Louis Erdrich’s novel The Plague of Doves recounts the murder of the Lochren family of Pluto, North Dakota which left a baby girl as the only survivor. The result is the lynching of three Native American men, including teenager Holy Track who Erdrich derived from true events. In this way, Plague of Doves concerns itself with re-examining this horrific event within the broader context of tensions between the Native American and white populations of North Dakota. This re-examination is much of the business of postmodernism which is characterized by the skepticism of accepted reason. More specifically, postmodernist literature often explores the multiplicity of truth, and how the telling of historical events is actually the composition of infinite partial truths. How does Louis Erdrich's use of multiple perspectives of the lynching of Holy Track bring the narrative closer to an accurate telling of events through “postmodernism’s denaturalizing critique” as Kimberly Chabot Davis conceptualized?

Erdrich employs what Davis calls a “denaturalizing critique” to question the widely accepted narrative that the lynching was justified. To denaturalize a fact is to interrogate how it was made conventional by general consent. Postmodern literature utilizes this tactic to assess the validity of history by attempting to “approximate ‘true history’ while remaining aware of the limits and impossibility of truth,” as Davis puts it. The goal is to fill in details that may counteract the “master narrative,” or the historical telling that has gone previously unchallenged, to come closer to accuracy. In the Plague of Doves, the master narrative would be that the group of Native American men were the ones who killed the Lochren family and were therefore justifiably punished for their crimes. This was definitely the belief of the lynchers, and even of Dr. Cordelia Lochren, the survivor of the murder. Cordelia reflects that she “was allowed to believe that the lynched Indians had been the ones responsible,” employing a passive tense that implies a greater force working to spread this master narrative (Erdrich 307). The entirety of the novel then works to piece apart this notion through the exploration of various perspectives of people in Pluto. 

Erdrich’s approach utilizes multiple perspectives of the same event to explore how partial truths can be fit together to create a more encompassing telling of events. As a whole, the novel is organized into four sections each characterized by different narrators: Evelina Harp, Marne Wolde, Judge Anton Basil Coutts, and Dr. Cordelia Lochren. Within each of these sections, the narrative switches focalizers frequently, multiplying the number of perspectives offered on a single event. For example, it is Evelina’s persistence, Mooshum’s storytelling, and Sister Mary Anita’s admission of the final details that tell the story of the lynching while revealing that Mooshum is the one who tells the authorities about the murder. It is then Dr. Cordelia Lochren’s findings that uncover Warren Wolde as the true murderer of the Lochren family. These truths were brought to light by a combination of personal accounts, oral stories, and physical artifacts, a sort of “amalgamation of local narratives,” as Davis says, in pursuit of historical truth. And yet, even as Erdrich adds a multitude of perspectives to the point where it is dizzying to keep track of who’s who, in the end, it still does not bring us to an objective conclusion. Erdrich serves the name of the murderer and a plethora of supporting details on a silver platter but does not suggest how the reader is supposed to process it all. 

The novel, therefore, comprises multiple partial truths pieced together to make a whole, but it is not a perfect puzzle. The result of Erdrich’s denaturalizing approach is not a clear standing in right or wrong, truth or falsity. This ambiguity is a direct product of the novel’s multiple perspectives because these perspectives are often incommensurable; the frequent discrepancies and elements of bias perturb any attempt to draw an objective conclusion. Cordelia herself struggles with organizing her thoughts on Pluto and the murders. She questions how she will tell Pluto’s story once it is gone: “what shall I have said? How shall I have depicted the truth?” (Erdrich 308). Her confusion reflects the limits to historical truth, and Erdrich recognizes this by not suggesting how the past should be digested. This is due in part to how denaturalizing history is not meant to construct another master narrative, postmodernism rejects the master narrative. And in the novel, leaving the conclusion open-ended does just that. The reader is left to survey what Erdrich has uncovered without a driving force demanding a single conclusion. A retelling of history through multiple perspectives is therefore asymptotic; that is, it gets as close as possible to total objectivity, but can ultimately never meet it. 

The Plague of Doves questions whether amalgamating many different perspectives on an event effectively tells a truer history than the single master narrative. Although this reconstruction does accomplish that, it cannot do so perfectly because it is only an approximation of history. There are limits to truth in historical accounts because each involved party has experienced it differently and approaches it with some level of bias. Erdrich’s re-examination does excavate a more accurate telling of events but does not place full blame on any one person because every single person in the story is implicated in some way, whether it is directly connected to the lynching or not. Even the surviving baby, Cordelia, is not exempt from culpability because her prejudice compels her wrongful medical bias against Native Americans. Erdrich makes it impossible to see a clear standing of integrity which denies the human desire to make sense of things. In this way, Erdrich withholds the formation of a master narrative by uprooting the naturalized view, aligning herself with postmodern tactics.

Davis KC. “Postmodern Blackness”: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the End of History. Twentieth century

literature. 1998;44(2):242-260. doi:10.2307/441873