Love Medicine

by

Louise Erdrich

Marie and Nector’s adopted son, June and Gerry’s biological son, and King’s half-brother. June hands an infant Lipsha over to Marie not long after he is born, and he is not told who his real parents are. Marie tells Lipsha only that she saved him from his biological mother, who wanted to drown him in the river. Growing up, everyone knows the secret of Lipsha’s parentage but Lipsha, and King, who Lipsha believes is his cousin, calls him an orphan and tortures him every chance he gets. Lipsha has “the touch,” meaning he has the power to heal others by the laying on of hands, but he can’t seem to heal Nector, who suffers from dementia and in his confusion won’t stop chasing after his longtime lover, Lulu. To dissuade Nector from seeing Lulu, Lipsha tries to conjure “love medicine,” a sacred and powerful Ojibwe tradition that ensures lasting love. To conjure the love medicine, Lipsha attempts to shoot a mated pair of geese and feed their hearts to Nector and Marie, but he is not the best hunter and is forced to feed Marie and Nector frozen turkey hearts from the local grocery store. As Marie feeds Nector the love medicine, he tragically chokes and dies. After Nector’s death, Lulu tells Lipsha the truth about his identity, and he takes a trip to Minneapolis to clear his head and see King. At King’s Minnesota apartment, Lipsha meets his father, Gerry, for the first time and wins King’s car—a Firebird bought with June’s insurance money—during a game of poker. The Firebird symbolizes Lipsha’s newfound connection to June, and in it he gives Gerry a ride to Canada, coming to terms with their relationship along the way. Through Lipsha, Erdrich argues that true family need not be closely related by blood. Marie and Nector raise Lipsha as one of their own and love him like a son; yet Erdrich also implies that knowing where one comes from is essential to understanding one’s identity and self.

Lipsha Morrissey Quotes in Love Medicine

The Love Medicine quotes below are all either spoken by Lipsha Morrissey or refer to Lipsha Morrissey. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Tribal Connection and Family Ties Theme Icon
).
The World’s Greatest Fisherman Part 2 Quotes

Far from home, living in a white woman’s basement, that letter made me feel buried, too. I opened the envelope and read the words. I was sitting at my linoleum table with my textbook spread out to the section on “Patient Abuse.” There were two ways you could think of that title. One was obvious to a nursing student, and the other was obvious to a Kashpaw. Between my mother and myself the abuse was slow and tedious, requiring long periods of dormancy, living in the blood like hepatitis. When it broke out it was almost a relief.

Related Characters: Albertine Johnson (speaker), Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, June Morrissey / June Kashpaw, Lipsha Morrissey, Gordie Kashpaw, King Kashpaw, Zelda Kashpaw, Lynette Kashpaw
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Love Medicine Quotes

I saw that tears were in her eyes. And that’s when I saw how much grief and love she felt for him. And it gave me a real shock to the system. You see I thought love got easier over the years so it didn’t hurt so bad when it hurt, or feel so good when it felt good. I thought it smoothed out and old people hardly noticed it. I thought it curled up and died, I guess. Now I saw it rear up like a whip and lash.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Nector Kashpaw
Page Number: 229-30
Explanation and Analysis:

Our Gods aren’t perfect, is what I’m saying, but at least they come around. They’ll do a favor if you ask them right. You don’t have to yell. But you do have to know, like I said, how to ask in the right way. That makes problems, because to ask proper was an art that was lost to the Chippewas once the Catholics gained ground. Even now, I have to wonder if Higher Power turned it back, if we got to yell, or if we just don’t speak its language.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Nector Kashpaw
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis:

It was Grandma Kashpaw who thought of it in the end. She knows things. Although she will not admit she has a scrap of Indian blood in her, there’s no doubt in my mind she’s got some Chippewa. How else would you explain the way she’ll be sitting there, in front of her TV story, rocking in her armchair and suddenly she turns on me, her brown eyes hard as lake-bed flint.

