Andy Erdrich's The Red Convertible

“The Red Convertible”
“One in five veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder also known as PTSD...Veterans now account for 20 percent of suicides in the US”(“Shocking”). This relates to Stefan in the Red Convertible because when he leaves for war he is fine, but when he comes back he has PTSD. Marty and his brother buy a red convertible with their insurance from their restaurant after it was destroyed by a tornado. However, a few years after they buy the convertible, Stephen goes off to war in Vietnam and the bond between himself and Marty becomes broken. Finally, after Stephan returns back home from Vietnam, Marty tries to convince Stefan to get interested in the convertible once again. This

lead to the men traveling around, Stefan driving the car into a river and passing away. In The Red Convertible, Louise Erdrich establishes a cause/effect relationship between two themes, one displays the bond between brothers, while the other depicts how the occurrence of traumatic events can change one’s life, in order to emphasize the importance of family when a traumatic event occurs.
The bond between a family, especially brothers, may be the strongest bond one could experience. When Stefan left for war, he let Marty have the car because he wouldn’t be there to take care of it. During the two years Stefan was gone at war, Marty fixed up the car. Most of the time Marty had the car, “up on blocks in the yard or half taken apart because that long trip wore out so much of it although, it gave us a beautiful performance when we needed it”(Edrich 138). Edrich illustrated the condition of the convertible through his choice in words. The diction of the word “beautiful” is used to describe the driving performance of the car. The car drove beautifully, meaning it met their standards and didn’t cause them any trouble when they were driving. Marty fixed the car for his brother because it met something to them, but it also bonded them together. When the author uses the phrase “wore out” he is describing the condition of the car. With the boys going on their vacation together, it took a lot out of it because it is an older car. So, Marty planned on fixing the car for his brother. Unfortunately, when his brother got back from war, “he had not even looked at the car, though like I said, it was in tip-top condition and ready to drive”(Edrich 140). This affected Marty negatively because he worked very hard on the car and his brother didn’t care enough to notice. This describes the attitude of Stefan, how he went from being a determined brother to a man with little care. Marty then took a hammer to the car and destroyed it. He did this because he wanted his brother to be the person he used to be. Stefan began working on the convertible and Marty thought, “he’d freeze himself to death working on that vehicle”(Edrich 141). He fixed the car because he cared deeply about it. The brothers shared a bond not only with each other, but with the car as well. The red convertible met something to the brothers that one couldn’t understand.
Traumatic events can either change someone for the better or for the worse, and in this case it changed one for the worse. The author uses negative connotation to describe how the war had changed Stefan. Marty explains that “when he came home, though, Stefan was very different, the change was no good. You could hardly expect him to change for the better...I thought back to times we’d sat still for whole afternoons”(Edrich 138). In this, Marty is describing a memory moment he had of him and Stefan before the war, when things were simpler. The author uses the word “different” to describe the change in Stefan when he returned from war. He was no longer happy and caring, but jumpy and mean. No one wanted to be around him because of the way he acted. Marty explains that when he, “looked over, he’d bitten through his lip. Blood was going down his chin...He didn’t notice it”(Edrich 139). He became so damaged, he no longer realized when he hurt himself. This displays how PTSD can impact one person’s life. According to the US Department of Veteran Affairs, a government-run beneficiary program,“PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) is a mental health problem that some people develop after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening event, like combat, a natural disaster, a car accident, or sexual assault”(“PTSD”).
Two themes within the short story The Red Convertible, one about the unbreakable bonds between brothers and another about how traumatic events change one's life, interacting to convey a cause/ effect relationship.

“Then, before we had thought it over at all, the car belonged to us and our pockets were empty...Some people hang on to details when they travel, but we didn't let them bother us and just lived our everyday lives here to there” (Erdrich 136). Erdrich emphasized that the convertible trips were very significant to the brothers, especially with the phrase “just lived our everyday lives here to there”. This phrase determined that the brothers enjoyed their small road trips with each other where they could just live life and be themselves. When they come back from their trip, unfortunately Stefan has to go to war. He is gone for two years, and when he returns he is different. Marty said that “he thought the old car would bring old Stephen back somehow” (Erdrich 140). So Marty damaged the vehicle in hopes to change Stephen back to the way he was before. In which Marty was successful “That car’s a classic! But you went and ran the piss right out of it” (Erdrich 140). Being away at war made Stephen forget about the vehicle that was so important to him before, but after going through his violent stage he realized that the car did mean a lot to him. His attitude changed when he realized that his brother trashed the vehicle. Erdrich expressed that violence can be changed, specifically with the phrase “but ran the piss right out of it”. Stephen was angry when his brother damaged the car, which lead him to begin caring again. When someone “runs the piss right out of something”, it means that a nice thing went downhill quickly, in which Erdrich determined that the convertible being damaged helped Stephen return back to his old self. Although his brother changed, it didn’t break their brotherly bond. The effect which is clearly displayed in the secondary theme is that a

traumatic experience can change one dramatically. Each trip and brotherly moment was because of the red convertible. The understanding of the significance of the convertible being important to his brother lead Marty to send the vehicle crashing into the water, and then nothing. Erdrich reiterated the idea of everything happening so quickly when he deliberately repeated the words “running” and “going”. Such words personalized the water flowing after such tragedy occurred, and accentuated the importance of how quickly life can be taken. And how PTSD can change one’s life for the worse. By developing a cause/effect relationship, the story The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich highlights the idea that a brothers bond is unbreakable even in the worst circumstances such as PTSD.
Unspoken bonds are quite common, bonds can be shared over an object or an experience shared between people. Stephan and Marty had an unspoken bond, but it came with the red Convertible. That car took them wherever they wanted to go, always together. Neither one of them went anywhere without the both of them in the car. Louise Erdrich’s story The Red Convertible clearly emphasized the important bond between a family, especially brothers. A traumatic experience can alter the bond, but it can’t break it completely.