medicine walk thesis statement

Medicine Walk

73 pages • 2 hours read

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-17

Chapters 18-21

Chapters 22-23

Chapters 24-26

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

From the outset of the novel, the reader begins to travel through the landscape with Frank as he describes the sounds and smells of the world around him. His positive thoughts about the natural world contrast with the metallic feel and sulfurous smells of the urban world. In nature, behavior is simple, direct, and honest. In the city, behavior is confused and without direction. Pleasure is sought for pleasure’s sake, and often relationships are mediated by money rather than the product of true feelings. The land is also the purpose of Eldon’s quest: He wishes to return to the land, to give back what was given to him when he was born.

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Medicine Walk

By richard wagamese, medicine walk literary elements.

Fiction, Interwoven Familial Narrative

Setting and Context

The backcountry/bush of British Columbia

Narrator and Point of View

The novel is written in third-person perspective. It is told primarily from the point of view of Franklin Starlight, the main character.

Tone and Mood

Melancholy, reflective, empathic

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protagonist is Franklin Starlight. The antagonist is Frank's father Eldon, and more broadly, the alcoholism and intergenerational trauma that he embodies.

Major Conflict

The major conflict in the novel is Frank's relationship with his alcoholic father, Eldon, and Frank's attempts to come to terms with this relationship as Eldon is passing away.

The climax of the novel occurs just before Eldon's death. Eldon tells Frank a final story about Frank's mother, Angie Pratt. Eldon passes away shortly after this story.

Foreshadowing

"Different fella now but I knew him good at one time. Least I thought I did."

"He smells funny," the kid said.

"He's been rinsed through pretty good."

"With that whisky?" the kid asked.

"Yes, sir. Some men take to it. I never did."

"Why not? Does it do bad things?"

The old man looked at him over his shoulder. "Keeps varmints away," he said.

The old man saying that he knew Eldon at one time, or at least thought he did, foreshadows the revelation of the past that Eldon and the old man share. Specifically, this remark foreshadows Eldon's story of Angie and Bunky, who turns out to be the old man.

Understatement

"Son of a bitch!" Eldon said. "That sucker went three pounds or I'm fucked."

"Drunk is what you are," the kid said.

"Hell, it's your birthday, kid. A little celebratin' is all I done."

Eldon's assertion that "a little celebratin' is all I done" is an understatement, because Eldon has gotten very drunk. This is an understatement both because of the degree of Eldon's "celebratin'," and because it minimizes what Eldon has done by drinking on Frank's birthday. Eldon promised Frank he would be sober all day, and so Eldon's drinking is in fact another broken promise he made to Frank.

Frank and Eldon's last name "Starlight" alludes to their dual role as storytellers. Jimmy Weaseltail tells Eldon, when he is younger, that the Starlights were meant to be storytellers and orators. The last name "Starlight" alludes to the importance of stories within the novel, as well as alluding to the bond that Eldon and Frank forge through stories during Eldon's final days.

The old man teaches Frank about Frank's Indigenous heritage and about honoring the land, despite the old man being white. This is a paradox because Eldon, Frank's biological father, is Indigenous, but Eldon does not teach Frank this knowledge.

Parallelism

The old man marks Frank's face with blood while the two of them are hunting. This parallels Jimmy's marking Eldon's face with blood during the Korean War, when Eldon promises he will bury Jimmy in the warrior way if Jimmy dies.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

Personification.

“They lowered their heads, their snouts poking near the ground, and watched him. And then they began to dance, or at least that’s how it seemed to him. One by one they began to weave sinuously back and forth, cutting between each other, snout to tail, a walk then half-trot until one of them nipped at the tail of another and they exploded into a frenzy of playfulness…They vanished into the trees, winked out of view as though the woods had folded itself around them, cocooned them, the chrysalis impermeable, whole, wound of the fibers of time, and the kid wondered what shape they would bear when they emerged into the moonstruck glades.”

In this passage, Wagamesse personifies the coyotes that Frank watches. They "dance" before Frank, after watching Frank curiously. Wagamese also personifies the forest in this passage as he writes "as though the woods had folded itself around them, cocooned them." Wagamese here gives the woods the capacity for human action.

Medicine Walk Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Medicine Walk is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why did frank had to come back to Nechako On pg:173?

What chapter are you referring to?

