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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Eggs

Part 1 of “The World’s Greatest Fishermen” is full of egg imagery. On the morning before Easter Sunday, June wears a torn pink shirt called a “shell,” and accepts colored eggs from Andy at the bar, eating one after another. As June goes to the restroom, her skin feels brittle and fragile. After she and Andy make love in his truck, he passes out, and she feels as if she could crack open. She describes the shock she feels as she unlocks the truck door and falls out onto the snow, feeling almost as if she is birthed or hatched. This symbol occurs early in the novel, but it sets a tone and pattern for many stories that follow, stories of death and resurrection, like the Easter story itself. Also a symbol of earth and fertility, eggs foreshadow the sexuality and fertility of the women in the novel, especially Marie and Lulu, its central mother figures. 

Sacred Heart Convent

The convent atop the highest hill overlooking the reservation symbolizes the hold that the Catholic Church has on the Native American community. Introduced in “Saint Marie,” the convent is also a significant setting in “Wild Geese” when Nector and Marie have sex in plain sight of the nuns inside. This setting returns in “Crown of Thorns” when Gordie drives to the convent with the dead deer and asks for help in the middle of the night. Sister Leopolda and Sister Mary Martin represent the two sides of the sisterhood: evil and compassion, devil and creativity. The convent appears again in “Love Medicine” when Lipsha goes to the convent to have the turkey hearts blessed. There, he meets Mary Martin who tells Lipsha to just be himself, advice that foreshadows the self-knowledge revealed to him in “Crossing the Water.” Throughout the novel, Catholicism contrasts with Chippewa spirituality, and hell and damnation contrast with Native American mysticism. The authoritative Christian God contrasts with the playful Chippewa gods. Often, Catholic imagery is debunked, such as the stigmata on Marie’s hand which is really the result of an injury, and Gordie’s crown of thorns, which represents his shame over his wife.  

Geese

Geese appear in many of the stories, symbolic of Chippewa love medicine and fidelity. In “Love Medicine,” Lipsha describes how geese mate for life, and he hopes their fidelity can help his grandparents if he feeds a female goose heart to Marie and a male heart to Nector. Lipsha hopes the magic will make Nector forget about Lulu, but when he misses the geese when he shoots, he takes a shortcut and his plan backfires. Geese figure prominently in “Wild Geese,” too. A young Nector shoots two geese and carries them to the convent to sell. The geese dangle grossly between Nector and Marie as they tussle and have sex. Nector offers the geese to Marie, almost in place of the wedding band he planned to offer Lulu. The birds represent both their connection to the wilderness and to each other.

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