INHERITED ROOTS AND FRACTURED IDENTITIES IN LOUISE ERDRICH’S «THE MIGHTY RED»

Abstract

The article examines generational memory and identity crisis in Louise Erdrich’s novel «The Mighty Red». The analysis focuses on how inherited narratives, family histories, embodied experiences, and the surrounding landscape shape the complex and often contradictory experience of Métis belonging. In the novel, memory functions not as a stable archive but as a dynamic force manifested through silence, repetition, unconscious gestures, and everyday practices. The land and the Red River Valley emerge as key memory topoi: they preserve traces of previous generations and simultaneously generate internal tensions by returning characters to the repressed layers of their past. Special attention is given to the ways in which characters respond to inherited trauma – through labour as a ritual of resilience, humour as a strategy of emotional regulation, familial solidarity, and attempts to articulate new forms of self-identification. Female and male narrative lines reveal different models of negotiating the crisis of belonging, ranging from silent endurance and bodily memory to the search for a voice and a renewed connection to ancestral histories. The novel articulates a model of identity grounded not in “pure” lineage but in the multilayered experience of coexistence. «The Mighty Red» demonstrates how generational memory simultaneously consolidates and fragments the subject, creating a space for new forms of belonging within a Métis context.