Medicine walk

In chapter 17, the story catapults back into the Korean War, where Jimmy and Eldon sit in the trenches.

Please tell me a one good question about Medicine Walk By Richard Wagamese from pg: 169-210.

Study Guide for Medicine Walk

Medicine Walk study guide contains a biography of Richard Wagamese, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Medicine Walk

Richard wagamese.

Sixteen-year-old Franklin Starlight —referred to as “the kid”—saddles his old mare for a trip over the mountains to the mill town of Parson’s Gap, British Columbia. His father Eldon has asked him to come, but he doesn’t know why. His guardian, the old man , warns him that his father will be very sick, perhaps dying, and reminds him that Eldon is dishonest.

When the kid reaches Parson’s Gap, he finds his father in a broken-down rooming house. Eldon takes the kid out for dinner and reveals that he wants the kid to take him into the backcountry to bury him there. (His liver is failing after years of hard drinking.) He also wants to tell the kid about his past, because it’s all he has to give. The kid isn’t sure at first, since his father has drifted in and out of his life and feels like a stranger to him. It was the old man (his guardian) who’d taught him how to survive school, to track and hunt, and to love the land. However, he agrees to the plan. Soon the men and the mare are headed into the mountains with a small pack of supplies.

On their first night in the wilderness, Eldon is impressed with Frank’s skill in setting up camp and fishing. He begins talking about himself, telling Frank that his parents, Frank’s grandparents, were half white and half Ojibway. They spent all their time traveling from job to job and didn’t have time to learn wilderness survival. He tells Frank they’re out here in the woods because he “owes” his son.

Frank thinks back to his earliest memory of Eldon, when he was almost six. Eldon had stayed at the farm briefly, leaving some money in a jar for the kid. The old man had explained that Eldon is someone he used to know very well, and that he drinks because things have gotten so broken inside him that they’re hard to fix. About a year later, Eldon returned and told the kid that he was his father, then disappeared again.

On the second day of their journey, Frank helps Eldon up a steep trail to a cliff that’s covered with sacred Indian paintings. He’s always loved coming here to sit and think about what the pictures mean and what they might reveal about who he is. Eldon says he was always too busy trying to survive to think about “Indian stuff.” That night, they take shelter in a cabin with a half-Indian woman named Becka Charlie . Though Eldon finds Becka to be nosy and critical, he softens when she guesses why he’s traveling West in order to die and be buried in the “warrior way”—it’s an effort to die with honor. Becka’s words prompt Eldon to tell Frank the story of his childhood.

After Eldon’s father died in the Second World War, he began traveling and working wherever he could in order to provide for his mother. Eldon became best friends with Jimmy Weaseltail , who became like a member of the family. One summer, the friends became accomplished logrollers in British Columbia, working under a foreman named Jenks . Before long, Jenks became intrigued by Eldon’s mother and started having meals with the family; then he and Eldon’s mother began sleeping together. Within a month, Eldon saw evidence that Jenks was abusing her. When he and Jimmy caught Jenks in the act, Jimmy attacked Jenks, nearly killing him. Eldon’s mother defended Jenks and told the boys to run. Eldon never saw his mother again.

Frank calls his father a coward for never going back; it has cheated him out of a grandmother and deepened his sense of not knowing who he is. As Eldon sleeps, however, Becka suggests that Eldon was brave to tell what most would rather forget, and that our stories are all we are.

The next day, when the kid and his father continue their journey, they cross paths with a juvenile grizzly. Frank succeeds in confronting the bear. Later he tells Eldon that out here in the wilderness, you just do what you have to in order to survive. Soothed by the herbal medicine Becka gave them, Eldon tells Frank to pour out his remaining whisky.

The kid recalls traveling to Parson’s Gap when he was nine to see his father. The old man accompanied him. They found Eldon in a crumbling rooming house, dancing drunkenly with a woman. Before he and the old man left in anger, Frank told his father that he didn’t know anything about having a father, except for what Eldon showed him through his actions.

The following year, for his tenth birthday, the kid visited Eldon by himself. At first, things looked promising; Eldon was living in a tidy boarding house and even planned a birthday outing for his son. After a blissful afternoon of fly-fishing, however, Frank discovered that his father had been sneaking whiskey the whole time, breaking his promise. Frank (an experienced tractor driver) was forced to drive his drunken father home in the pickup. A couple years later, Eldon promised to visit for Christmas. When he failed to show up, Frank was furious with himself—after all he’d witnessed, he should have known better than to hope.

