How is the narrator's character in "The Leap" revealed?
In the short story "The Leap" by Louise Erdrich, the narrator is an adult daughter talking about her mother. Now blind from cataracts, her mother, Anna, used to be part of a circus trapeze act know as the Flying Avalons. One summer day, Anna and her first husband, Harry, are performing a difficult maneuver on the trapeze when lightning strikes the circus tent. Harry is killed, and Anna, who is seven months pregnant, is hospitalized. The baby dies, but at the hospital, Anna meets her second husband, the narrator's father, and goes to live with him on an inherited farm. In the final scene of the story, Anna rescues her daughter from the second floor of the farmhouse after it has caught fire.
Although the story is mainly about Anna, the narrator's mother, we can learn a lot about the narrator as we read. For example, we...
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learn that she loves her mother enough to move back in with her after Anna becomes blind so that she can read to her. She also reports that her own life was failing but does not elaborate about this. She writes,
Since my father's recent death, there is no one to read to her, which is why I returned, in fact, from my failed life where the land is flat. I came home to read to my mother, to read out loud, read long into the dark if I must, to read all night.
In the second paragraph of the story we learn that, even as an adult living with her mother, the narrator vividly remembers and has visions of the night of her rescue from the burning farmhouse.
In paragraph 3, we learn that the narrator is profoundly grateful to her mother. She writes, "I owe her my existence three times." The first time is when Anna saved herself after the lightning strike at the circus so that her daughter could later be born. The second is when Anna met and fell in love with her second husband, the narrator's father, at the hospital. The third is when Anna leapt onto the burning building to save her daughter from the fire.
In paragraph 11, we learn that the narrator does not consider the unborn child that died, who was also a girl, her sister. Instead, she thinks of it as an unfinished version of herself.
Near the end, during the fire, we find out that the narrator is someone who stays calm in crisis. When she wakes, finds the house burning, and realizes that she cannot escape, she does what she can to protect herself and then waits for rescue.
How would you describe the narrator in "The Leap"?
Compared to Anna, her mother, the narrator of "The Leap" is a shadowy and indistinct figure. That itself gives us a clue to how she should be described, namely as someone very much in the shadow of her mother.
We see the narrator reflecting back on her childhood and seeing herself to a great degree as a vulnerable and passive youngster protected by her heroic mother. As an adult, she is still somewhat in awe of her mother, and appears slightly uncomfortable with the role reversal occasioned by her mother's blindness.
She appears to be a prodigal daughter who left home for somewhere in "the West" and has recently returned to care for her mother. She explains her return as follows:
Since my father's recent death, there is no one to read to her, which is why I returned, in fact, from my failed life where the land is flat. I came home to read to my mother, to read out loud, read long into the dark if I must, to read all night.
This explanation suggests two things. The first is that the daughter considers herself a failure, especially when compared to her mother, and the second is that she has a strong sense of obligation, or perhaps even guilt with respect to her mother.