63 pages • 2-hour read
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The Fluidity of Gender and Identity
Throughout the novel, Agnes DeWitt’s lifelong embrace of her role as Father Damien Modeste challenges many traditional notions of gender and identity. Erdrich uses this central conceit to suggest that identity is not an innate state but a fluid performance that is continually shaped and reshaped by a complex blend of social expectations, personal willpower, and spiritual conviction. Through Agnes’s “sincere lie”—her performance as Damien—the novel indicates that adopting a new gender role can be an act of profound sacrifice and radical liberation, for as Agnes fully embodies the identity of Damien, this new reality becomes more authentic to her than the identity that she was born with. Her unusual life therefore blurs the boundaries between male and female and between deception and truth.
Agnes’s transformation into Father Damien is a conscious, deliberate performance of masculinity, and as the narrative demonstrates, this process is far from monolithic. Whenever Agnes suffers doubts about her role as Damien, Erdrich temporarily refers to the protagonist with female pronouns and signifiers, indicating that the true core of the priest’s self is a complex, volatile mix of all her various “selves.”
Even in Agnes’s earliest moments, after she survives a traumatic kidnapping and devastating flood, she already undergoes a systematic shedding and rebuilding of identity. Her brief life in the convent as Sister Cecilia is soon eclipsed by her earthier, more sensual role as Agnes DeWitt, companion and lover to Berndt Vogel. Once again, in the aftermath of the symbolically baptismal flood that washes away these old tatters of her former life, she is reborn as Father Damien when she discovers the original priest’s body and willfully assumes his identity.
Notably, Agnes interprets this critical event as a divine calling to serve God while going forth “dressed as He is dressed” (44). To aid in her metamorphosis, Agnes soon creates a list that she calls “Rules to Assist in My Transformation” (74), which includes directives on how to stride, admire women’s handiwork, and adopt other stereotypically male behaviors. This performance grants her a level of authority and freedom that she never possessed as a woman or a nun. Now, as a male priest, she finds that she can pursue all questions with “frankness and ease” (62), and it is clear that she has found a way to transcend the limitations that would otherwise be her lot, as a woman, to endure.
However, this liberating performance requires the constant, painful suppression of her female body and desires. The physical reality of her womanhood is a lifelong secret that must be violently contained, and this constant stress and pressure is symbolized by the bandage that she uses to bind her breasts. This act of concealment is a daily, physical sacrifice that underscores the conflict between her internal self and her external role.
While she normally bears this burden gracefully, the underlying tension in her embodiment of Father Damien becomes most acute when she engages in a secret love affair with Father Gregory Wekkle. The relationship forces her to decide whether to persist in her male priestly function or pursue her instinctive desires. In the midst of this crisis, she recognizes that her desires challenge the very foundation of her assumed identity. By renouncing her love for Gregory, she boldly decides to preserve her vocation, choosing her performed identity and declaring it to be far more authentic to her than her womanly identities ever were. Erdrich thus portrays identity itself as a complex negotiation between the body one has and the role that one chooses, and the novel makes it clear that the performance of gender is a powerful, albeit costly, means of shaping one’s destiny.
The Ambiguous Nature of Faith and Sainthood
As the complex layers of the novel scrutinize the nature of faith, Erdrich deliberately contrasts the rigid, institutionalized piety of the Catholic Church with the lived spiritual experiences of both the white characters and the Ojibwe characters. As every scene unveils new philosophical dilemmas and levels of ambiguity, the novel suggests that true faith lies not in certainty but in the personal, painful process of grappling with doubt. By creating a narrative that questions the supposed miracles of Sister Leopolda while simultaneously validating Father Damien’s private spiritual encounters, Erdrich wryly critiques the Church’s excesses of bureaucratic authority and redefines holiness itself as an intimate process that defies easy categorization.
