The Red Convertible Analysis

Erdrich overall did a great job displaying the effects of PTSD through Henry, and he did an even better job using symbolism to represent the effects. Erdrich used a few small symbols throughout the story to emphasize on specific symptoms of PTSD, but she used the red convertible consistently through the story to reflect on Henry’s emotions as the story progressed. One of the first symbols of the story and maybe the most important since it foreshadows one of the most common symptoms of PTSD. Henry and Lyman meet and a young girl named Susi while on a road trip, and the last day they are together with Susi she unravels her hair for the first time showing Lyman and Henry her beautiful hair that she had hidden in a bun the whole time she was with Lyman and Henry. This foreshadows Henry’s incapability …show more content…
Erdrich also represented this symptom with a picture on the wall that Lyman had seen during the early stages of Henry’s PTSD. In this picture, Henry faced seemed to be covered in the shade; this again was representing his future emotional separation from the family, or as previously stated, his “general numbing of emotions” (Cockram, Drummond, and Lee 166). Erdrich also used a television to express one of the more serious effects of PTSD. Every time Henry sits down to watch the colored television he sits down in the chair as if he was holding on for his life. In other words, Henry could have been having flashbacks of the war reliving those cruel disastrous moments of the Vietnam War (Vrana). The last and the most common symbol used throughout the story was the red convertible. The red convertible was used as a mirror image of Henry’s emotions throughout the story; this allowed readers to easily follow and visualize the effects of PTSD that Henry was experiencing in the story. Erdrich did an excellent job to not only write a narrative accurately depicting a veteran with PTSD, but she did it in a way that allowed more people to connect with emotions Henry was