medicine walk essay questions

Medicine Walk

73 pages • 2 hours read

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-17

Chapters 18-21

Chapters 22-23

Chapters 24-26

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Why does Frank accept Eldon’s request for a warrior’s burial?

Why is Eldon unable to financially succeed in life?

How does Wagamese portray nature in the early chapters of the novel? What does nature mean to Frank? Support your answer with three passages from the novel.

How does Wagamese characterize the town of Parson’s Gap? What is the cumulative effect of these details?

Is Eldon the “victim of circumstance” that he claims to be? Why or why not?

What are Angie’s primary characteristics, and what does she symbolize in the narrative?

What are the major elements of Bunky’s philosophy of life? How is his philosophy of life also a philosophy of nature?

What function do stories play in the novel? 

How does Frank change during the novel? How do the changes he undergoes parallel Eldon’s transformation?

Does Eldon succeed in his quest to die as a warrior? 

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Medicine Walk

By richard wagamese.

• Medicine Walk Summary

The novel begins with 16-year-old Franklin Starlight riding into town to see his alcoholic father, Eldon Starlight . Eldon has been absent for most of Frank’s life. Frank is Ojibway and Cree, but has mostly been raised by his white foster father, referred to as the old man. When Frank arrives in town, Eldon informs Frank that he is dying of liver failure from his years of alcoholism. Eldon asks if Frank will take him into the backcountry to be buried the warrior way: sitting upright and facing east.

Before the journey, Frank reflects on the life he’s lived with the old man. The old man has always been more of a father to Frank than Eldon has, and for the longest time, Eldon believed the old man was indeed his father. The old man taught Frank how to hunt, how to give thanks to the animals he hunted, and how to honor the land. The old man taught Frank everything he knows.

Frank agrees to accompany Eldon, and the two begin their journey. They leave the town of Parson’s Gap, British Columbia, and travel to the bush. Along the way, Eldon begins to tell Frank stories from his past—stories Eldon has never shared with another person before. Eldon tells Frank about his mother, Frank’s grandmother, who was a wonderful storyteller. Eldon tells Frank about laboring in work camps when Eldon was younger, and about Eldon’s best friend Jimmy who worked alongside him. Eldon’s mother was trapped in an abusive relationship with Eldon’s foreman, Jenks, and Eldon was forced to abandon his mother. Frank becomes angry when he hears this story, feeling as though he was robbed of a grandmother.

During their journey, Frank and Eldon come across the house of Becka Charlie . Becka is Indigenous and white, much like Frank and Eldon. Becka cares for Frank and Eldon, gives them food, and gives Frank advice about Eldon. Becka tells Frank that all anyone is, in the end, is their stories, and then Becka sends Frank and Eldon along with some medicine to aid in Eldon’s alcohol withdrawal.

The stories continue as father and son travel, with Eldon becoming weaker along the way. Eldon describes how he signed up for the Korean War with Jimmy. While in the trenches, Jimmy made Eldon promise to bury Jimmy in the warrior way if Jimmy died. Eldon promised. Jimmy was shot in battle, and Eldon was forced to finish Jimmy off so as not to give their position away. Eldon also had to leave Jimmy’s body on the battlefield, and so he was unable to bury Jimmy in the warrior way. After the war, Eldon began drinking heavily, and soon developed an alcohol problem.

Eldon’s stories are interspersed with Frank’s memories of Eldon during Frank’s childhood. Frank learned Eldon was his father when Frank was seven years old. Eldon was always drunk when Frank came to see him, and one time Eldon had sex with a woman when Frank was in the room. On Frank’s 10th birthday, Eldon promised to stay sober, but ended up getting very inebriated secretively. Eldon was unable to keep his promises to Frank due to the severity of his alcoholism.

In the present, Eldon nears the brink of death. His body is shaking from withdrawal, but the medicine Becka gave Frank and Eldon helps to ease Eldon’s pain. The final story Eldon tells Frank is the story of Frank’s mother, Angie Pratt . Angie was a Cree woman Eldon met in a bar. Eldon also met a man named Bunky, and a week later Bunky offered Eldon a job at his farm. Angie was romantically involved with Bunky at this point. Eldon agreed to take the job.

Eldon built Bunky a fence over the course of a few weeks, and during this time Angie and Eldon began sleeping together. Eldon also got sober during this time. Bunky discovered their affair, and Eldon and Angie admitted that they loved one another. Angie and Eldon left Bunky’s farm. The couple found an old cabin, began fixing it up together, and Angie got pregnant. Eldon began drinking again during Angie’s pregnancy because he was ashamed of his past and fearful of being a father. Eldon was at a bar when Angie went into labor, and consequently, Angie got to the hospital too late. Angie died, but their son, Frank, lived. Eldon brought a week-old Frank to the old man, Bunky. Bunky agreed to raise Frank out of his love for Angie, but he despised Eldon and blamed him for Angie’s death.

