Genre
Fiction / Magical Realism
Setting and Context
Set in the First Nations community of Otter Lake in the 21st century
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person narration from the perspective of an omniscient speaker
Tone and Mood
Humorous, honest, positive, ironic
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: Maggie, Virgil; Antagonist: Nanabush
Major Conflict
Will Nanabush, the Trickster, screw up Virgil and Maggie's lives?
Climax
The climax arrives at the press conference at which human bones are discovered and the conversation where John tells Maggie he is the one who put them there.
Foreshadowing
A crow thinks there is "something very different about this creature" (31) when it sees the man on the motorcycle, foreshadowing our discovery of how he is not human.
Understatement
1. "You can call me...John" (76)
2. "You know things." "What do I know?" "Stuff." (153)
Allusions
1. The Battle of Hastings (5) refers to the 11th-century battle between the French and the English, which brought French control to England.
2. There are numerous allusions to Jesus and the Bible.
3. There are numerous allusions to Shakespeare, including young Sam saying "To be or not to be, that is the question" (12) from Hamlet.
4. John jokes that "Virgil Second" is like Henry the Eighth, the English King.
5. John mentions a few explorers like Cabot and Columbus.
6. Maggie thinks about how thinkers like Nietzsche and Plato and Rousseau probably didn't have to do dishes.
Imagery
Taylor associates John with nature—animals, water, storms, etc. He associates Maggie and Virgil with both nature and with the man-made world/the world outside the reservation; for example, Virgil is fascinated by the train, an emblem of industry and modernity.
Paradox
1. “There are no such things as dead ends. Only people who find dead ends.”
2. Anthony Gimau, a Native man, says there were people who were "unfortunate not to be Native but who should have been Native" (67).
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
1. "It's like the sky is waking everybody up" (4).
2. "It stung the old man, the remnants of his pride struggling to come out of its coma" (21).
3. "It was like the music was taunting him" (129).
4. "The sun was dangling near the horizon, saying farewell to this part of the continent" (176).
