Analysis of Pauline Puyat’s Tracks­ Essay -- Tracks

Analysis of Pauline Puyat’s Tracks ­ One of the most striking characteristics of Pauline Puyat is her devout Catholicism and her desire to be disconnected from the Ojibwa people. Throughout Tracks, she openly chooses Catholicism over her native religion and abandons her native ways almost completely. When Pauline tries to help Fleur prevent a miscarriage, she is literally held back by her conscious separation from the Ojibwa culture. There are many things that Pauline fails to do to effectively prevent Fleur from miscarrying. The most obvious is her failure to efficiently put together the herbal steep made of Alder: â€Å"And I could not remember the plant’s configuration, even though its use was common enough for bleeding problems† (156). Although Pauline could be nervously forgetting the properties of Alder, this forgetfulness of a basic remedy stresses her abandonment of Ojibwa society and its practices. The array of stored plants makes Pauline even more nervous: â€Å"Plant after Plant! Some were shaped like a man’s forked legs and some were rolled in balls...I put fort...