance that harmonious living with nature played within traditional Indigenous American cultures.

One key feature of Erdrich’s writing is her use of Anishinaabeg words within her English language texts. This is called “code meshing,” a literary technique that combines or meshes different languages within the same text. Code meshing is often observed in texts that depict bilingual cultures like the Anishinaabeg communities Erdrich writes about in “The Shawl” and other narratives. This usage lends cultural authenticity to the story in that the author, in addition to creating a sense of culture through setting, descriptions of individual character, family, and group dynamics, and place, also shares with the reader a more accurate representation of how their characters would communicate with one another.

In the case of “The Shawl,” Erdrich not only paints a richer picture of Anishinaabeg culture through her use of Indigenous words but also conveys a sense of cultural change. She discusses the movement of Indigenous Americans from reservations into urban settings and notes the difference between “old” and new Anishinaabeg people. By using Anishinaabeg words such as “gego” and “manidoog” (363), she illustrates the way that her characters remain rooted in Indigenous cultures, even as their patterns of existence are, as the result of 20th-century governmental policies and the loss of tradition, in a state of flux.