露薏絲•鄂萃曲的小說作品在北美印地安文學中享有盛名，其文體風格更經常吸引文評家的目光，進而加以探討。鄂萃曲似乎也希望藉由她筆下所鋪陳的美國達克塔州，能夠讓世人進一步認識並瞭解北美印地安族群複雜且糾葛的認同及歷史課題。
然而，鄂萃曲上述的用意並非人人認同。部分文評家認為鄂萃曲的作品是後現代，唯美但不食人間煙火的。本論文擬就此觀點提出不同的看法，並進一步證明鄂萃曲的作品，雖沒有直接提出政治上的批判，但確有政治或社會控訴的暗喻。她的作品揮灑著既政治又非政治的筆觸。若欲深入瞭解箇中旨趣，不妨試著用神話以及女性的角度觀之，將別有一番天地。
在第一章中，將探討鄂萃曲本人生長背景以及自十九世紀以降北美印地安人在白人世界中的社會經濟地位概要，並試圖將鄂萃曲筆下的北達克塔部落的生活與真實生活中，白人的巧取豪奪相結合，拼湊出較為完整的北美印地安世界。
在第二章中，本論文將試圖以榮格的得意門生，埃利希•諾依曼的《大母神》為出發觀點，進一步分析鄂萃曲作品中的大母神以及神話結構。
在第三章中，本文以鄂萃曲作品《蹤跡》為例，將小說中的寶琳，即李歐波妲修女的一生心路歷程的演化，用《大母神》的角度加以分析，剖析一位純樸的混血印地安少女是如何在壓抑嫉妒以及民族自卑催化下，成為一位怪物般的修女，幫襯著白人「大父神」，以宗教和愛為名，對著自己的同宗手足，遂行對印地安族人經濟及思想上的打壓。
鄂萃曲作品，在她細膩的筆調中，蘊含著對她心中真正印地安精神的傳承與期許。在看似各自獨立，甚至不連貫的短篇故事中，印地安的口述文化，已經獲得重生。

The novels of Louise Erdrich have been critically acclaimed by those both inside and outside of the Native American community of the United States. Highly regarded for her poetic prose and frequently analyzed for her disjointed narrative style, Erdrich has sought, through her work, to untangle the complex web of identity and history among the Native Americans of the Dakotas.

Her work has not been without controversy, however. Some commentators, among them fellow Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, have considered her work to be the result of post-modern, aestheticist literary influences, and have read in her stylistic approach a lack of political engagement. Yet Erdrich’s work, as I hope to show, is indeed political, although not in the traditional sense. Erdrich’s work, which employs narrative and mythic structures borrowing from both her Native American and Euro-American heritage, seeks to fictionalize the experience of members of her Chippewa tribe, placing their experience with Europeans settlers and American society in a universal context. This context, which I argue is both political and apolitical, is best approached through an attempt to understand her stories as the outgrowth of both myhic and feminist concerns.

In Chapter One of my thesis, I introduce Erdrich herself, and attempt to place her fiction in the context of the political and social events which transpired in the late nineteenth century. These events led to the fracture of the Chippewa tribe, the loss of its indigenous lands, and its eventual sequestration on the reservation.

In Chapter Two, I introduce the ideas and methodology of Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann, whose pioneering work The Great Mother will serve as a partial foundation for my analysis of both the feminist and mythic structures in Erdrich’s work.

In Chapter Three, I introduce and extensively analyze her antagonist, the character Pauline Puyat, who is a convert to Catholicism, and, as I will argue, an archetypal female character representing the “Terrible Mother.” Pauline will be the focus of the majority of my analysis, as she is a narrative voice and a prime example of the cultural and spiritual quandary in which were placed the Native Americans of the time, who were forced to adapt to the ways of the Euro-Americans or face certain extinction.

In Chapter Four, I attempt to place Erdrich’s work in a larger context of cultural criticism, and answer some of her detractors. Her work, I will argue, is a form of mytho-poetry, simultaneously fictionalizing and addressing political concerns.

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