51 pages • 1 hour read
Louise ErdrichThe Painted Drum
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Revival Road”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Revival Road”
Faye Travers lives with her mother, Elsie, on Revival Road in the quiet New Hampshire town of Stiles and Stokes. Leading to a field where revival meetings once took place, Revival Road seemingly twists and turns into tangles, “[b]ut there is order in it to reward the patient watcher” (4). At the end of the road is the brick house of 56-year-old Kurt Krahe, a German artist. Although his assemblages made of large stones were once much-admired, he hasn’t produced any noteworthy work for years. Faye and Kurt are lovers, but their affair is clandestine and Kurt sneaks into Faye’s room during the night. If Elsie knows, she says nothing.
Kurt hires a teen named Davan Eyke to help him haul stones for an assemblage commissioned long ago. After Davan wrecked his father’s new car, his working-class parents evicted him from their house. When he moves into the cottage beside Kurt’s house, “the ravens watched […] and knew immediately that Davan Eyke would be trouble” (8). Indeed, Davan regards the ravens with animosity, and kills one with his crossbow.
Kurt is devoted to his daughter, a college student named Kendra and the product of his marriage to a woman who died in a car accident. Faye feels no fondness for Kendra and believes that Kurt mistakes her “for the incarnation of his lost wife and not as his actual self-absorbed and petulant daughter” (11). Kendra visits her father on weekends and takes an interest in Davan, whom Kurt now considers “a brainless punk” (10). Kurt warns Davan against seeing Kendra, but “Davan just starts to laugh, raucous, cracking, a raven’s laugh” (19).
Meanwhile, the Eykes have an ill-treated dog chained in their yard who breaks free and disappears into the woods. She emerges periodically to devour small pets, but when she begins eyeing the school bus, the police organize a stake-out. Davan and Kendra careen by in a stolen Toyota. After an officer runs a check on the car, a high-speed chase ensues on winter-slick roads. The Toyota knocks hits and kills an old man named John Jewett Tatro before careening off a bridge, killing Davan and Kendra.
Faye ponders the Eyke’s dog, identifying with her sadness and hunger.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Painted Drum”
Faye works with her mother in the estate disposition business that Elsie established. They have a reputation for honesty and expertise when appraising personal property and are skilled at helping relatives manage “the afterlife of stuff” (28) that remains when a loved one dies. Sarah Tatro, John Jewett Tatro’s niece, secures Faye’s services after her uncle’s death.
John Jewett Tatro resided with his brother, recently deceased, in the 19th-century house inhabited by the Tatro family for 200 years. The eccentric brothers never parted with any family heirlooms and lived frugally, and their finances were sound. Jewett Parker Tatro, their grandfather, “was an Indian agent on the Ojibwe reservation” (29) in North Dakota. Although unconfirmed, rumors circulate that the Tatro house holds a cache of Indigenous artifacts.
Faye is excited by the prospect of appraising the Tatro estate, particularly because her maternal grandmother was born on the same Ojibwe reservation where Jewett Parker Tatro was posted. After Sarah greets her at the door, Faye tours the old house and finds an Indigenous doll. Upon seeing it, Sarah says there are more such items—“ a lot of beadwork and stuff” (37)—in the attic.
Upstairs, they discover “a real haul” (41), but Sarah tires of their task and excuses herself to do errands. Alone, Faye’s attention is drawn to a large drum which is “intricately decorated” (39) with a painted yellow stripe in the center. Faye is startled to hear the drum sound a deep tone; placing her hand on it, she senses “a clear conviction” and a “visceral” feeling (40). Faye has never stolen anything before, but she bundles the drum into her car and goes home.
During dinner, Faye tells Elsie about the Tatros’ Indigenous collection and mentions the drum. Elsie is well-informed about Ojibwe artifacts and says, “A painted drum, especially, is considered a living thing and must be fed as the spirits are fed, with tobacco and a glass of water set nearby […]. Drums are known to cure and to kill” (43). After Elsie goes to bed, Faye sneaks the drum into her room. She cannot sleep and concludes that her “instinctive theft signifies a matter so essential that it might be called survival” (44).
Part 1, Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The Painted Drum is divided into four parts, the first and last of which share the title “Revival Road,” and are narrated by Faye Travers. Faye lives on Revival Road with her mother, and in the novel’s opening pages she describes how its surface changes across the seasons. She imagines that “[f]rom the air, our road must look like a ball of rope flung down haphazardly, a thing of inscrutable loops and half-finished question marks. But there is order in it to reward the patient watcher” (4). Her descriptions of the road might equally apply to the tangled course of an individual’s life. Moreover, the name “Revival” suggests restoration, rebirth, and renewal—and life after death.
There are signs in these chapters that Faye is a “patient watcher” of life, not an active participant. Because she resists change and does not want to upset the balance in her life with her mother, Faye conceals her affair with Kurt. She strives to ensure that “things remain as they are. Elsie and I maintain a calm life together, the treasure of routine” (21). Her lack of meaningful communication with her mother beyond routine matters also indicates how disconnected Faye is from the people in her life. She is similarly distant with Kurt. During their nights together, “there is so much meaning, so much hunger” between their bodies, but Faye admits, “I never talk about who I really am with him” (10).
While Faye distances herself from other people, she identifies with animals, particularly ravens. She reflects, “the more I come to know people, the better I like ravens” (15), and expresses the desire to become one: “If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens” (15). The wild freedom of the ravens attracts Faye, but she figuratively links herself with the Eykes’ chained dog when, acknowledging her submission to her desire for her lover, she thinks, “Without a word, without a sound, I circle Krahe, dragging my chain” (21). After the dog breaks loose, Faye has “the greatest wish to stare into her eyes,” and wonders, “would the sad eye see me or the hungry eye? Which one would set me free?” (26). Here Faye expresses her internal conflict between sorrow and hunger—between a need to protect herself from others and an equal need to connect.
Although the painted drum that Faye finds in the Tatros’ attic doesn’t necessarily set her free (yet), it does inspire her to break from “rules and laws and [… begin] breathing new, thin air” (44). As she hears the drum sound a note, she protests, “I’m not a sentimental person and I don’t believe old things hold the life of people” (39). Faye’s appraisal of old things as commodities bearing no trace of “their owner’s essence” (39) is at odds with the beliefs of her Ojibwe ancestors. She is disconnected from her past as well as her present life. When she defies her own rational judgement by stealing the old drum and then “feeding” it water and tobacco, Faye begins to appreciate the past as a vital force in the present, an important theme in the novel.
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