Giveaway

Today’s strip’s humour relied heavily on the idea that Elizabeth is treating her departure from Mtigwaki just like she did last summer, where she packs and leaves, and for some reason seems to be oblivious to the fact that it is going to be yet another occasion where everyone in Mtigwaki is coming out for a party in her honour, much like the star-gazing incident from last fall. I am honoured, so I must wear a nice dress. That will seem a little odd. There are pictures on the For Better or For Worse website showing the giveaway blanket and the people are not dressed fancy, so I expect strips that will copy from these pictures almost exactly, just as the nicer powwow pictures were copied for last October’s powwow strips.

My guess for the strip intent is that Liz is going to play the humble card, when it comes to receiving the praise and adulation that is going to be coming her way this week. That way we can admire her humility, while at the same time marveling that she has made such an impression on these nice Mtigwaki people. I hope Lynn will describe the giveaway with a little more depth than what she has in her website, because this strip has pushed me into heavy research mode. Most of the websites talking about the giveaway simply list times and places. In fact, and a comment that I had Constable Paul Wright make, was that for some websites, the time was listed like: Tuesday, Thursday, 6 pm. Giveaway. It was like it was a regularly scheduled weekly event. For most of the websites though, it was listed as a part of powwow activities. The only controversy I spotted was people complaining that they were required to do a giveaway whenever anything good happened to them, and they just couldn’t afford it, and they had to get someone else to provide their giveaway items. The idea that Jesse’s auntie would ask Liz to provide some gifts without specifying the reason for the gifts, the approximate nature of the gifts, a price limit, etc. seems absurd to me. I know it’s a part of the idea of making Liz appear humble, but Lynn needs to realize that ignorance does not equal humility. Paul Wright immediately recognizes the ceremony for what it is after a few sentences, and after 2 years of living there, Liz should too.

However, maybe she doesn’t. Liz and Elly trotted out of the powwow early and may have missed the giveaway part. And considering Liz’s reclusive nature, maybe she did not attend the powwow the year prior. It seems impossible for Liz to have intentionally skipped out on an event that virtually everyone in Mtigwaki participates in, particularly the younger children dancers, who are her students. However, the monthly letters only mention the Elly-attended powwow. So, the odd turn of events is either (a) Liz is feigning ignorance or (b) Liz is actually this ignorant of Ojibway traditions after lived there for 2 years. In order to make her look humble, Lynn ends up making her look even more detached and isolated from the people around her than ever. When will Lynn learn? The more she tries to puff up her characters in her readers’ eyes, the more she makes her readers hate her characters. One of the reasons April is probably the best-like Patterson now, is because Lynn has tried to show her faults. While failing to make April a monster, she does appear to be more human.