“Lipsha Morrissey,” she’ll say, “you went out last night and got drunk.”

How did she know that? I’ll hardly remember it myself. Then she’ll say she just had a feeling or ache in the scar of her hand or a creak in her shoulder. She is constantly being told things by little aggravations in her joints or by her household appliances.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Lulu Nanapush / Lulu Lamartine, Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Sister Leopolda
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:

But when she mentions them love medicines, I feel my back prickle at the danger. These love medicines is something of an old Chippewa specialty. No other tribe has got them down so well. But love medicines is not for the layman to handle. You don’t just go out and get one without paying for it. Before you get one, even, you should go through one hell of a lot of mental condensation. You got to think it over. Choose the right one. You could really mess up your life grinding up the wrong little thing.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Fleur Pillager
Page Number: 237
Explanation and Analysis:

As I walked back from the Red Owl with the rock-hard, heavy turkeys, I argued to myself about malpractice. I thought of faith. I thought to myself that faith could be called belief against the odds and whether or not there’s any proof How does that sound? I thought how we might have to yell to be heard by Higher Power, but that’s not saying it’s not there. And that is faith for you. It’s belief even when the goods don’t deliver. Higher Power makes promises we all know they can’t back up, but anybody ever go and slap an old malpractice suit on God? Or the U.S. government? No they don’t. Faith might be stupid, but it gets us through. So what I’m heading at is this. I finally convinced myself that the real actual power to the love medicine was not the goose heart itself but the faith in the cure.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Lulu Nanapush / Lulu Lamartine, Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Nector Kashpaw
Related Symbols: Geese
Page Number: 241-2
Explanation and Analysis:

“Love medicine ain’t what brings him back to you. Grandma. No, it’s something else. He loved you over time and distance, but he went off so quick he never got the chance to tell you how he loves you, how he doesn’t blame you, how he understands. It’s true feeling, not no magic. No supermarket heart could have brung him back.”

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Lulu Nanapush / Lulu Lamartine, Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Nector Kashpaw
Related Symbols: Geese
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis:
Crossing the Water Part 4 Quotes

He was right about that, of course. I’d never seen. He could not go back to a place where he was known and belonged. No matter where he settled down he would always be looking behind his shoulders. No matter what, he would always be on the run.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Gerry Nanapush
Page Number: 329
Explanation and Analysis:

I still had Grandma’s hankie in my pocket. The sun flared. I’d heard that this river was the last of an ancient ocean, miles deep, that once had covered the Dakotas and solved all our problems. It was easy to still imagine us beneath them vast unreasonable waves, but the truth is we live on dry land. I got inside. The morning was clear. A good road led on. So there was nothing to do but cross the water and bring her home.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, June Morrissey / June Kashpaw
Related Symbols: Cars
Page Number: 333
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Love Medicine LitChart as a printable PDF.
Love Medicine PDF

Lipsha Morrissey Quotes in Love Medicine

The Love Medicine quotes below are all either spoken by Lipsha Morrissey or refer to Lipsha Morrissey. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Tribal Connection and Family Ties Theme Icon
).
The World’s Greatest Fisherman Part 2 Quotes

Far from home, living in a white woman’s basement, that letter made me feel buried, too. I opened the envelope and read the words. I was sitting at my linoleum table with my textbook spread out to the section on “Patient Abuse.” There were two ways you could think of that title. One was obvious to a nursing student, and the other was obvious to a Kashpaw. Between my mother and myself the abuse was slow and tedious, requiring long periods of dormancy, living in the blood like hepatitis. When it broke out it was almost a relief.

