Louise Erdrich is a prolific Native American writer who has been garnered since her first novel Love Medicine in 1984. She has attempted to create a unique literary style, which involves multiple narratives of storytelling, including even animals. She has also tried to expand the subject matter, as in The Beet Queen, of white characters in white society as she claims her mixed blood ethnic background. Similarly, The Master Butchers Singing Club focuses on white society in the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota. Unlike The Beet Queen, however, this novel particularly delineates the relationships between American and German ethnicity and history. Fidelis immigrates to the United States in order to hopefully pursue a new and better life. But his memories and experiences as a sniper in the First World War never disappears while on the new continent. Furthermore, during the Second World War, his two sons are killed and one son, brainwashed by Nazi’s propaganda, ignores his father at a POW camp in Minnesota that results in his eventual heart attack. Fidelis’s singing club shows the center of American ethnicity at this particular period. On the surface, Fidelis’s masculinity and industrious hard-working efforts look strong. However, Erdrich emphasizes the role of women at home as well as in society, breaking with the traditional family boundary. Eva and Delphine establish Fidelis’ home, giving order by wisely managing the butcher shop and zealously raising for children, as the first and second wife, respectively. Their special relationships as mother-daughter and friends are portrayed as ideal and a reason for a brightened home and society. With the two World Wars, above all, Erdrich asks the reader to be retrospective about one of the most tragic incidents in American history in connection with Native Americans: The Wounded Knee Massacre. Delphine’s father Roy gives an indirect but vivid description with historic present calls for our attention, while Step-and-a-Half’s experience at the huge incident as a child does not stop her from walking off with horrible memories held until her death in this seemingly peaceful landscape.
