Chapter 16: Step-and-a-Half

Well, we have reached the end of our novel, and what a fascinating end it is. We find ourselves reading a very detailed description of the town pariah, Step-and-a-Half; a very strange and seemingly anti-social person who collects literally everything she can get her hands on. Yet perhaps the most interesting thing about her is that she knows everything about everyone in town; she knows people’s dirty habits, their secrets, and their shames. Most important of all, she holds the key to the mystery of Delphine’s mother, Minnie. And when we find out that she is in fact Minnie, the love of Roy’s life, it seems that the lid is blown wide open. But there is more, it seems: not only is Minnie not Delphine’s mother, she had found Delphine abandoned in an outhouse by her mother, who is none other than Mrs. Shimek, Mazarine’s mother. In perhaps not the best state of mind, Minnie took the baby to Roy’s house and left her there, and that is where she stayed. I think, in the end, it all comes down to the tremendous responsibility of life, and what one does with it. Both Roy and Mrs. Shimek chose not to accept certain responsibilities, but life went on, forever echoing the consequences of those decisions. I don’t think that Louise meant us to be angry over this, however, but simply to accept that yes, this is the way life is; it is wild and unpredictable and we often don’t know where we come from or like Minnie, where we are going. And that’s okay, because like Delphine, we will be okay no matter what. It is a testament to human capability, and human fault.

Chapter 15 Cont.

True to all the foreboding signs, Fidelis continues to decline in health. "The tiredness was bewildering--it had come upon him gradually and now it was beyond his control...When Franz had come home only to fade from life in bewildered anger, part of Fidelis had gone out raging with him" (Erdrich 377). All of the events of his life for the past ten years have been slowly but surely draining him of energy and the will to live. He has lost two of his sons, experienced many heartbreaking events, and continued to abuse his body to show his strength in the face of them; but as life was becoming too much to handle, his body was similarly showing signs of distress and wear. Suddenly, not a moment after stepping foot on American soil, he collapses, slowly watching everything around him fade, listening to soft music playing in the background, seeing Delphine's face blurring in front of him, ready to take care of him as she had been since the beginning. I thought it was interesting that he compares himself dying with being led to the slaughter, and whoever took care of him at the end was "carrying out death's chores." Yet, he is also hearing a familiar sound of music around him; two things that were always the most important things in his life: his love of music and his profession. It is the way he found himself when he was alive and now he will be led out of this world in the only way that is fitting to him.

Chapter 15: The Master Butcher's Singing Club

As we near the end of the book, World War II is ending as well. They are permitted to return to Germany, and Erich is set free from the prison camp. Delphine and Fidelis plan a large trip to Germany as a sort of delayed honeymoon, but "Fidelis had suffered mysterious pains on the way across, and an X ray told them of an enlarged liver and a threatened heart" (Erdrich 374). With this bittersweet news, and with the tedious isolation that she was experiencing, it was no wonder that Delphine felt helpless and bewildered. She hears knocking in her dreams and knows that it is Eva coming to ask for Fidelis; she understands that he is dying and she must let go of him soon. The same knocking had occurred when Eva was dying all those years ago. I personally think that it is Delphine's own fears manifesting themselves, and the fact that she will be alone once again when she finally returns home from a strange land is almost too much to bear for her. But, we do not really need to hear any more about Delphine, because we know that no matter what she will be alright. She has experienced so much for someone so young: heartache and intense joy and pain, the loss of important people, and the return of other important people, that we have plenty of confidence in her.

Chapter 14 Cont.

