73 pages • 2 hours read
Richard WagameseMedicine Walk
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A 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.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Eldon summons Frank to Parson’s Gap, a nearby mill town where Eldon works odd jobs. Bunky cautions Frank against the trip due to Eldon’s unreliability. Although Eldon abandoned Frank as a baby, Frank believes he has a duty to Eldon, his biological father. Frank starts his journey on horseback. Although Frank is only 16 years old, he is a capable hunter and trapper who understands how to survive alone in the wild. Frank is a silent and solitary boy who, after learning more from nature than from books, has dropped out of school: “He was Indian. The old man said it was his way and he’d always taken that for truth” (5). Frank camps for the night, smokes a homemade cigarette, and wonders why his father summoned him.
Chapter 2 Summary
Frank travels from the quiet comfort of Bunky’s farmland to the polluted mill town: “The horse snorted and shook her head at the sulphur smell” (6). When Frank needs to control the frightened horse “when she skittered at the cars or the screeching metallic sounds of town life” (7), he realizes that horses are rarely seen on the road. The town kids swear at Frank and call him names, but Frank ignores them and attempts to find a connection with nature: “The autumn chill was in the air and he could smell the frost coming and the rain that would follow” (8). As Frank searches for his father, he encounters “hard-looking men, grease-stained, callused with the lean, prowling hungry look of feral dogs” (8). Frank finally finds a woman who tells Frank where he can find Eldon.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The first two chapters establish two conflicts: wilderness versus city life, and formal education versus life lessons. Formal education does not appear to add value to Frank’s lifestyle, and he’s put off by how loud his fellow classmates are. Frank drops out of school; he prefers Bunky’s practical life lessons because they align with Frank’s preference to live a solitary life in nature. Frank can survive alone in the wilderness—a skill that he can't learn in school and that separates him from his fellow classmates. However, Eldon’s summons forces Frank to leave the natural landscape of Bunky’s farm for the contrasting squalor of Parson’s Gap. Frank departs on horseback, emphasizing his physical connection to nature: “He rode through it fleshed out and comfortable with the feel of the land around him like the refrain of an old hymn” (5).
The “hymn” metaphor is reminiscent of religious practices and emphasizes the sacredness of Frank’s connection to nature and animals. Frank has learned to travel with cougars and to seek out eagles. Now, as he travels, Frank feels a connection to the horse that carries him, sensing her needs and caring for her along the journey.
Whereas the natural landscape is described in quasi-religious terms, the city is “metallic,” and the air is no longer sweet but carries “the greasy smell of cooking” (7). Dogs on chains “bark and growl” (7) rather than act as partners like the horse. The men are threatening, and the woman Frank meets is much too forward: “Let old Shirl show you a good time” (9).
Frank retreats and moves on, establishing his separation from the seedy, grimy town with its bars and brothels and from Eldon’s dissolute lifestyle. The wilderness teaches a stern morality of individual responsibility and a traditional Indigenous ethos of respect for the land, but the town is associated with the kind of dissolute living, such as alcoholism, that has often been the downfall of many Indigenous men such as Eldon.
Related Titles
By Richard Wagamese
