The Red Convertible Short Story Analysis

📌Category: Literature
📌Words: 451
📌Pages: 2
📌Published: 09 April 2022

Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible” is a short story set on a Chippewa reservation in 1974. The story is about the brotherly bond shared between the protagonist, Lyman and his older half-brother, Henry. The story is a recollection of Lyman’s (perspective on his) relationship with his half brother Henry, before his suicide. The tale begins with a quick recount of the innocent and carefree nature the brothers shared before the Vietnam war began. After Henry’s return from the Vietnam War, the once innocent and outgoing person he was, became someone unrecognizable; someone filled with fear, trauma, and extreme post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As a last desperate attempt to get his brother back to normal, Lyman destroys the red convertible that he and his brother had pitched in to buy earlier in the story. This triggers a response out of Henry and leads them to set off on a little adventure to a place known as Red River. After a deep conversation with Lyman apologizing for how he had been acting, Henry finally makes peace with the world, allowing him to commit suicide in the Red River with no regrets.In this short story, the author develops the theme of how the wounds that someone brings home from war are not always physical. This major theme is demonstrated through the use of conflict, specifically Man vs Self conflict in “The Red Convertible''. This conflict is conveyed through the war that Henry fights mentally after he returns home. The most noticeable example of this is in Lyman’s description of his brother when he came home from the Vietnam War: “he was quiet, so quiet, and never comfortable sitting still anywhere but always up and moving”(Erdrich 182). This quote supports the idea that Henry was suffering from mental illness, presumably PTSD, from his time spent in war. The unease of staying still and never being comfortable is the shock that war inflicted on Henry and the battle he must fight against himself every day. This battle that Henry fights is eventually lost when he decides to commit suicide in hopes of ending his mental trauma. Henry’s mental instability helps create the memory and plot of Lyman’s reminiscences on Henry’s life after the war. The scars someone brings home from war don’t always have to be something on the outside; rather, they can be on the inside, such as Henry’s internal conflict with mental illness. The war induced enough trauma and mental damage in Henry, to where, even though he wasn't fighting physically, the battle continued in his head. The device of Man vs Self conflict is a direct result of the Vietnam war and helps explain the psychological damage an individual may experience from war. The author Louise Erdrich in “The Red Convertible” uses the man vs self conflict shown through Henry’s mental instability and trauma to help express how the wounds that someone brings home from war are not always physical.

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