73 pages • 2 hours read
Louise ErdrichThe Sentence
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Unpredictability of Life
In The Sentence, Erdrich observes and portrays the unpredictability of life. Tookie endures one challenge after another in life, but she’s also surprised by life’s capacity to bring her love and joy.
Tookie’s lessons in the unpredictability of life began in childhood. Her mother battled substance addiction and moved in and out of her life and was unable to provide a secure and stable environment for Tookie. As a child, Tookie couldn’t rely on her family, highlighting that life is unpredictable because people are unpredictable. Tookie’s arrest comes as a surprise too. Although Tookie doesn’t realize it, transporting Budgie’s body was actually a plan by her crush to transport drugs. Tookie believes in love and transports the body out of passion, not realizing that she’s committing a crime. Her arrest happens quickly after the transport of the body, revealing that life can change in the span of hours. Those hours fundamentally transform Tookie’s future because she goes to prison, becomes a statistic, and is traumatized by her incarceration. In addition, Tookie’s arrest casts this theme in a more positive light when, against all odds, Tookie ends up marrying Pollux, the man who arrested her before her incarceration. Marriage with Pollux gives Tookie a second chance at stability, love, family, and home after her release from prison. It’s an unlikely relationship, given their fraught past, but its unpredictability belies its beauty.
Just when Tookie’s life seems peaceful and wholly good, she faces another challenge when Flora’s ghost starts haunting the bookstore where Tookie works—disturbing her, annoying her, and forcing her inward to question her character. The presence of the ghost is a mystery. Although it seems appropriate for Flora, of all ghosts, to haunt her beloved bookstore, Tookie struggles to understand why she’s the only one (at least initially) who can hear the ghost—and what this means about Tookie. The haunting prompts Tookie to reckon with her internal conflicts, spurring a journey of self-reflection and confrontation with resentments about her past. The haunting symbolizes the unpredictability of life because the ghost’s presence is unwelcome, and the subsequent struggle between Tookie and Flora’s ghost is unexpected. In this situation, life’s unpredictability twists from conflict into revelation. Tookie is surprised to discover that Flora’s family lineage is tied to Tookie’s mysterious background. In an unpredictable revelation that helps Tookie resolve her internal conflicts, she acknowledges her real name (Lily) when she realizes that Flora’s ghost is trying to atone for the historical wrongs her ancestors inflicted on Tookie’s ancestors.
Minneapolis faces an unpredictable and unstable period of protests, riots, and looting after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the police. These months are painful for the community and highlight the instability of society’s fragile relationship with history, the present, and community. On the heels of this unpredictable event, a worldwide pandemic surprises everyone. The unpredictability of COVID-19—from the insecurity of the lockdowns to the uncertainty surrounding who gets sick and how badly, to the initial lack of a meaningful response and effective treatments—emphasizes that life is full of challenges we can’t predict. These events make characters in the novel stronger, so Erdrich’s theme on the unpredictability of life develops external conflict to motivate character development.
The Resilience and Importance of Indigenous American Identity
Erdrich’s novel celebrates the resilience and importance of Indigenous American identity. The Ojibwe (or Chippewa) woman Tookie and her loved ones are all part of the larger Minnesota Indigenous American community, so they’re connected through a shared history and a mutual struggle with present-day American politics.
Birchbark Books, Louise Erdrich’s real-life independent bookstore, features Indigenous American texts and symbolizes the preservation of Indigenous history and voices. The employees of the bookstore are committed to learning Indigenous American languages, histories, and contemporary identity politics. Often, this leads to external conflict because many customers come into the bookstore with preconceived notions about Indigenous American life and ask ignorant questions that constantly remind Tookie and her peers of the lack of conscientious learning about Indigenous life in the US. Tookie is often “othered” for her identity. When an elderly white woman approaches her and Asema on the street to tell them a disturbing (and unrequested) story about her ancestors’ appropriation of Indigenous American land and bones, the woman’s inability to understand the significance of her story dehumanizes Asema and Tookie. In this situation, Asema and Tookie become nothing more than visual representations of Indigenous people in the eyes of the white woman, and her lack of consideration emphasizes her lack of respect for their history. However, they support one another in recovering from this disturbing conversation, which highlights the resilience of Indigenous Americans in the face of bigotry and ignorance.
