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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Abandoned or Parentless Children

Children who are abandoned or orphaned by their parents fill the pages of Love Medicine. In “The Beads,” readers learn details about June’s experience after her mother died in the woods. Marie recalls how June appeared when first brought to her: “What I saw was starved bones, a shank of black strings, a piece of rag on her that I wouldn’t have used to wipe a pig.” Similarly, Lipsha, also taken in by Marie, feels abandoned by a mother he did not know and believes she intended to throw him into the water tied to a stone. Throughout the novel, Marie takes in many children in addition to these two, becoming the mother to many. Not all rejection is overt, however. The abuse between Albertine and her mother was “slow and tedious.” In addition, although Lulu’s boys have a strong mother who cares for them, their fathers are scattered, and some are unknown. When Lipsha thinks to himself when playing poker with King at the end that “I dealt myself a perfect family. A royal flush,” his words are ironic, for his family is far from perfect. However, even before Lipsha learns of his actual parents, he realizes that the tribe is his family, his community is his lost mother, and the reservation is his rightful home.

Alcohol Abuse

Of all the motifs in Love Medicine, alcohol abuse prevails, appearing in nearly every story. The novel begins with June and Andy at a bar, getting drunk together. When she is married to Gordie, June says that he “takes it out in liquor,” always sneaking off to drink. Marie remarks that her intelligent husband, Nector, is diminished by alcohol. Alcohol is the reason for Henry Senior’s death, and in “Red Convertible,” Lyman and Henry Junior fight after they drink “all the rest of the beers one by one” and watch the cans float and sink, just as Henry and the car will do. “Scales” opens in a bar, with Albertine “sitting before my third or fourth Jellybean, which is anisette, grain alcohol, a lit match, and a small wet explosion in the brain.” The motif explodes in “Crown of Thorns,” a story that explores Gordie’s full-blown alcoholism. After the European genocide, Native American culture is plagued with alcoholism, a disease that represents the hopelessness of persecution and prejudice, and Erdrich makes thorough use of it as a unifying and powerful motif.

Water 

Water imagery abounds in Love Medicine, both as a giver and taker of life. In the beginning, June “walked over [the snow] like water and came home,” just before she dies. Later in the opening story, King tries to drown his wife in the kitchen sink. Lulu remarks that drowning is the worst way to die because it is believed that the drowned aren’t allowed into the afterlife and are instead forced to wander for eternity. Often, sex is described in terms of water, as Marie does with the words, “I rolled with his current like a stone in the lake. He fell on me like a wave.” The painting The Plunge of the Brave shows Nector plunging into a raging river, and he literally dives deep into a lake that is as cold and dark as a grave. Henry has a flashback in “The Bridge” when he has sex with Albertine. He thinks of diving off a bridge into the whirling water below, foreshadowing his literal death in the Red River. Finally, the last image of the novel is Lipsha driving home across a wide river, bringing June with him. For the characters, water is both the resolver of some problems and the creator of others.

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