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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
Evelina recounts the events of 1896, when—soon after her great-uncle was ordained as a Catholic priest—a flurry of doves descended on her town. Though the town was divided, a mix of American Indians and German and Norwegian immigrants, all of the local farms were equally threatened by the birds. No matter how many doves the villagers kill, more always reappear, looking gentle as they crush roofs with their combined weight.
Just as the novel’s prologue juxtaposed murderous violence with the tender innocence of childhood, the flurry of doves presents a similar contrast, as the seemingly delicate birds wreak physical havoc. The ethnic and religious mix that Evelina describes here suggests that her town is somewhere in the Great Plains region of the Upper Midwest.
Themes
Through all the chaos, Evelina’s great-uncle does his best to protect the town rectory, where he lives with a younger brother, “whom he had saved from a life of excessive freedom.” This younger brother, whose name is Seraph Milk but whom everyone calls Mooshum, would go on to father and raise Evelina’s mother. And now, Evelina lives with her grandfather Mooshum in a government-owned house on the Bureau of Indian Affairs reservation tract. One day, Evelina’s parents hide the TV remote, so Evelina asks to hear about the doves.
The fact that Evelina and her family live in government-owned housing—and that they have access to television given that, as readers will later learn, it is still only the 1960s—speaks to the family’s class privilege (at least relative to some of their neighbors on the reservation). Tellingly, it seems that Mooshum’s storytelling ability rivals the TV, pointing to just how vivid and fascinating his stories will be for Evelina.
Themes
Mooshum obliges: several months into the plague of doves, people tried to put a stop to things by leading a prayer for the entire town. Mooshum walked to the town square, holding a large metal candelabra to protect his face. But as the villagers advanced towards the doves to pray, the birds panicked, swooping down from roofs and tangling themselves in the women’s skirts. Mooshum, only 12, seized the occasion as an opportunity to admire the women’s legs, and he lowered the candelabra to look—but just then, a bird flew into his forehead, as if it had “been flung directly by God’s hand, to smite him” for his lust.
Mooshum’s playful, flirtatious personality is evident even in these first moments, as he recounts his teenage lust with self-deprecating flair. Mooshum’s sardonic treatment of Catholicism, tangible in the jokey way he references “smiting,” hints at an important thematic thread, as Mooshum (and his descendants) continually navigate their own complicated relationships to various forms of faith.
Themes
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To Evelina’s delight, Mooshum always acts the next part of the story out, crumbling to the floor to show how the bird knocked him to the ground. When he came to, Mooshum saw a beautiful young woman. Evelina reflects that her family has a reputation for these kinds of “deathless romantic encounters.” Mooshum met his wife during the plague of doves; Evelina’s parents fell in love just days before World War II split them apart. A cousin named John kidnapped his wife because he fell so in love with his mistress, while an uncle named Octave Harp got his heart so broken that he managed to drown himself in two feet of water.
Evelina’s fascination with “deathless romantic encounters” will become one of the crucial shaping forces of her life, as she seeks to emulate the desperate passion she sees in her relatives (even though, as Evelina herself acknowledges, the stories often end tragically). Some of the examples that Evelina gives here will become focal stories in other parts of the novel, a testament to the interconnectedness of this small town. But some of Evelina’s examples of such “deathless” encounters will never be mentioned again, suggesting that for every story the book dives into, there are many still left to be explored.
Themes
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For the most part, Evelina’s family is quiet and peaceful—“we are a tribe,” Evelina reflects, “of office workers, bank tellers, book readers, and bureaucrats.” But Evelina and her brother Joseph cannot quite shake the belief that they will one day find their own intense romances, and that they will need to listen to Mooshum closely to survive these future trials.
As Evelina ponders her own future, she looks towards her family’s past, a sign of the central role ancestral history plays in her life. The jobs Evelina lists here (“bank teller” and “bureaucrat”) help signal that her family is solidly, comfortably middle-class.
Themes
Indeed, turning 11 in the mid-1960s, Evelina believes she has already met the love of her life: Corwin Peace, her classmate at Catholic school. Though Evelina and Corwin never speak or touch, they are understood to be a couple. Indeed, Evelina obsessively writes Corwin’s name in invisible letters on her body, believing that if she does so a million times, Corwin will kiss her.
To Evelina, passion seems less important than connection, as she focuses not on bonding with the real Corwin but on her private fixation with the idea of him. As will remain true for much of her life, Evelina sees language as key to making sense of her own lust, as if by finding and (in this case) repeating the right words, she can gain control over her own intense feelings.
Themes
Because Evelina’s parents work for the school and tribal offices, their house has recently been connected to the agency water system. One day, enjoying the novelty of indoor plumbing, Evelina takes a long bath, writing Corwin’s name on her skin. In doing so, she unwittingly masturbates and has her first orgasm. The feeling is so intense that Evelina believes she has reached a million repetitions, and she doesn’t “dare” to write Corwin’s name anymore.
Here, it appears that Evelina’s family’s unique status on the reservation—they have plumbing and TV— stems from the fact that her parents work for the federal government, gesturing to the complicated history (and lasting legacy) of the U.S. government’s seizure of native land. The fact that Evelina orgasms from tracing Corwin’s name makes the earlier implicit link between literary and sexual passion literal.
Themes
Mooshum continues his story: the beautiful woman, dressed all in white, is named Junesse Malaterre. Junesse cared for Mooshum, tending to the wound on his forehead. Even now, 70 years later, Mooshum breaks into a giant smile when he describes Junesse to his grandchildren; she had the kind of beauty, Mooshum boasts, that made European priests warn their colleagues to “pray hard in the presence of half-breed women.”
