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4. Sister Godzilla
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Plague of Doves, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ancestry, History, and Interconnection
Punishment vs. Justice
Land, Ownership, and Dispossession
Passion vs. Love
Faith, Music, and Meaning
Summary
Analysis
Evelina continues to feel obsessed with Sister Mary Anita, talking about her constantly at home. One day, Clemence asks Evelina what Sister Mary Anita’s last name is. When Evelina says that her beloved teacher is a Buckendorf, Clemence reacts in shock. Even Mooshum looks up. As Clemence goes to hang the family’s laundry on the clothesline, Mooshum wonders aloud if Mary Anita is a nun because she has seen firsthand “there is no justice.”
Nuns are often associated with forgiveness and peace, and Mary Anita has indeed found it in her to forgive Evelina for the cruel “Godzilla” mockery she started. But in ominously murmuring that “there is no justice,” Mooshum suggests that beneath the orderly structure of Evelina’s Catholic school, there is something darker and less even-handed, another hint that the present is never fully separable from the past that created it.
Themes
Mooshum looks at Evelina and Joseph, as if trying to decide how much of the Buckendorf story he should tell them. While Clemence hangs laundry, Mooshum brings the two children outside. This story happened after the plague of doves, Mooshum says; by this time, even the herds of buffalo had thinned. Then, Mooshum repeats the name “Holy Track” several times.
It is interesting to note that Mooshum tells time through the natural world, locating his story after the plague of doves and during the mass slaughter of buffalos. The near-extinction of buffalo at the turn of the 20th century is often seen as one of the hallmarks of U.S. colonial devastation, as White settlers sometimes intentionally killed buffalo in an effort to starve Indians off of their land.
Themes
Mooshum begins: when Mooshum and Junesse first returned to the reservation, Mooshum drank too much whiskey, believing the liquor “had a mind of its own.” Around the same time, Junesse’s young cousin lost his mother to tuberculosis. Before the mother died, she asked Mooshum to fix two metal crosses to her son’s boots, so that god would protect him from her illness. These new boots earned the young boy the nickname “Holy Track.”
The Catholicism that Clemence and others in her family now practice clearly has strong historical roots, as can be seen in Holy Track’s mother’s dying wish that her son be protected by the church. The introduction of whiskey to indigenous communities was yet another way that White colonists tried to undermine native traditions and gain advantages in trade and battle.
Themes
Clemence frets that her children do not need to hear this story, but Mooshum pushes on. After his mother’s death, Holy Track went to live with an uncle named Asiginak. Asiginak taught his nephew how to weave baskets, and soon Holy Track’s baskets became popular around the reservation. One day, in 1911, Holy Track and Asiginak were coming back from the market when they ran into Mooshum and his friend Cuthbert Peace (called “Opin” because of his potato-shaped nose). Mooshum asked Asiginak for money to buy whiskey.
Clemence’s apprehension here—and the general foreboding the narrative has created around Mooshum’s story—suggests that history still has tremendous power to unsettle and disrupt the present. Readers can assume that Cuthbert Peace is an ancestor of Corwin Peace, yet another testament to how entangled the people of Pluto are in their shared family histories.
Themes
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Asiginak tries to shoo Mooshum and Cuthbert away, not wanting them to corrupt Holy Track, who is studying to be a priest. As the men walk, playfully arguing, they come across the Lochren family’s farm, just outside Pluto. Right away, it is clear something is wrong: the door is open, and the cows are mooing as if they haven’t been milked in days. Asiginak wants to leave, but Cuthbert hears a baby crying from within.
The fact that Holy Track is studying to be a priest emphasizes just how much this young boy wants to be a force for good in his town. The baby that Cuthbert hears crying seems to recall the baby from the novel’s opening, crying alone as the “unearthly violin solo” played in the background.
Themes
Mooshum and Holy Track walk into the barn, while Cuthbert goes into the house and retrieves the baby, who is wearing a tiny white dress and a reeking diaper. Along the way, Asiginak sees two murdered children lying on the grass. He instructs Holy Track not to look. Mooshum begins milking the cows, as Asiginak and Cuthbert debate what to do: if they bring the baby to the White sheriff in Pluto, won’t he blame them for the killings? Asiginak has Holy Track write a note: “one lives yet on Lochren.” Asiginak places the note in the sheriff’s mailbox, and cautions that they must sweep away the markings from Holy Track’s shoes.
