Husband Character Analysis

Aanakwad’s husband recognizes that she loves not him, but rather the other man, with whom she has just had a baby. Eventually, as their family life becomes untenable due to her despair, the husband sends for the other man’s uncle to come pick up Aanakwad and take her to live with her lover. The separation is painful for him, especially because they are splitting up the two children they had together — their daughter will go with Aanakwad, while their son will stay with him. When the uncle arrives, the husband stops up his ears to avoid having to listen to their departure, so he doesn’t notice at first that his son is chasing the cart through the snow as it leaves. When he does realize and goes to get his son, his son tells him about the gray shapes he saw on the trail, the husband goes to investigate. He then discovers that his daughter was eaten by wolves and assumes that Aanakwad threw the daughter to the wolves in order to stave them off and save herself, her infant, and her lover’s uncle. The husband takes a scrap of his daughter’s plaid shawl from the scene of the attack but initially keeps the story of what happened to himself. When, years later, he begins to weaken from tuberculosis, he tells this story to his son, and then begins to tell it to everyone, whenever he can.