Wandering Stars

Dancing, music, and instruments, specifically Bear Shield’s drum and Orvil’s guitar, symbolize the idea that it’s possible, and perhaps necessary, to find beauty and vitality after experiencing pain, suffering, and violence. Notably, Bear Shield’s suffering is caused by a massacre carried out by the U.S. government; with that in mind, his drum also represents the idea that finding vitality and beauty after suffering can be a form of political resistance against oppressive and violent institutions. When Jude hears Bear Shield play his drum, Jude remarks that after experiencing so much “hunger and suffering,” the drum “made something new, […] a brutal kind of beauty lifting everything up in song.” That description of how the drum helps “[lift] everything up in song” mirrors Opal Viola’s idea that, after she’s diagnosed with cancer, simply surviving the illness won’t be enough; instead, if she survives, she wants to come back better. She says that Native culture has undergone a similar transformation. Native culture and Native people have been systematically targeted for centuries, but in the novel’s present, Opal Viola notes, “The culture sings. It dances.”

Various characters undergo similar transformations throughout the novel as they move from great suffering to a kind of resilient beauty, often through the help of music and dancing. Orvil starts playing music during his lowest point, and he then uses music as a way to maintain sobriety after he overdoses and almost dies. Orvil’s suffering is also linked to centuries of violence and cultural erasure carried out by the U.S. government, which begins, in the novel’s narrative, with Jude’s survival of the Sand Creek Massacre. Like Jude and Bear Shield, then, Orvil’s ability to find a life-sustaining force within music after experiencing profound suffering can also be seen as a form of political resistance.