Mooshum’s lustful tale of spying on women’s bare legs quickly gives way to a quieter, longer-lasting love story, as he describes meeting his wife Junesse (Evelina’s grandmother). Junesse’s mixed-race heritage will later become a central plot point, and the strange mixture of exoticization and prejudice that White settlers felt towards mixed-race members of their communities (evident in this quote from the priests) will continue to percolate throughout the narrative.
Themes
Eventually, Mooshum and Junesse head to the badlands of North Dakota, fleeing Junesse’s abusive aunt and Mooshum’s brother’s Christianity. Evelina grows obsessed with Mooshum’s striking romance. She wonders when Mooshum and Junesse first kissed or had sex. And she imagines them as survivors, trapping rabbits and staying alive.
Evelina dramatizes her grandfather’s story, focusing not on the painful hardships Mooshum and Junesse had to suffer (like Junesse’s abusive mother) and instead only on the “deathless” passion Evelina imagines the young couple might have shared.
Themes
A few weeks later, when Evelina gets braces, the boys—even Corwin Peace—make fun of her. Though Evelina is crushed, she is also prepared; all of her family’s tragic romances have unexpected reversals. So Evelina punches Corwin in the arm and says the first words she has ever spoken to him: “love me or leave me.” On Easter Sunday, Evelina and Corwin make eye contact, and as they take communion, Evelina feels an “anguished passion.”
Evelina’s romantic desire for Corwin now gets entangled with the religious passion her church services aim to inspire, as Evelina cannot fully separate her Corwin “anguish” from the ritualistic process of taking communion. Once again, Evelina looks to her parents and grandparents for a map of how to navigate her own, 11-year-old life.
Themes
For a whole summer, as they made their way to western North Dakota, Mooshum and Junesse lived only on a bag of pinto beans. Fortunately, towards the end of the summer, the couple encountered “Mustache” Maude Black, a large woman dressed like a man. Maude took pity on Mooshum and Junesse, bringing them to the ranch she shared with her husband. The duo would live there for six years, “until the ranch was broken up and Mooshum was nearly lynched.”
“Mustache” Maude Black is a real person, one of the few historical figures that tethers Erdrich’s fictional narrative to the history that inspired it. Though Mooshum himself is not a historical figure, this threat of White vigilante violence against indigenous men and women was both real and pervasive.
Themes
According to Mooshum, “Mustache” Maude was just as the history books described her: she was kind and “hard-assed,” and she smoked, drank, and ran her ranch with an iron fist. Maude quickly separated Mooshum and Junesse, forbidding him to marry Junesse until they were both 17 years old. When they did get married, Maude threw a wedding party, bringing resentment from neighboring White people. After all, “this was western North Dakota at the turn of the last century.” Indians were always seen as suspicious, blamed whenever anything went wrong.
In asserting just how easily disgruntled, White North Dakotans jumped to scapegoating Indians, Evelina also foreshadows the novel’s central tragedy: the 1911 lynchings, in which four indigenous men (including Mooshum) were blamed for a crime they did not commit. That Mooshum will, over the course of the novel, survive several such brushes with violence speaks to the fact that vigilantism was a fixture of this era and region.
Themes
A few years into Mooshum’s time at Maude’s ranch, a neighbor was murdered. One night, the local White settlers charged over to Maude’s house, demanding that Maude turn Mooshum over to them and blaming Mooshum for the murder. Maude held off the vigilantes, but the next day, Maude gave Mooshum and Junesse her two best horses and sent them home. Mooshum returned to the reservation just in time to get his allotment. He and Junesse settled there and gave birth to their five children, including Evelina’s mother Clemence and her aunt Geraldine.
Again, these threatening White settlers on Maude’s ranch ominously mirror the violent men that come to define Evelina’s own small town of Pluto, North Dakota. An allotment is a piece of farmland leased out to tribal members by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Allotment Act, which denied tribal citizens ownership over the land that was originally theirs, is widely accepted as one of the most damaging pieces of U.S. settler-colonial legislation.
Themes
Now, Evelina wonders whether or not Mooshum’s story is true. “If there was embellishment,” Evelina concludes, “it only had to do with facts.” After all, the local Saint Joseph’s Church was named for a carpenter who “believed his wife,” no matter how tall her tale seemed to be. Besides, what were the doves if not messengers of “legend and truth,” coming down in such great numbers?
In this essential passage, Evelina reflects on the difference between myth and history, “legend and truth.” Mooshum’s stories might not always seem totally plausible, but in “embellishing,” he accesses a deeper meaning of the story, using false detail to highlight a more essential “truth.” Evelina also now gives context to the novel’s titular, symbolic “doves,” making them the messengers of seemingly contradictory “legend” and “truth”—and thereby showing that legend and truth aren’t so far apart after all.
Themes
That spring, Mooshum slows down, and Evelina’s father starts letting Mooshum watch more TV. The metal candelabra, which Mooshum hauled to western North Dakota and back, stands on the family’s dining room table. The day after Easter, Evelina kisses Corwin for the first time. Later that day, she notices a crack in the sidewalk. The kiss leaves Evelina sad and nervous: “it seemed that my life was a hungry story,” she worries, “and with this kiss I had now begun to deliver myself into the words.”
History and the present are always intertwined for Evelina, even down to her dining room, with its mix of ancestral objects (the candelabra) and modern ones (the TV). Evelina’s desire for Corwin is again rendered as both linguistic and religious, as Evelina spiritually “delivers” herself into the “words” of what—at least in her mind—is a longing of almost biblical proportions.
Themes
