The Red Convertible
...g those of Henry’s before he leaves to go off to Vietnam (Sutton par. 2). These human traits that are represented are not just anybody’s, but are “portrayed as having what at first are Henry’s traits” (par. 2). The peaceful qualities, represented by Henry, is explained when Lyman states about first seeing the car as being “calm and gleaming[,]” just as Henry once was (Erdrich 407). There is a time that Lyman recollects when he and Henry “sat still for whole afternoons, never moving a muscle” which shows Henry’s “natural calm and repose” (409). Though the car had a “FOR SALE sign in its left front window[,]” the car was not simply “stopped, parked, or whatever[,]” but rather it was just relaxing or reposing (407). Unfortunately, Henry’s “natural repose” is lost when he is sent to Vietnam (Sutton par. 4). For most Americans upon returning home, the war is supposed to be over but in Henrys case “it would keep on going” (Erdrich 409). The only place that Henry can stay still most of the time is in front of the television “and even then he sits as if trapped in an out-of-control car seconds before the crash” (Sutton par. 4). Everywhere else, Henry is “never comfortable sitting still…but always up and moving around” (Erdrich 409). Henry never smiles, seems happy, or even laughs anymore, but “when he [does] it [is] more the sound of a man choking” (409). Henry now stays frustrated and nervous like a “rabbit when it freezes and before it will bolt” which is more sign of the internal Vietnam War still going on inside his head (409). It is a shame about Henry losing his “natural repose[,]” because he was such a cool and calm boy all of his life (Sutton par. 4). The emotional disorder of Henry correlates to the condition of the once beautiful shining red convertible. The car used to run great before Lyman beat it to a pulp and messed up all the hoses from the engine so it would not run right anymore. Though as time passes Lyman wants the car to be fixed on the inside just like Henry needs a good “tune-up” on the inside which could possibly fix Henry’s mixed and messed up emotions. With there being no Indian doctors on the reservation and Moses Pillager, the only Indian man that even closely relates to a doctor, he is not trusted enough to give Henry this fixer-upper or “tune-up” that he really desperately needs, sending Henry to the hospital to see the real doctors comes up. Lyman and his mother are afraid that the “regular hospital” will keep him and will “just give [him] drugs” (Erdrich 410). The hospital that they can put him in is being described as a “cut-rate garage” (Sutton par. 5). Knowing that Lyman and his mother can not get Henry to get checked into a hospital to help his emotional distress anyway, they “just forget about it” and the main reason is because the hospital is mostly for whites. (Erdrich 410). In some critics’ minds Henry is being corrupted and is beginning to loose his “free American Indian spirit” and the white man is doing the corruption (Dutta par. 4). The Vietnam War from almost every race complains because it was said to just be a white man’s war. In this story’s case, the “western ideas and concepts” is what the corruptive white man ways is. The white man’s horrible ways are everywhere now that they are starting to “[run] in his blood” (Dutta par. 6). This corresponds to later in the story when Henry and ...