The following day, Eldon’s condition worsens. By evening, he and the kid arrive at a ridge Eldon had hoped to reach. The valley is filled with a beautiful turquoise river and ringed with snowcapped mountains. Eldon visited this place once before, and it’s the only place where he ever felt as though he fit. That’s why he’s chosen to die here. He begins telling Frank a story he needs to hear—of how he once killed a man.

In 1951, Eldon and Jimmy enlisted in the Royal Canadian Regiment to fight in Korea. More loyal to Jimmy than to the war effort, Eldon committed himself to becoming the best soldier he could be. Sitting in a trench outside Busan, Eldon swore to Jimmy to make sure that if he got killed, he’d receive a warrior’s burial. Soon after, they were sent on a reconnaissance mission, and Jimmy got fatally wounded. Knowing his screams would give away their position, Jimmy signaled to Eldon to kill him. Eldon stabbed his friend to death, and his body was never recovered, so Eldon was unable to keep his promise to bury Jimmy. He’s never admitted this story to anyone before.

The next morning, Eldon is worse, but he’s determined to talk to the kid about one more thing: Frank’s mother. After the war, Eldon was in bad shape, drinking to forget his memories and working odd jobs in Parson’s Gap to afford his binges. One day, he was drinking at his favorite dive, Charlie’s, when he noticed a graceful, long-haired woman dancing to the jukebox. An older man, who introduced himself as Bunky, sat down with Eldon and admired the woman, Angie , too. When Angie’s dancing partner, Dingo , bullied a weaker drunk, Bunky stood up to him. Soon Angie joined their table, and Eldon fell in love with her. However, she was attracted to Bunky.

A week later, Bunky drove into Parson’s Gap and hired Eldon to put up 10 acres of fencing on his farm; Eldon stayed on the farm for a couple of weeks. Angie was living there now, too. Each day, Angie brought him lunch and told him about her life, and in the evenings, Angie told Bunky and Eldon stories she made up on the spot. Eldon grew increasingly attracted to Angie, and she hinted that she felt the same, but he resisted opening up to her. He could see how much Bunky loved Angie, and he felt guilty about his own feelings—all the more since he’d stopped drinking.

On Eldon’s last day on the job, Angie visited him in the pasture, and he finally opened up to her a little. They ended up making love in the field. That night, Eldon, guilt-ridden, tried to avoid everyone, but Angie climbed to his loft, and they made love passionately. Bunky discovered them and was furious. But after Eldon and Angie admitted their love for one another, Bunky wept brokenly. He told Eldon that if he and Angie were going to build a life together, he must treat her right, or Bunky would come and find him. He gave them the keys to his truck and some cash and told them to be gone before he returned.

Eldon tells Frank that for the longest time, he kept his promise and didn’t drink. For the first time, he even felt he could settle down contentedly. But the following fall, Angie found out she was pregnant with Frank. Eldon’s fears of inadequacy awakened the old darkness in him; he believed he was destined to destroy everyone he loved. He began drinking in secret to cope with his fear and shame. One night, Eldon drove home drunk from a tavern and discovered Angie in an agonizing breech labor. He got her to the hospital, but she died as the baby was delivered. The doctor said if he’d gotten home in time, she might have lived.

Eldon believed that his loving Angie had killed her, and he feared he would hate Frank because of this. In the only deed he was ever proud of, Eldon brought Frank to Bunky (who, he confirms, is the old man) when Frank was a newborn. Though Bunky was devastated by the news of Angie’s death and blamed Eldon, he loved Frank instantly and quickly decided to raise him for Angie’s sake. After telling Frank this, Eldon is spent. He overlooks the valley one last time, moaning “I’m sorry.” That night he dies in his sleep.

The next morning, Frank buries his father in the traditional warrior way. When he gets back to the farm, he sees himself in the old man’s working rhythms and smoothly rejoins the comfortable home routine. After telling Bunky Eldon’s whole story, Frank also tells Bunky that Bunky has always been a father to him. That night, he overlooks Bunky’s land and imagines he sees a traveling band of Indians waving warmly to him, making him feel connected to an ancestral line he’s never known. Then he goes back to the cabin where the old man is waiting for him.

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