Related Characters: Albertine Johnson (speaker), Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, June Morrissey / June Kashpaw, Lipsha Morrissey, Gordie Kashpaw, King Kashpaw, Zelda Kashpaw, Lynette Kashpaw
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Love Medicine Quotes

I saw that tears were in her eyes. And that’s when I saw how much grief and love she felt for him. And it gave me a real shock to the system. You see I thought love got easier over the years so it didn’t hurt so bad when it hurt, or feel so good when it felt good. I thought it smoothed out and old people hardly noticed it. I thought it curled up and died, I guess. Now I saw it rear up like a whip and lash.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Nector Kashpaw
Page Number: 229-30
Explanation and Analysis:

Our Gods aren’t perfect, is what I’m saying, but at least they come around. They’ll do a favor if you ask them right. You don’t have to yell. But you do have to know, like I said, how to ask in the right way. That makes problems, because to ask proper was an art that was lost to the Chippewas once the Catholics gained ground. Even now, I have to wonder if Higher Power turned it back, if we got to yell, or if we just don’t speak its language.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Nector Kashpaw
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis:

It was Grandma Kashpaw who thought of it in the end. She knows things. Although she will not admit she has a scrap of Indian blood in her, there’s no doubt in my mind she’s got some Chippewa. How else would you explain the way she’ll be sitting there, in front of her TV story, rocking in her armchair and suddenly she turns on me, her brown eyes hard as lake-bed flint.

“Lipsha Morrissey,” she’ll say, “you went out last night and got drunk.”

How did she know that? I’ll hardly remember it myself. Then she’ll say she just had a feeling or ache in the scar of her hand or a creak in her shoulder. She is constantly being told things by little aggravations in her joints or by her household appliances.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Lulu Nanapush / Lulu Lamartine, Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Sister Leopolda
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:

But when she mentions them love medicines, I feel my back prickle at the danger. These love medicines is something of an old Chippewa specialty. No other tribe has got them down so well. But love medicines is not for the layman to handle. You don’t just go out and get one without paying for it. Before you get one, even, you should go through one hell of a lot of mental condensation. You got to think it over. Choose the right one. You could really mess up your life grinding up the wrong little thing.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Fleur Pillager
Page Number: 237
Explanation and Analysis:

As I walked back from the Red Owl with the rock-hard, heavy turkeys, I argued to myself about malpractice. I thought of faith. I thought to myself that faith could be called belief against the odds and whether or not there’s any proof How does that sound? I thought how we might have to yell to be heard by Higher Power, but that’s not saying it’s not there. And that is faith for you. It’s belief even when the goods don’t deliver. Higher Power makes promises we all know they can’t back up, but anybody ever go and slap an old malpractice suit on God? Or the U.S. government? No they don’t. Faith might be stupid, but it gets us through. So what I’m heading at is this. I finally convinced myself that the real actual power to the love medicine was not the goose heart itself but the faith in the cure.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Lulu Nanapush / Lulu Lamartine, Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Nector Kashpaw
Related Symbols: Geese
Page Number: 241-2
Explanation and Analysis:

“Love medicine ain’t what brings him back to you. Grandma. No, it’s something else. He loved you over time and distance, but he went off so quick he never got the chance to tell you how he loves you, how he doesn’t blame you, how he understands. It’s true feeling, not no magic. No supermarket heart could have brung him back.”

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Lulu Nanapush / Lulu Lamartine, Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, Nector Kashpaw
Related Symbols: Geese
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis:
Crossing the Water Part 4 Quotes

He was right about that, of course. I’d never seen. He could not go back to a place where he was known and belonged. No matter where he settled down he would always be looking behind his shoulders. No matter what, he would always be on the run.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Gerry Nanapush
Page Number: 329
Explanation and Analysis:

I still had Grandma’s hankie in my pocket. The sun flared. I’d heard that this river was the last of an ancient ocean, miles deep, that once had covered the Dakotas and solved all our problems. It was easy to still imagine us beneath them vast unreasonable waves, but the truth is we live on dry land. I got inside. The morning was clear. A good road led on. So there was nothing to do but cross the water and bring her home.

Related Characters: Lipsha Morrissey (speaker), Marie Lazarre / Marie Kashpaw, June Morrissey / June Kashpaw
Related Symbols: Cars
Page Number: 333
Explanation and Analysis: