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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Plague of Doves, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ancestry, History, and Interconnection
Punishment vs. Justice
Land, Ownership, and Dispossession
Passion vs. Love
Faith, Music, and Meaning
Summary
Analysis
It’s before the dinner rush at the 4-B’s and Evelina, now waitressing in order to save up for college, is killing time, “consolidating” all the ketchup into one bottle and studying her French dictionary. Marn Wolde walks in with her two young children, looking as if “they were walking out of the funnel of a tornado.” Later, Evelina will wonder if this how someone who just murdered their husband is supposed to look.
Previously, the novel’s disparate narratives have operated in parallel, referencing characters and plot points in other parts of the story but never directly overlapping. Now, however, Evelina’s story picks up right where Marn’s left off, perhaps signaling that dramatic actions—like Marn’s murder of Billy—are the moments that most draw all of Pluto’s various stories together.
Themes
Marn orders mountains of food. At first, Judah and Lilith are hesitant to eat, but then they dive in, solemn and ravenous. When Lilith orders a chocolate sundae, Evelina puts so much whipped cream on it that her boss requires her to pay for the extra out of her tips. Evelina deposits the sundae on the table (“voil”), and studies Marn, taking in her strange beauty.
Judah and Lilith’s hunger here at the 4-B’s speaks to the extent of the deprivation they were experiencing on the farm. Evelina’s obsession with all things French likely stems from her heritage (she is mixed-race French and Chippewa), though it also uneasily acknowledges the colonial history in her family line.
Themes
Marn announces that she wants to find Judge Coutts so that she can get her land back. Right at that moment, Bliss, one of Billy’s other followers arrives, screaming at Marn that she is a “defilement” and a murderer. Marn pulls a hammer out of her coat pocket and whirls on Bliss, grabbing a steak knife from the table for extra security. Marn fights with Bliss, knocking over ketchup bottles in the process. Eventually, Marn is able to stab Bliss with the knife (“a mere flesh wound,” notes one of Evelina’s coworkers). Bliss leaves, and Marn asks the manager of the 4-B’s for her job back.
In this exchange, so sudden and chaotic that it verges on comic, several different forms of justice compete with each other. On the one hand, Marn wants to use the U.S. court system to reclaim her family’s land deed (a deed rooted in a deeply unjust settler-colonial past). But on the other hand, Marn’s violence against Bliss—much like her murder of Billy—goes unquestioned, as if Evelina and her coworkers understand that Marn’s actions here are a necessary, extra-legal corrective to the cult’s built-in injustice.
Themes
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Afterwards, Marn orders a second pie while her kids fall asleep. As Marn and Evelina dig in, Mooshum arrives. Evelina wonders aloud if she looks French, and Marn assures her that she does. Mooshum pleads with Evelina to help him get his letters to Neve. When Evelina agrees, Mooshum grins: “you are a very good granddaughter,” he tells her. “You look more French than any girl around here.”
Perhaps more than any other character, Mooshum takes pride in his Ojibwe roots. At the same time, though, Mooshum encourages his granddaughter’s Francophile tendencies with love and tenderness, one more acknowledgment of how impossible it is to untangle the complicated strands of this family’s history.
Themes
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