Fleur

“Fleur” explores issues of agency, authorship, and authenticity in the craft of storytelling. The stories of Fleur’s drownings which open “Fleur” combine hearsay, myth, and fact, as Erdrich establishes a storytelling tradition within the community at Lake Turcot, employing magical realism, a technique which combines fantastical elements with reality. Pauline presents her personal experience of discovering Fleur’s tracks shifting into those of a clawed animal as fact to support the semi-mythical presentation of Fleur by the community elders. However, by the end of the story the tribal knowledge is called into question explicitly. Pauline notes that there are still stories about Fleur and her baby and that the “old men talk” about her (189), but Pauline notes that they get the story “wrong” because “they only know they don’t know anything” (189). Erdrich complicates the magical realist presentation by introducing an element of speculation, positioning Pauline—and thereby the narrative voice of the story—as the ultimate authority on Fleur’s semi-mythical personhood. Reinforcing Pauline’s authority, Pauline pivots early on from the subjective knowledge of the tribe to facts she alone knows about Fleur’s time in Argus, writing “that’s what this story is about” to indicate a separation between events (178).