In Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich uses a lot of symbolism, metaphors, and figurative language when she is talking the characters and their lives and relationships. In the chapter The Red Convertible, Louise shows how one thing, the red convertible, brought two brothers' relationship together and to an end.
             The red convertible is a symbolism of the brothers' love for one another and the car. The car is what brought them together, because they both put money in to buy it. The car also symbolizes the brothers being broken apart.
             When Lyman drives the car into the lake, this symbolizes their relationship being torn apart now that Henry is dead. The narrator is trying to show the relationship between the brothers, by having Lyman drive the car into the water so it can be with his brother. Lyman thought that since it was the one thing that brought them together, that it should be the thing to show that they aren't with each other anymore.
             Erdrich uses first person narration for Lyman in the passage and I think that it is very important because he would be the only one to really know what it felt like to be there seeing Henry drown because he was the only one there. It helped understand the tone and mood of the passage rather than hearing it from someone who didn't have a relationship with Henry like the one that him and Lyman had.
             The red convertible wouldn't have been a significant part of the passage if someone else was talking about what had happened because the reader wouldn't get the same effect. Also, the whole point of this part of the book is to show the relationship between the two brothers so it wouldn't make any sense to have someone else tell the story of their relationship because they don't know the deep feelings between the two and how they really felt. It would be more judging of why Henry died and why Lyman drove into the lake rather than the understanding of the brothers&a...