The Trickster
If there is just one good thing to come about as the result of the massive popularity of the MCU movies, it would be the awakening of massive numbers to awareness of the Trickster archetype in the form of Loki. Now it just remains to educate Marvel fanatics to the reality that Loki is simply one incarnation of this archetype. This novel is a building a block in that construction as it will introduce some readers to the concept of the Trickster as it exists within Native American communities. The character of Nanabush fulfills the role here, though it must be stated that those looking to find a strict coherence between this Trickster—which also might be called Nanabouzoo—and Loki is not only difficult but beside the point. The point is that the Trickster is an archetype which is not limited by culture or nationality. The Trickster is a representative of something much larger than its individualized personification. Like a Coen Brothers movie, a strong sense of fatalism pervades the narrative of this story.
Faith…within Reason
Like a Coen Brothers movie, the Trickster here also serves the purpose of suggesting that faith is a good thing, but only within reason. All the faith in the world won’t buy you a salad unless you have enough reason to bring money. Or, put another way as found in the book, you can have all the faith in the world that you will one day meet a glamorous Ginger who changes your life forever, but if you only hang out with one Mary Ann after another that fantasy remains unreasonable. Within this context, the narrator reminds us that faith is belief you will find your Ginger without proof it can ever happen. That pretty much sums up the narrative trek of the book and its philosophical mindset as well.
John vs. Wayne
There is a character named John. There is also a character unnamed Uncle Wayne. For those who don’t watch movies made during the 20th century, an actor named John Wayne made a bunch of westerns—those are movies set during the 19th century in the American frontier west of the Mississippi River—in which no matter what else was going down between characters, the real bad guys were always Native Americans, who in those days were always called Indians. The very concept of pitting two characters who together form the name of the pop culture figure most strongly associated with anti-Native American prejudice is one of those deals which cannot be mere coincidence. The author quite clearly made that decision for a purpose. A story that pits John versus Wayne is a very subtle way of exploring within the novel the reality that there is not and never has been a singular collective “Indian” culture as has been consistently portrayed within mainstream white American culture, but is rather every bit as diverse as the cultures occupying any other continent.