As the situation clarifies—a family has been murdered, and the only survivor is a baby girl—it becomes evident that this is indeed the baby from the story’s prologue. Just as Mooshum was falsely accused of a crime when he was staying with Maude, Asiginak knows that even if he and his friends are only trying to help, any Indians associated with the crime scene will automatically be the target of White villagers’ prejudiced suspicions.
Themes
A few nights later, the Buckendorfs and their friend Eugene Wildstrand come for Asiginak and Holy Track. Mooshum is able to warn Holy Track, but Asiginak is not so lucky. Emil Buckendorf, Wildstrand, and the other vigilantes capture Asiginak, then send their dogs to look for Mooshum and Holy Track. Panicked, Mooshum and Holy Track decide to seek out Pluto’s priest, Father Severine. As they walk, Holy Track says Hail Marys and Mooshum prays to the birds for help.
Mary Anita is clearly a descendant of the vigilante Buckendorfs, whose own sense of “justice” immediately seems warped. Mooshum’s prayer to the birds hints that the plague of doves in his youth has left a lasting impression, endowing him with a sense that birds present some sort of link to a spiritual plane.
Themes
When they arrive at the church, Holy Track confesses that he has not eaten for days. Holy Track then eats all the communion wafers and puts the church’s lamp up to his lips, drinking the rancid fat from its bowl. In the present, Joseph insists that communion wafers are supposed to provide everlasting life, but Mooshum is skeptical: “that did not work for Holy Track.”
Mooshum has often expressed some distrust of Catholic faith, but his foreboding comment here—that the communion wafers failed Holy Track—suggests that this traumatic incident in 1911 might be a big part of what first shook Mooshum’s faith.
Themes
In the early morning, Father Severine arrives. He believes Mooshum and Holy Track are guilty and that they have come to confess, but he feeds them anyway. Holy Track eats, protesting as he does so that they did not commit any crime. Back in the present, Mooshum’s story is interrupted by Geraldine’s arrival, and she and Clemence fight. Even this argument between his daughters does not deter Mooshum, however; it was as if “he couldn’t stop the story from forcing its way out.”
That Father Severine is Mooshum’s older half-brother demonstrates once more that almost everyone in Pluto is somehow related to each other by blood (or history). The nature of the fight between Geraldine and Clemence is, for now, left ambiguous, but it’s something the novel will return to later.
Themes
Mooshum’s tale continues with Father Severine standing in front of the church, hoping to ward off the vigilantes while Mooshum and Holy Track hide beneath the pews. But it is no use: the White men push past Severine, declaring their intention to hang Asiginak. In despair, Asiginak shouts in Ojibwe, “I don’t want to die alone.” Holy Track then steps out from behind the pews, announcing himself: “Uncle, I will go with you!” As soon as Mooshum sees the horror and shame on Asiginak’s face, he knows that Holy Track regrets showing himself.
Holy Track’s instinctive eagerness to be with his uncle Asiginak demonstrates the narrative’s emphasis on the intensity of family ties. But Holy Track’s bravery here—effectively condemning himself to die in order to protect his uncle from being “alone”—also speaks to the young boy’s character, his kindness and generosity throwing his unfair persecution into even starker relief.
Themes
Emil Buckendorf and Wildstrand throw Asiginak, Mooshum, and Holy Track into their wagon. A few minutes later, some other men drag Cuthbert into the wagon too. Cuthbert laments that the violence has scraped off the bump in his nose—“it is a pity to die,” he sighs, “now that I am handsome.” As the wagon crosses out of the reservation, various neighboring farmers stand and watch.
Like Mooshum often does, Cuthbert here uses humor as a survival tactic. But in emphasizing his pride at being “handsome,” Cuthbert also suggests that lust and desire, so all-consuming in the novel, can act as a rejuvenating life force in the face of death and pain. And such a force is particularly important in the face of White violence and complicity, as signaled by the farmers watching passively as Buckendorf and Wildstrand brutalize their captives.
Themes
Later, it would come out that a young White man named Tobek Hoag had run away shortly before the murders. Though his sister Electa knew of her brother’s disappearance, she kept this revelation to herself, not wanting to cast suspicion on her brother. Mooshum wonders what would have happened if Electa had spoken up.
Tobek had already run away from Pluto by the night of the hangings, so there would have been few consequences to Electa speaking up. The fact that she did not thus underscores the senseless injustice of these murders (and the double standards placed on White vs. Indian families).
