The Red Convertible: War's Affect on Brotherhood

Cruising down the highway in a cherry red convertible on a sunny day with the top down, a brother to sing along to the radio with; a relaxing scene that many would see as a memorable moment. The shots of guns and cannons, death, blood and the unimaginable violence of war holds the complete opposite. Louise Erdrich, an extremely popular short story author, combines the two in her painfully realistic story The Red Convertible. The ease of life for the Lamartine brothers, Henry and Lyman, quickly changes when Henry is drafted into the war. Erdrich tells the tale of two native american boys whose lives are plagued with the nasty repercussions of war. Her story incorporates her own native american culture and is tied in with the harsh truth of

Her parents are Ralph Erdrich, a German-American, and her mother Rita, who was half French-American and half Ojibwe. Both of her parents were teachers at a boarding school in Wahpeton, North Dakota, set up by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “Growing up, her father would give her a nickel for every short story that she wrote” (Poetry Foundation). Erdrich comes from a family of writers as her two sisters are also both authors. Erdrich attended the first coed class at Dartmouth in 1972 and received her A.B. in English. In 1978, the author enrolled in an M.A. program at Johns Hopkins University, where she wrote poems and stories incorporating her heritage, many of which would later become part of her books. She also began sending her work to publishers, most of whom sent back rejection slips, but that did not falter her love for writing. After receiving her master 's degree, Erdrich returned to Dartmouth as a

The U.S. troops left Vietnam in March of 1973. However, when U.S. troops left, the fighting did not stop. The North Vietnamese seized the South 's government and took over. This resulted in Vietnam being reunited as a communist country, which would be known as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This would be around the time that Henry was released from enemy imprisonment. Though he was done fighting in the war physically, he spent the rest of his life in a mental battle worse than he had ever faced before. He would never be the same, and this was a hardship for both him and