The Red Convertible Short Story

Reliving Life Through Writing
Literature can be based on a myriad of plots. From a realistic fiction story to science fiction and aliens attacking earth, there are a multitude of possibilities. Many times the topic of the literature is based on some part of the author’s life. The short story, “The Red Convertible,” by Louise Erdrich, is a piece realistic fiction that has elements that parallel Erdrich’s life. This story outlines the relationship of two brothers, Lyman and Henry. They have a strong relationship, but after Henry comes back from the Vietnam War things change. “The Red Convertible” is a prime example of how authors write to express their feelings and make sense of life events. Ultimately, Louise Erdrich has perfected the art of writing a fiction story in an autobiographical way by relating events in her life such as her heritage, the death of her eldest son, and the suicide of her husband to those written in “The Red Convertible.”
There were tragedies and successes in Erdrich’s eventful life; these experiences gave her a multitude of ideas to write about. It has been proven that tragedies, such as death, cause people to write about their emotions (Lacy 4). This practice is often encouraged by physicians in order to help patients recover from losses. According to Texas Women’s University one of the best ways to heal emotionally after the death of a loved one is to “use writing, art, and music to let out your feelings and thoughts” (Lacy 4). Erdrich likely followed this advice and wrote “The Red Convertible” after the suicide of her husband.
Louise Erdrich had a basic childhood that blossomed into a lively adulthood, which contained events that inspired the plot of “The Red Convertible.” As a child she grew up in ...

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... take on her life. Her characters are based on real people that have influenced her and the events are created from life experiences. The trauma of some of these occasions has likely caused her to write and create characters that undergo the same ordeals. Her heritage also plays a role in her writing, yet it is debatable whether her portrayal is accurate. Simply summed up, “Using an autobiographical technique…[Erdrich] gives depth to her characters’’ personalities through her poetic sensibility toward language, using a vernacular diction, funny analogies, and epithets the evoke laughter...” (Hunter 474). Overall, Louise Erdrich had many impacts on her life including the death of her eldest son, her Native American and German heritage, and the suicide of her husband that influenced her to write “The Red Convertible.” The events in the story are parallels to her life.