The Painted Drum (2005) (edit title/settings)

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Faye Travers: Faye is the main protagonist of the novel. It is she who steals the drum and looks into its history.
• Elsie Travers: Faye's mother. She and Faye run a business together as well as live together.
• Kurt Krahe: An artist who lives down the road from the Travers'
• Kendra Krahe: Kurt's daughter.
• Bernard Shaawano: Add a description of this character.
• Anaquot
• Zigwan'aage
• Simon Jack
• Fleur
• Doosh
• Nibin'aage
• Kakageeshikok
• Albert Ruse

Quotes edit see section history

• “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

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• Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

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• All we crave is a simple order. One day and then the next day and the next after that, if we’re lucky, to be the same. Grief is chaos. Death or illness throw the world out of whack. The drum’s order is the world’s order. To proceed with and keep that order is a gesture of desperate hope. Protect us. Save us. Let our minds remain clear of sorrow so that we can simply praise the world.

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• She must be responsible for our psychic weaknesses the rest of her life. It is all right to feel kinship with your father, to forgive. We all know that. But your mother is held to a standard so exacting that it has no principles. She simply must be to blame.

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• In the woods, there is no right way to go, of course, no trail to follow but the law of growth. You must leave behind the notion that things are right. Just look around you. Here is the way things are. Twisted, fallen, split at the root. What grows best does so at the expense of what’s beneath.

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• The body of a drum is a container for the spirit, just as if it were flesh and bone. And although love between a man and woman can change and fail, overreach itself, fall prey to suspicions, yet the drum lives on. The drum waits with the patience of unliving things and yet it heals with life itself.

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• The drum is the universe. The people who take their place at each side represent the spirits who sit at the four directions. A painted drum, especially, is considered a living thing and must be fed as the spirits are fed, with tobacco and a glass of water set nearby, sometimes a plate of food. A drum is never to be placed on the ground, or left alone, and it is always to be covered with a blanket or quilt.

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• what I’m telling you is you wear down these sorrows using what you have, what comes to hand. You talk them over, you live them through, you don’t let them sit inside. See, that’s what the drum was good for. Letting those sorrows out, into the open, where those songs could bear them away.”

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• Schadenfreude, the joy that rises as one witnesses the pain of others.

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• For it seems that my sorrow is deep in my bones and I’d have to break every single one to let it out.

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• What’s the difference between smart and self-protective? They are the same, I think. Only when you are secure enough not to fear immediate survival can you display creative intelligence in anything you do.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• New Hamshire
• North Dakota

First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Louise Erdrich (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Minnesota Book Award (2006: Novel & Short Story, Winner)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.54

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › Native American › Erdrich, Louise
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( E ) › Erdrich, Louise
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary