The Red Convertible

Content Warning: This sections contains references to war-related trauma and systemic racism against Indigenous Americans.

The story establishes itself as a character study from the beginning. The title situates the Oldsmobile as the focal point of the story, and Lyman reveals the end of that narrative in the first paragraph: Henry “buys out” Lyman’s share on a cold night, and now Lyman walks everywhere. The anecdote about the Joliet Café’s destruction confirms that Lyman is someone who loses things, and he loses them “quick” (178). Because the author discloses the last event of the story before he really begins, the question driving the reader forward isn’t primarily what happens (though the narrator’s ambiguously metaphorical account of what happened to the car and his brother does leave room for surprise). Instead, this is a story about why things happen and how they affect the people they happen to. The narrator’s comments on the story as it happens augment this search for understanding, making connections and drawing meaning from the events.

The structure of the story reflects the main character’s Coming of Age. When the narrator recalls a fond memory, he leans hard into nostalgia, indulging in lush or repetitive language. He can hardly contain his excitement about the day he and Henry bought the convertible: “The first time we saw it! I’ll tell you when we first saw it” (178). The road trip they take that summer is characterized by their carefree approach. They drive and “somehow” find themselves in different places, living “everyday lives here to there” (179). They change directions and drive their furthest leg by far just to take a hitchhiker home. They tell Susy it’s time to go home, and her answer is a non sequitur: “You never seen my hair” (180). Yet according to Lyman, the funny part of this interaction is Henry’s immediate response: He puts Susy on his shoulders and spins. If Lyman feels confusion in this moment, it’s eclipsed by wonder and joy. Before the war changes everything, Henry and Lyman greet life with awe and enthusiasm so strong it still manages to affect the narrator years later.

Despite his past self’s easygoing attitude, narrator Lyman tends to fixate on the small things. He picks out a single afternoon from the whirlwind road trip to render life at that moment in vibrant detail. Recalling some willows somewhere, he says that lying “under those trees and it was comfortable. So comfortable” (179). As the story continues, the narrative voice takes on a darker tone that reflects The Trauma of War. For example, Lyman says of postwar Henry, “I’ll say this: the change was no good” (182). His sharp eye renders painful memories in agonizing detail, such as when Henry bites through his lip while watching TV. The narrator tracks the blood as it drips down his chin and onto his dinner “until [Henry] was eating his own blood mixed in with the food” (183). When the narrator can’t offer insight, he relays the events of the story with bluntness and an unflinching eye. This may be the biggest difference between Lyman the narrator and Lyman the character, who lacks the former’s distance. Near the end of the story, young Lyman is convinced he can feel “what Henry was going through at that moment. Except that [he] couldn’t stand it” (187). Both Lymans are present on the page through the whole story, and the events of the story illustrate how one became the other.

While the first-person point of view grants the reader access to Lyman’s most private thoughts, it also limits the reader’s access to the other characters in the narrative. As a result, the reader is only as aware of other characters’ thoughts and feelings as the narrator. Henry’s postwar trauma is the conflict that drives much of this story, and his words and actions are the only clues to the nature of his distress. Lyman wants to help his brother, and he knows him well enough to decode the general tenor of his feelings from small hints like a restless stance or the quality of their shared silences. The interpersonal conflict arises from Lyman’s attempts to discern what exactly is wrong with Henry, what’s causing it, and how to fix it, and he gains some clarity from the brotherly heart-to-heart at the Red River. It turns out Henry knew that Lyman beat the car up on purpose, and he played along fixing it just so he could give it back. While this mystery is solved by the end of the story, several remain unanswered: what exactly happened to Henry in Vietnam, what memories caused him so much distress, and what his intentions were in jumping into the raging river. Lyman will never have the true answers to these questions, so he engages in the exercise of storytelling, recounting the events and mulling over details in search of clues.

As a narrator, Lyman is far from omniscient or objective, and that is a key part of how this story is told; it is as much about him as a character in the past and the present as it is about the plot. The cast of this story is fairly small, especially compared to Erdrich’s other works, but it still operates in the context of a larger community. Small expository details like the boys’ mother’s previous dalliance with Moses Pillager—a figure she and Lyman consider consulting about Henry—point to a web of characters and relationships that extend far beyond what’s on the page.

Much of that broader context involves the challenge of balancing modern American life and Indigenous Identity. The story never states why Henry signed up for the army, but the detail that he had been laid off from the Jewel Bearing Plant suggests that he needed work and might have had few options. Lyman is suspicious of the military from the start, especially when it comes to his brother. He says the army was “so glad” to get because of his strong build and jokes that they wanted him for his Indigenous features. This points to a deeper fear that Henry’s superiors will look at him and see a racist tribal warrior stereotype. Lyman, who is a teenager at the time, otherwise demonstrates a limited working understanding of the Vietnam War and his brother’s place in the conflict. He knows Henry was stationed “up in the northern hill country. Whereabouts I did not know” and that Henry couldn’t write often because he was frequently on the move and was eventually captured (181). When Henry returns after three years, Lyman makes a snide comment that the conflict was “solved” according to the government (but not, by implication, to its veterans). Lyman and his mother lament the lack of “Indian doctors on the reservation,” because they don’t trust a “regular hospital” to treat Henry (183).

One of the deepest psychological wounds from the war is Henry’s inability to connect with the world around him. Before the war, he and Lyman spend an entire summer traversing their ancestral lands. They are eager to take in the wonders of the natural world and the Alaskan summer, and the act of connecting with the land makes them happy. The story presents dissociation as the direct enemy to peace. Postwar Henry is only happy when he is in the moment, working on the car or taking a beautiful drive with his brother. Detachment, whether it is brought on by watching TV or traumatic memories, is the worst possible state of being.