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Narrator
Aanakwad is the narrator’s grandmother, and the mother of the narrator’s father. Her name means “cloud,” a word that also describes her changeable temperament. When the narrator’s father was young, Aanakwad had a child by a man whom she loved but who was not her husband, and she became so depressed that it was arranged for her to leave the husband and live with this other man instead. After arguing about it, Aanakwad and her husband decide to split up their own children: their nine-year-old daughter and the infant will leave with her, while their five-year-old son (the narrator’s father) will stay with her husband. The other man’s uncle fetches Aanakwad, the daughter, and the infant in his horse-drawn cart. Not long after they set off, they are attacked by wolves. The husband arrives at the scene of the attack not long after and can see from the remains that the daughter has been eaten by the wolves. He believes that Aanakwad threw their daughter to the wolves in order to save herself, her baby, and the uncle, and passes on this version of events to his son. At the end of the story, the narrator suggests that perhaps Aanakwad didn’t throw the daughter, but that the daughter jumped and sacrificed herself instead. This version of the story, to some extent, redeems Aanakwad in her son and grandson’s eyes.
Aanakwad Quotes in The Shawl
The The Shawl quotes below are all either spoken by Aanakwad or refer to Aanakwad. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Shawl
Quotes
It was only after his father had been weakened by the disease that he began to tell the story, far too often and always the same way: he told how when the wolves closed in, Aanakwad had thrown her daughter to them. When his father said those words, the boy went still. What had his sister felt? What had thrust through her heart? Had something broken inside her, too, as it had in him? Even then, he knew that this broken place inside him would not be mended, except by some terrible means … He saw Aanakwad swing the girl lightly out over the side of the wagon. He saw the brown shawl with its red lines flying open. He saw the shadows, the wolves, rush together, quick and avid, as the wagon with sled runners disappeared into the distance—forever, for neither he nor his father saw Aanakwad again.
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The other thing I said to him was in the form of a question. Have you ever considered, I asked him, given how tenderhearted your sister was, and how brave, that she looked at the whole situation? She saw that the wolves were only hungry. She knew that their need was only need. She knew that you were back there, alone in the snow. She understood that the baby she loved would not live without a mother, and that only the uncle knew the way. She saw clearly that one person on the wagon had to be offered up, or they all would die. And in that moment of knowledge, don’t you think, being who she was, of the old sort of Anishinaabeg, who things of the good of the people first, she jumped, my father, indede, brother to that little girl? Don’t you think she lifted her shawl and flew?
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Aanakwad Quotes in The Shawl
The The Shawl quotes below are all either spoken by Aanakwad or refer to Aanakwad. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Shawl
Quotes
It was only after his father had been weakened by the disease that he began to tell the story, far too often and always the same way: he told how when the wolves closed in, Aanakwad had thrown her daughter to them. When his father said those words, the boy went still. What had his sister felt? What had thrust through her heart? Had something broken inside her, too, as it had in him? Even then, he knew that this broken place inside him would not be mended, except by some terrible means … He saw Aanakwad swing the girl lightly out over the side of the wagon. He saw the brown shawl with its red lines flying open. He saw the shadows, the wolves, rush together, quick and avid, as the wagon with sled runners disappeared into the distance—forever, for neither he nor his father saw Aanakwad again.
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Explanation and Analysis:
The other thing I said to him was in the form of a question. Have you ever considered, I asked him, given how tenderhearted your sister was, and how brave, that she looked at the whole situation? She saw that the wolves were only hungry. She knew that their need was only need. She knew that you were back there, alone in the snow. She understood that the baby she loved would not live without a mother, and that only the uncle knew the way. She saw clearly that one person on the wagon had to be offered up, or they all would die. And in that moment of knowledge, don’t you think, being who she was, of the old sort of Anishinaabeg, who things of the good of the people first, she jumped, my father, indede, brother to that little girl? Don’t you think she lifted her shawl and flew?
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