The Sentence

“So the word with its yawning c, belligerent little e’s, with its hissing sibilants and double n’s, this repetitive bummer of a word made of slyly stabbing letters that surrounded an isolate human t, this word was in my thoughts every moment of every day. Without a doubt, had the dictionary not arrived, this light word that lay so heavily upon me would have crushed me, or what was left of me after the strangeness of what I’d done.”

In this passage, Erdrich praises the beauty of one simple word: sentence. She breaks down the letters of the word and emphasizes the significance of language. Tookie is emotionally sentenced by the word “sentence,” and though she thinks the word would have crushed her, the subsequent chapters reveal that the word will haunt her for many years.

“Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters.”

This quote is ironic because Erdrich’s novel is a testament to the power and importance of books. However, the quote is also notable because Erdrich demonstrates, through plot and character development, that although books are important, so is life experience and dealing with inner conflict. Books provide one form of knowledge, but figuring out what matters in life is an entirely different journey, a separate kind of knowledge.

“I love statistics because they place what happens to a scrap of humanity, like me, on a worldwide scale. For instance, Minnesota alone imprisons three times as many women as all of Canada, not to mention all of Europe. There are the other statistics. I can’t even get into those. For many years now, I have asked myself why we are at the bottom, or at the highest worst, of everything measurable. Because I know we have greatness as a people. But perhaps our greatness lies in what isn’t measurable. Maybe we were colonized, but not enough. Never mind casinos, or my own behavior, most of us do not make money our one fixed star. Not enough to wipe clean the love of our ancestors. We’re still not colonized enough to put us in a dominant-language mind-set.”

This passage emphasizes the dilemma of being human yet being dehumanized by statistics. Statistics help reveal inequity in US society, but they highlight the oppression of the Indigenous American community. The passage celebrates Indigenous resiliency by placing importance on the shared heritage and cultural values that keep Indigenous Americans in touch with their culture despite the systematic destruction of their people and customs. Here, Erdrich challenges the American prison system that helps propagate negative stereotypes of Indigenous Americans when she reveals that