The novel is framed by Father Damien’s efforts to prevent the official sainthood of the cruel Sister Leopolda, and his efforts in this vein soon expose the fallibility of institutional religion. In his letters to the Pope, Damien reveals that Leopolda’s alleged stigmata were not divine marks but self-inflicted wounds from a barbed-wire rosary that functioned as a murder weapon; thus, her so-called holy trance was simply a case of tetanus. By actively seeking to debunk events that have been mistakenly branded as official miracles, Damien implies that the Church’s process for determining sainthood is a flawed, bureaucratic exercise that can easily mistake pathological behavior for piety. The Vatican’s decades of silence in the wake of Damien’s reports further emphasize the institution’s distance from the lived spiritual realities of its followers, suggesting that the Church itself is nothing more than a cold, unresponsive authority.
In a marked contrast to Sister Leopolda’s fraudulent public piety, Father Damien’s most profound spiritual encounters are private and ambiguous, and they often blend Catholic and Ojibwe traditions in equal measure. For example, during Damien’s first Mass on the starving, snowbound reservation, the communion wafer physically transforms into “a thick mouthful of raw, tender, bloody, sweet-tasting meat” (69), providing real nourishment to the dying nuns. Rather than being cast as a spectacle for canonization, the miraculous event is described as a direct, compassionate response to human suffering. Similarly, Damien finds spiritual solace in his own lived experiences rather than in doctrine, as when he sees the visage of Christ in Mary Kashpaw’s face and later finds his shaken faith restored in a sweat lodge ceremony that he sees in a dream. Erdrich thus redefines holiness as a messy, personal journey that allows individual seekers to discover the divine in the most unexpected places.
The Intertwining of Love, Sacrifice, and Suffering
In every thread of the novel’s nonlinear plot, the complex emotion of love is variously shown as a simple, healing force; a corrosive form of temptation; and a powerful, destructive passion that proves to be inseparable from the more difficult trials of sacrifice and suffering. As each character’s life unfolds, Erdrich uses the complexity of this fictional community to demonstrate that love’s deepest expressions can be found in acts of profound self-denial, particularly for those who are burdened by personal and ancestral trauma. Through the intertwined stories of Agnes, Fleur, and the surrounding community of Little No Horse, the novel suggests that the devastating and all-consuming power of love demands immense sacrifice.
The connection between romantic love and suffering is established early and remains a consistent pattern throughout the narrative. For example, Agnes’s passionate affair with Berndt ends with his violent murder—a trauma that fractures her memory and erases her identity, forcing her to forge a new life as Father Damien. Years later, her love for Gregory presents another impossible choice, for in order to pursue this relationship, she would have to renounce her priestly vocation and abandon the community to which she has dedicated her life. Her decision to sacrifice her romantic love for the sake of her spiritual duty and her love of her community therefore leads to an all-consuming anguish, a “pain [that] close[s] like a trap” (209). In these instances, love is a catalyst for loss and suffering rather than a source for fulfillment.
This theme also extends to the dilemmas involved in parental love. As Fleur Pillager’s life story shows, it is impossible to renounce one’s parental duties and pursue other goals without suffering grievous consequences. Torn between her love for her daughter and her long-held love for her stolen ancestral lands, Fleur makes the choice to relinquish her role as a mother in Lulu’s life in order to seek revenge against John James Mauser, the lumber baron who stole and ravaged her lands. When Fleur leaves Lulu at a government boarding school, this moment stands as an act of self-denial that creates a permanent rift between mother and daughter.
By contrast, Father Damien’s parental love for Lulu remains intense and steadfast. When Damien is visited by a demonic black dog that threatens Lulu’s life, Damien bargains for the child’s safety by trading his own soul. This act defines his love as a form of spiritual self-annihilation. In this context, it matters not whether the spiritual encounter is “real,” as Damien has nonetheless offered up his most valued possession—his soul—in order to save another. With the priest’s dramatic gesture, Erdrich challenges conventional notions of sentimentality and shows that the truest form of love manifests as a fierce, demanding, and often tragic force.
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