Farewell to Liz

Today we started wrapping up all the lose ends in Mtigwaki, which consists entirely of Liz and Jesse coming to terms with Jesse leaving. I would count Liz and Paul, but that is not really a Mtigwaki loose end. So, after 2 years in Mtigwaki, really all we have to show for it, is that Jesse has a dependent relationship with Liz, because his parents left him and he has been using her for a parental substitute. Only, we don’t actually have that. Jesse as an abandoned child was introduced for the first time last May. Before this, all we really knew about Jesse was that he was nuisance both in the class and out, and he was overly attached to Liz. No family background, no long talks with Liz about his parents, nothing. After 2 years of strips, what should have been a story of Liz struggling to understand another culture, another language, and struggling to be accepted by people who are very different than she is, and struggling to find friends in a completely new place; we got zippo. None of that.

Liz was instaneously accepted. Liz did not have to work to find a boyfriend. He was literally dropped in her lap. Even her stargazing exercise for the village for which she was compared to a star, was entirely orchestrated for her. Aside from Jesse Mukwa’s mild disobedience, Liz had a class of extraordinarily enthusiastic students who hung on her every word. Liz never learned Ojibway and appeared to never even try. As for the cultural differences, those were explored almost entirely by Elly during the 2 times she came to visit and not Liz.

The only 2 struggles Liz had were with Jesse Mukwa, which she solved instantly with a promise to see Jesse again; and with her own homesickness, to which she ultimately succumbed. It’s no wonder she is tossing away Constable Paul Wright without hardly a second thought. When you get something too easily, you don’t appreciate it. And that would be for me the whole morale of this story with Liz and Mtigwaki.

Elizabeth Patterson in Mtigwaki. As a reader, what I have learned about you is that are as arrogant and self-centered as your obnoxious brother. I wish that I had learned you are a self-reliant woman not afraid to break with your family tradition to pursue and make a life different from the way you were brought up. I wish I had learned that you embraced a different culture and sought to make it a better place because you were there. I wish I had seen you examine your beliefs and prejudices because of your experience in Mtigwaki. Instead what I have seen is that you are a white girl who had a nice 2-year working vacation in the Northwest. I don’t know how to read this. Vivian Crane spelled this position out in no uncertain terms, but the rest of the week is likely to be a Liz praiseathon. Are we supposed to admire Liz or mock her? It will be interesting to see how closely Lynn walks to the line between praise and ridicule for the rest of the week. In tomorrow’s strip, it is left ambiguous. Neither Jesse or Ellen tell us how Liz is considered, only that they have feasts for people that they like and people that they don’t like, and usually the person leaving doesn’t know which one they are. It would funny, if at the end of the week, we didn't know either.