Things seem to be going good for awhile: Markus fails his eye test and takes a desk job, Franz and Mazarine reunite and consummate their love, resulting in a future addition to the family, and Markus discovers that there is a man in an American prison camp named Waldvogel who can sing like an angel; everyone is shocked and excited. In perhaps the saddest twist of events that I could have imagined, the family soon realizes that "Erich's fanaticism was that of the culturally insecure...Erich's new father was a boundary on a map, a feeling for a certain song, a scrap of forest, a street" (Erdrich 364). They go to see him at the prison camp, but he walks right past them as if they were ghosts. He thinks that he has no family, and indeed perhaps he doesn't anymore. His twin brother was killed right at the start of the war, and he has nothing left to identify himself with; being German is no longer a good thing where he is, but he has worked so hard to become so that he runs the risk of losing himself entirely if he cannot let it go. What so many failed to realize, including Fidelis, was that although Erich was German by blood when he was born, he was culturally American, and thus had no idea what was accepted or cool in Germany. He was singled out and people were confused by him. He was German, spoke German with an American accent, was raised in Germany, but unable to forget his American childhood as well. It does not help with the pain of the loss of Erich that soon after Franz is gravely injured in a freak collision with a heavy steel cable.

Chapter 14: The Army of the Silver Firs

By now the war is full fledged and the only people left at the house are Delphine and Fidelis. Perhaps the most difficult thing for both of them to handle is that two of their sons are fighting on the American side (well Markus is not fighting, but he is in the military), and two are on the German side. This type of thing is what made that era so confusing for so many. There were tons of German and polish and all sorts of other immigrants living in the United States with loyalties to both their own countries and America. They will have family living in both countries, be familiar with both cultures, etc. How does one transcend the political and social implications of this and worry about his sons perhaps killing each other or dying at the hands of either Americans or Germans? This must have been a difficult thing for everyone involved. Even Erich had completely forgotten his upbringing in America, and experienced something that I think could easily have happened to anyone in his situation, especially with nationalism running so high in those days: he became a Nazi. "That is, he'd replaced the childhood with a new wash of purity. Belief, death loyalty, hatred of the weak. He lived simply, by one great consuming oath" (Erdrich 352).

Chapter 13 Cont.

Another significant event for Delphine takes place in this chapter that is somewhat life-changing and somewhat expected. She has been wondering, as I was, for quite some time about her relationship with Fidelis. They had both left it to simmer for awhile, and now the time had come to figure out whether they were ever going to marry. Whenever Delphine becomes comfortable with the way her life is going, she is very hesitant to change it, and rightly so. Although at this point she has been using the books that she found at the courthouse to read and escape from her life. "That she kept her father drugged on his bed next to the kitchen stove, that she was childless and husbandless and poor meant less once she picked up a book. Her mistakes disappeared into it" (Erdrich 301).
It is during one of these book reading sessions that Fidelis comes a-knocking and begins a rather flirtatious and off-putting pursuit of her hand in marriage. Delphine does not know what to make of this new electric attraction that has taken hold of both of them, and spends most of the time leading up to the wedding ignoring him, but as the case seems to be with them, there were many other important things to worry about: Roy's impending death, Franz's decision to enlist in the air force in preparation for the war, Cyprian's return to town just after Delphine and Fidelis are married, and Roy' admittance to knowing a bit more about the Chavers family's deaths than he had originally let on. Eventually all of her fears get the better of her and she dreams: "You are alone, the snake child mocked, more alone than you know. Your husband's from a foreign country and you haven't got a child. your father's dying and you don't know the face of your mother..." (Erdrich 329).

Chapter 13: The Snake People

The time has come for Delphine, along with most people living through the great depression, to go job searching. Needless to say, she needs to give off something that other people don't have, since the competition is heavy. However, all of it goes to naught when she discovers that her father has been drinking, and even more frightening, has to chase him all over town naked one evening in her respectable clothing. I think this is a very significant event for Delphine, because she is realizing that no matter what she does, her father will never change, and if she bases her happiness around him being sober, that is not being fair to herself. Perhaps this was a good experience in the end, because it forced her to put things into perspective and to face the truth of what was happening to her father. She knows that people would help her because they are nice, but also that sometimes who she is will get in the way of that. But I think that the more she remembers that, the more likely she is to avoid negativity in her life, and she does just that and settles into a comfortable sleepy routine of work and taking care of her father.