After the story of Frank’s mother, Eldon passes away in the night. Frank buries Eldon like he asked, in the warrior way. Frank is unsure if he forgives Eldon for being a neglectful father at the end of the novel. Frank returns to the farm with the old man, and the two eat dinner together. In the final scene of the book, Frank walks out onto the land. In the space between sunset and darkness, Frank sees the ghostly shapes of his ancestors on the land. Frank raises his hand to his ancestors, and heads back to the farmhouse.

Medicine Walk Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Medicine Walk is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why did frank had to come back to Nechako On pg:173?

What chapter are you referring to?

Medicine walk

In chapter 17, the story catapults back into the Korean War, where Jimmy and Eldon sit in the trenches.

Please tell me a one good question about Medicine Walk By Richard Wagamese from pg: 169-210.

Study Guide for Medicine Walk

Medicine Walk study guide contains a biography of Richard Wagamese, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Medicine Walk

Richard wagamese.

Sixteen-year-old Franklin Starlight —referred to as “the kid”—saddles his old mare for a trip over the mountains to the mill town of Parson’s Gap, British Columbia. His father Eldon has asked him to come, but he doesn’t know why. His guardian, the old man , warns him that his father will be very sick, perhaps dying, and reminds him that Eldon is dishonest.

When the kid reaches Parson’s Gap, he finds his father in a broken-down rooming house. Eldon takes the kid out for dinner and reveals that he wants the kid to take him into the backcountry to bury him there. (His liver is failing after years of hard drinking.) He also wants to tell the kid about his past, because it’s all he has to give. The kid isn’t sure at first, since his father has drifted in and out of his life and feels like a stranger to him. It was the old man (his guardian) who’d taught him how to survive school, to track and hunt, and to love the land. However, he agrees to the plan. Soon the men and the mare are headed into the mountains with a small pack of supplies.

On their first night in the wilderness, Eldon is impressed with Frank’s skill in setting up camp and fishing. He begins talking about himself, telling Frank that his parents, Frank’s grandparents, were half white and half Ojibway. They spent all their time traveling from job to job and didn’t have time to learn wilderness survival. He tells Frank they’re out here in the woods because he “owes” his son.

Frank thinks back to his earliest memory of Eldon, when he was almost six. Eldon had stayed at the farm briefly, leaving some money in a jar for the kid. The old man had explained that Eldon is someone he used to know very well, and that he drinks because things have gotten so broken inside him that they’re hard to fix. About a year later, Eldon returned and told the kid that he was his father, then disappeared again.

On the second day of their journey, Frank helps Eldon up a steep trail to a cliff that’s covered with sacred Indian paintings. He’s always loved coming here to sit and think about what the pictures mean and what they might reveal about who he is. Eldon says he was always too busy trying to survive to think about “Indian stuff.” That night, they take shelter in a cabin with a half-Indian woman named Becka Charlie . Though Eldon finds Becka to be nosy and critical, he softens when she guesses why he’s traveling West in order to die and be buried in the “warrior way”—it’s an effort to die with honor. Becka’s words prompt Eldon to tell Frank the story of his childhood.

After Eldon’s father died in the Second World War, he began traveling and working wherever he could in order to provide for his mother. Eldon became best friends with Jimmy Weaseltail , who became like a member of the family. One summer, the friends became accomplished logrollers in British Columbia, working under a foreman named Jenks . Before long, Jenks became intrigued by Eldon’s mother and started having meals with the family; then he and Eldon’s mother began sleeping together. Within a month, Eldon saw evidence that Jenks was abusing her. When he and Jimmy caught Jenks in the act, Jimmy attacked Jenks, nearly killing him. Eldon’s mother defended Jenks and told the boys to run. Eldon never saw his mother again.

Frank calls his father a coward for never going back; it has cheated him out of a grandmother and deepened his sense of not knowing who he is. As Eldon sleeps, however, Becka suggests that Eldon was brave to tell what most would rather forget, and that our stories are all we are.

The next day, when the kid and his father continue their journey, they cross paths with a juvenile grizzly. Frank succeeds in confronting the bear. Later he tells Eldon that out here in the wilderness, you just do what you have to in order to survive. Soothed by the herbal medicine Becka gave them, Eldon tells Frank to pour out his remaining whisky.

The kid recalls traveling to Parson’s Gap when he was nine to see his father. The old man accompanied him. They found Eldon in a crumbling rooming house, dancing drunkenly with a woman. Before he and the old man left in anger, Frank told his father that he didn’t know anything about having a father, except for what Eldon showed him through his actions.