Pollux practices Indigenous traditions, participating in community cultural events and volunteering to do patrols when the community faces danger. When he arrests Tookie, he’s just doing his job, but his actions contribute to turning Tookie into a statistic, one of the many Indigenous Americans incarcerated. Pollux tries to fight the stereotype of criminality with which white America labels the Indigenous community. His former work as a police officer made him feel that he was representing and protecting his community, but his own internal conflict over working for an institution with a history of oppression against the Indigenous American community overpowered him and led him to quit the force. Pollux has a vast knowledge of Indigenous traditions and languages, and he helps Tookie get more in touch with her Indigenous American identity.
Flora’s ghost connects to this theme too. In life, Flora was a loyal but annoying customer. The bookstore employees knew that Flora was white, but she insisted that she had some vague Indigenous ancestry. Her support of the Indigenous American community through fostering runaway teens from the reservation, adopting Indigenous customs, and collecting and consuming Indigenous literature was suspicious to Tookie and the other employees of the bookstore. Flora’s ghost in the store symbolizes the continuous appropriation of Indigenous American culture by white Americans. At the end of the novel, the narrative reveals that Flora died and her spirit haunted the store because of her guilt over her white ancestry. Flora thus represents both a threat to the Indigenous American community and the offer of reparations that the Indigenous community deserves after centuries of genocide and oppression.
The Power of Love as Redemption
In The Sentence, the characters find redemption through giving and receiving love. The most prominent example of this theme is the relationship between Pollux and Tookie.
Through their loving marriage, both Pollux and Tookie make amends with their internal conflicts and their pasts. Tookie finds a family in her relationship with Pollux. She grew up without her father and most without her mother. Pollux provides the stability of a family that Tookie herself creates, empowering her and giving her peace after a strenuous part of her life. Pollux’s extended family becomes Tookie’s source of love too. His niece Hetta essentially becomes like an adopted daughter to them, and though Tookie and Hetta have a fraught relationship, it’s the closest Tookie comes to being a mother. Tookie and Hetta mend their relationship over time, demonstrating that it’s never too late to rebuild love. Hetta’s son, Jarvis, inspires Tookie and makes her feel unconditional love for the first time in her life. Jarvis is a baby, so his innocence informs his interactions with her. Jarvis doesn’t care about Tookie’s past or her bouts with a mental health condition. Jarvis responds only to the empathy and love that Tookie expresses. He shows Tookie that her capacity for love is deep, one of the only things she likes about herself. Through the love Tookie gives and receives from her family, she finds redemption and forgives herself for her past misdeeds and her flaws.
Likewise, Pollux finds peace in the power of love. Like Tookie, Pollux has misgivings and resentment about his past. His former job as a police officer fills him with ethical problems, and he harbors guilt for having arrested Tookie. However, in being Tookie’s husband, Hetta’s father figure, and a visible figure of support in his Indigenous American community, Pollux finds redemption by doling out his love. Pollux feels deep empathy for his loved ones and is a pillar in his community; both roles help him deal with his past and focus on his present.
Before Asema and Pen help Tookie find a way to free Flora’s ghost, Tookie uses the power of love to redeem herself—to break free from the anxiety of the ghost. For many chapters, Tookie worries that the ghost’s presence indicates something about Tookie—that her past mistakes make her hauntable. However, Pollux’s dangerous bout with COVID-19 puts Tookie’s love and life back in perspective. She realizes that she’s faced scarier things than Flora’s ghost and relies on the love she learned from family and friends to overcome her fear of the ghost. Tookie even forgives Flora for her cultural appropriation. When Tookie discovers the truth about Flora’s ancestry and her shared history with Tookie, she frees Flora’s ghost by forgiving her and extending genuine empathy to her. The resolution of Flora’s disturbed spirit lies in Tookie’s capacity for love.
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