After reading "Fluer" I was a bit confused at the beginning with Fluer surviving both drowning accidents. This made me think that she was witch because instead of her dying the people who helped her died instead. When Pauline mentioned the water man it also brought a new idea to my mind that instead of her being a witch he could have had some kind of spell put on her that made her only his. He possible could have put some kind of spell or curse that if another man helped her or hurt her bad things would happen to them in turn and in turn would keep them away from her. This could be why she kept going to the water to drown herself because she could not swim to get away from the water man. The fact that because of the men being killed on the reservation due to her also the stories people said about her probably helped with making her move off of the reservation. Even though she moved to Argus the spell or curse did not go away or wear off in my mind atleast. When the men lost the poker game no matter what they did to her, whether it be beat her or raped her the curse came back and ruined the meat store they had with a tornado.
When it comes to dealing with Pauline and how she followed Fluer around it gave me mixed signals of Pauline seeing her as a role model, being afraid of her, and also being like everyone else and telling her own story. After our discussion on this topic on Wednesday though it made me see Pauline view Fluer as a role model and an older sister a little bit. I thought this because when Fluer needed change to play poker with the guys Fluer asked Pauline for hers and like an older sister would do she gave Pauline the money back and also gave her 5 times as much back. Another thing I noticed was that even though others in class thought that she was going back and forth telling people stories about her after everything had happened I don't think she did. The reason I believe this is because even though she started to become more of her own character as the story went along I think that at the end she went back to being what she was before Fluer, which was just being in the midst of things just nobody paid attention to her, and she was just listening to the different stories people continued to say about her. Pauline was the only one to visit Fluer after she had her baby, which I believe to be from the night she won the poker game and Lily and all the men beating her and what I believe to have happened was her being raped.
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It seems like you see the "gossip" about Fleur as having some truth to it. How would you respond to the idea that the stories told about Fleur are an exaggeration? Why might the members of the reservation tell such stories about her? If, in fact, the stories are credible, does Erdrich give us any "proof" of this within the story?
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