Themes
Across Pluto, a young German man named Johann Vogeli—whose mother recently died—watched as the Buckendorfs arrived at his house. At the Buckendorfs’ urging, Johann and his father Frederic mounted their horses and headed to the area where the lynchings were to take place.
By zooming out to show just how many residents of Pluto participated in this violence, the novel emphasizes the scope and casualness of this vigilante brutality. Indeed, like many throughout history, Frederic seems to treat the hangings almost as a pleasant spectacle, perhaps even seeking a distraction from his wife’s death in the carnage.
Themes
Once there, the various White men fight among each other. Emil Buckendorf and Eugene Wildstrand are some of the loudest voices in favor of killing all four of the men; Pluto’s sheriff agrees with them. When others push back, arguing that Holy Track is only a boy, the Buckendorfs threaten to train their guns on anyone who will defend the four prisoners.
In endorsing these hangings, the sheriff implicitly suggests that the judicial system—which he has been hired to defend—is in fact subordinate to the whims of Pluto’s White citizens. In other words, therefore, the sheriff’s participation here emphasizes that even seemingly extra-legal violence against Indians was often state sponsored.
Themes
As the vigilantes look for a tree to hang their captives, Cuthbert protests: “we are not your bad kind of Indians,” he cries, “us, we are just like you!” One of the White men responds by jamming the butt of his gun into Cuthbert’s head. In Ojibwe, Cuthbert whispers that Holy Track will be saved; after all, there is a boy about his age among the vigilantes, and soon they will realize the injustice of killing someone so young.
With legislation like the Allotment Act, the U.S. government declared that it wanted to assimilate Indians into White settler society, promising land and full legal rights to indigenous tribes that followed suit. But when Cuthbert insists that “we are just like you,” he is only met with more violence, a testament to the emptiness of these American promises.
Themes
Cuthbert and Asiginak try to remember their death songs. When they cannot, they decide to make one up together. Emil Buckendorf announces that he has found a tree that will be strong enough, and Asiginak tells Cuthbert he looks handsome now. Mooshum hears crying; at first he thinks he himself is weeping. But then he realizes the crying is coming from Johann, who has begun to beat his father, desperate to make the lynching stop. Back in the present, Joseph asks Mooshum if Asiginak and Cuthbert and Holy Track survived this day. “No,” Mooshum says.
Even as the majority of Pluto’s White residents show no guilt about the violence unfolding, Johann’s reaction—recognizing his own youth and innocence in Holy Track—hints at the complicated interconnection of this community, in which empathy and brutality can exist side by side. Indeed, Mooshum cannot separate his own tears from Johann’s, a sign that the line between victim and victimizer is always uneasily blurry here. A death song is a personalized song, traditionally sung by warriors across different indigenous tribes once they realized they had been mortally wounded.
Themes
To this day, the tree where the lynching happened still stands, on the Wolde property. Mooshum recalls that it took the vigilantes a long time to tie the rope into the necessary knots. While they work, Holy Track and Asiginak quietly confess that they view each other as father and son. Cuthbert asks Holy Track his real name (“how do the spirits know you?”). Holy Track replies that his true name is Everlasting Sky, and Cuthbert assures the young boy that his mother and other relatives will be waiting for him in the afterlife.
Though Catholicism is a huge part of Holy Track’s life (especially because he is studying to be a priest), in this moment of crisis, Holy Track and his friends rely not on Catholic scripture but on indigenous tradition (even wanting to call each other by their traditional Indian names rather than English ones). The fact that the hanging tree is on the Wolde property marks the first of many subtle links between that family and the atrocity committed on their farm.
Themes
As the vigilantes tighten the ropes, Cuthbert and Asiginak begin to sing, their voices high. In “the old language,” they cry out: “these white men are nothing / what they do cannot harm me / I will see the face of mystery.” Holy Track feels “almost good,” listening to this death song. Cuthbert and Asiginak die right away, but Holy Track is “too light for death to give him an easy time of it.” He feels intense fear, until his mother’s voice tells him to open his eyes. When he does, Holy Track sees the clouds turn into birds, “and they swept across the sky now, faster and faster.”
In this graphic, wrenching passage, the novel contrasts the horrible, concrete physicality of White violence (epitomized by Holy Track’s long death) with the “mystery” of faith and resistance. The birds that Holy Track pictures as he closes his eyes recall the narrative’s titular doves, which now emerge as Holy Track’s guides to the “legend and truth” of the afterlife. It is also significant to note that Holy Track pictures the afterlife as a reunion with his mother, one more sign of how deeply family ties determine his cosmology.
Themes