The following year, for his tenth birthday, the kid visited Eldon by himself. At first, things looked promising; Eldon was living in a tidy boarding house and even planned a birthday outing for his son. After a blissful afternoon of fly-fishing, however, Frank discovered that his father had been sneaking whiskey the whole time, breaking his promise. Frank (an experienced tractor driver) was forced to drive his drunken father home in the pickup. A couple years later, Eldon promised to visit for Christmas. When he failed to show up, Frank was furious with himself—after all he’d witnessed, he should have known better than to hope.

The following day, Eldon’s condition worsens. By evening, he and the kid arrive at a ridge Eldon had hoped to reach. The valley is filled with a beautiful turquoise river and ringed with snowcapped mountains. Eldon visited this place once before, and it’s the only place where he ever felt as though he fit. That’s why he’s chosen to die here. He begins telling Frank a story he needs to hear—of how he once killed a man.

In 1951, Eldon and Jimmy enlisted in the Royal Canadian Regiment to fight in Korea. More loyal to Jimmy than to the war effort, Eldon committed himself to becoming the best soldier he could be. Sitting in a trench outside Busan, Eldon swore to Jimmy to make sure that if he got killed, he’d receive a warrior’s burial. Soon after, they were sent on a reconnaissance mission, and Jimmy got fatally wounded. Knowing his screams would give away their position, Jimmy signaled to Eldon to kill him. Eldon stabbed his friend to death, and his body was never recovered, so Eldon was unable to keep his promise to bury Jimmy. He’s never admitted this story to anyone before.

The next morning, Eldon is worse, but he’s determined to talk to the kid about one more thing: Frank’s mother. After the war, Eldon was in bad shape, drinking to forget his memories and working odd jobs in Parson’s Gap to afford his binges. One day, he was drinking at his favorite dive, Charlie’s, when he noticed a graceful, long-haired woman dancing to the jukebox. An older man, who introduced himself as Bunky, sat down with Eldon and admired the woman, Angie , too. When Angie’s dancing partner, Dingo , bullied a weaker drunk, Bunky stood up to him. Soon Angie joined their table, and Eldon fell in love with her. However, she was attracted to Bunky.

A week later, Bunky drove into Parson’s Gap and hired Eldon to put up 10 acres of fencing on his farm; Eldon stayed on the farm for a couple of weeks. Angie was living there now, too. Each day, Angie brought him lunch and told him about her life, and in the evenings, Angie told Bunky and Eldon stories she made up on the spot. Eldon grew increasingly attracted to Angie, and she hinted that she felt the same, but he resisted opening up to her. He could see how much Bunky loved Angie, and he felt guilty about his own feelings—all the more since he’d stopped drinking.

On Eldon’s last day on the job, Angie visited him in the pasture, and he finally opened up to her a little. They ended up making love in the field. That night, Eldon, guilt-ridden, tried to avoid everyone, but Angie climbed to his loft, and they made love passionately. Bunky discovered them and was furious. But after Eldon and Angie admitted their love for one another, Bunky wept brokenly. He told Eldon that if he and Angie were going to build a life together, he must treat her right, or Bunky would come and find him. He gave them the keys to his truck and some cash and told them to be gone before he returned.

Eldon tells Frank that for the longest time, he kept his promise and didn’t drink. For the first time, he even felt he could settle down contentedly. But the following fall, Angie found out she was pregnant with Frank. Eldon’s fears of inadequacy awakened the old darkness in him; he believed he was destined to destroy everyone he loved. He began drinking in secret to cope with his fear and shame. One night, Eldon drove home drunk from a tavern and discovered Angie in an agonizing breech labor. He got her to the hospital, but she died as the baby was delivered. The doctor said if he’d gotten home in time, she might have lived.

Eldon believed that his loving Angie had killed her, and he feared he would hate Frank because of this. In the only deed he was ever proud of, Eldon brought Frank to Bunky (who, he confirms, is the old man) when Frank was a newborn. Though Bunky was devastated by the news of Angie’s death and blamed Eldon, he loved Frank instantly and quickly decided to raise him for Angie’s sake. After telling Frank this, Eldon is spent. He overlooks the valley one last time, moaning “I’m sorry.” That night he dies in his sleep.

The next morning, Frank buries his father in the traditional warrior way. When he gets back to the farm, he sees himself in the old man’s working rhythms and smoothly rejoins the comfortable home routine. After telling Bunky Eldon’s whole story, Frank also tells Bunky that Bunky has always been a father to him. That night, he overlooks Bunky’s land and imagines he sees a traveling band of Indians waving warmly to him, making him feel connected to an ancestral line he’s never known. Then he goes back to the cabin where the old man is waiting for him.

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