Sita And Mary Into Bed example essay topic

Louise Erdrich, the author of The Beet Queen, is the oldest of seven children. Erdrich, was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, on June 7, 1954. The daughter of a French Ojibwe mother and German American father, Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Erdrich's large extended family lived nearby, affecting her writing life from an early age. Her father introduced Louise to William Shakespeare's plays and encouraged Louise and her sisters to write their own stories.

Erdrich attended college at Dartmouth and John Hopkins before marrying author and anthropologist Michael Dorris. When she married Dorris, he had three adopted children and later the couple had three more children of their own. When the two separated in 1995, Erdrich moved six blocks down the street in order to share custody of their children. On March 29, 1997 Dorris committed suicide. Erdrich now lives in Minneapolis, MN with her three children.

On a spring morning in 1932, Mary age eleven and Karl Adare age fourteen arrive in Argus, North Dakota. Having parted and going separate ways Mary having gone to live with her aunt, while Karl goes on to explore and live on the wilder side. These children were orphaned in a strange way; their mother took off with an airplane stuntman. Haunted by disturbing images of her mother, Mary seeks refuge and stays with her mother's sister Fritzie, which with her husband Pete, run a butcher shop. This begins the forty-year saga of abandonment and unstinting love. The novel, The Beet Queen, deals with the elements involved to create plot movement.

First off is exposition, since every chapter in The Beet Queen is narrated by a different character in the book it tells the story of each character in first person and in great detail chapter by chapter. It tells you the story from their point of view. It is very effective it allows you to be in their mind thinking along with them seeing what they are going through and feeling. At the conclusion of each chapter you want to keep reading to see what will happen to a specific character when it is there turn to narrate again. One event in The Beet Queen is when Sita is put into a psycho ward because she pretended to lose her voice, and ever since then her neighbors and everyone she came in contact with would have to read her lips. Sita explains she did it because she grew to like the way they bent close, puzzling out her words, studying her face for clues.

She grew to like it so much she lost the ability to speak out loud. You could feel Sita's fear ' I was frightened now' (206) She explained in great detail how the color of the walls she had to stay in paralyzed her and how it made her sick to her stomach. Also while in the ward you could feel Sita's frustration. She wanted Louis her husband to take her home's ita used her whole face emphatically. She ordered him to take her home. ' (206)'s top!

She tried to call out. Put everything back in my suitcase! I'm leaving! I could really feel her frustration here because the nurse replied ' You " ll have to speak out loud, Mrs Tape. ' ' We don't read lips here. ' (207) Sita just shut her mouth and glared at the nurse.

Sita finally gets out of the ward she calls Louis and says, ' Get me out!' she cried to him. I'm cured. ' (212) I feel that Erdrich letting Sita herself tell the story allows the reader to better feel the characters emotions and thoughts. The Beet Queen also has conflict to give the novel more plot movement. Mary and Sita run into conflict based mostly on jealousy right away in the novel.

It all starts when Mary comes to live with her aunt Fritzie and uncle Pete whose daughter is Sita. Sita always wanted this cow diamond her father, Pete, owned and was hoping to inherit it. One night Pete came in and tucked both Sita and Mary into bed. But after tucking Mary into bed Pete leaned over and said, ' Here is a jewel.

' (30) Sita then realized it was the cow diamond that she wanted ' When I looked over the edge of my bed and saw the pale lens glowing in her hand, I could have spit. ' (30) Ever since Mary had arrived at Sita's house to live she first took over Sita's room, then her clothing, then the cows diamond. But Mary stole something worse from Sita her best friend Celestine. Another element of plot movement in the novel is rising action.

This happens when Adelaide's child is left with Mary when she leaves her children abandoned. The baby Mary holds in her hands is her baby brother and the baby is screaming from hunger. A man tells her to let him see him because his wife could breast feed the baby and he would bring it back. Mary tells him no but the man snatches the baby from her arms and never sees him again. Miss Miller the woman who now has the baby cut this article out of the paper ' the reward offered for information leading to the recovery of a month-old baby boy.

' (47) This event happened in 1932 and 20 years later Mrs. Miller writes Sita a letter explaining to her that she had lost her own baby and couldn't have any after that. So Mrs. Miller kept Jude when her husband brought him home that night. She explained how she might have given him back except she heard about the mother flying off. So she raised him. Mrs. Miller was letting Sita know that Jude was going to be ordained in a week, that he was going to become a Deacon. Sita never tells Mary about the letter and Jude only returns at the end but no one ever sees him.

Another complication in the novel was between Dot and Wallace Pfe f. Dot feared nothing and was often in trouble for her temper. It all started when Dot was playing Saint Joseph in a school play. One of the boys in the play that was playing a donkey reached out from under his suite to pull off Dots beard. Dot being hot tempered made the boy playing the donkey fall down. The nuns had to stop the play and told the parents the play was over.

Dot ran out off the stage and later that night ended up at Wallace's. She rang his doorbell many times and finally he found the strength to get up and answer it. Dot said ' Let me in it's freezing cold. ' (240) and Wallace replied ' No, I mean please go home.

' (240) He then felt bad and Dots face turned to hate. She jumped off the step and headed home in the cold rain. He replied ' Come back!' (240) She kept running so he jumped in his car and found her eventually at her house. Dot avoided Wallace for a long time. In the novel there is a lot of rising action for each character has there own dilemmas and I feel it brings the reader to want to read on and to find out how the characters might resolve there situations. Most of the situations in The Beet Queen do come to a final resolution.

To put closure on the incident between Wallace and Dot, Wallace racks his brain for something he can do to win Dot back. He called Celestine, Dots mother and asked her if she was doing anything for Dots eleventh birthday next week. Celestine told him she didn't have plans and that Wallace could throw her a party. So that's what Wallace did he planned Dots birthday party and the theme was Hawaii. They played pin the tail on the pig and then disaster hit. Sita gave Mary a drink but she put a lot more alcohol in it just so Mary would eventually pass out and not be the center of attention of the party.

Since Sita hated Mary for always stealing the show. Well Mary was very drunk by the time it was time to blow out the candles. So Mary sitting at the table decides to light the candles and send the cake spinning in circles on its stand. It gets spinning so fast it eventually fly's off the stand and splatters over everything.

Mary was just sitting at the table smiling and that's when Celestine decided it was time for everyone to go home and before leaving Dot yelled out the window at Wallace ' Uncle Wallace! That was the best birthday ever!' (251) Then Dot and Wallace were back on good terms. At the end of The Beet Queen all the conflicts the characters have are all put to rest at the end of the novel. One thing I found which every character has in common is his or her ties to family. Though they are all related to incredibly dysfunctional people and they all face hardships, each one of them remains close to the characters around them despite their own and the family's flaws. Somehow every character in this book is reunited with another character they either hated or liked and no matter what they were there for each other.

And no matter how many times a character got abandoned the person that abandoned them would somehow always return in there lives either in person or by letters or in there minds.