Last Bus To Wisdom: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-8

Part 2, Chapters 9-14

Part 3, Chapters 15-22

Part 3, Chapters 23-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Literary Devices

Imagery and Setting

Content Warning: The source text includes anti-fat bias as well as outdated and insensitive terminology to refer to Indigenous Americans, people without permanent homes, and people with disabilities. The text also features the theft of Indigenous artifacts by non-Indigenous people.

Among the literary characteristics that pervade Doig’s novels is his use of imagery when describing new settings. Authors, including Doig, frequently employ such imagery when describing a sweeping new vista. For instance, as Donal leaves the Two Medicine area of Montana with which he is familiar, he finds himself riding through a vast, new terrain:

[T]he country along the highway turn to grainfield, miles of green winter wheat striped with the summer fallow of strip farming and tufted here and there with low trees planted around farm buildings as windbreaks. I stay glued to the window, which for a while showed the blue-gray mountains I had been used to all my life, jagged tops white with snow left over from winter (31).

However, the author offers similarly detailed descriptions of more mundane sights, like the people inside of a Wisconsin bar, the dismal Manitowoc skyline, or Herman’s greenhouse constructed from old photographic plates. In the same way Doig introduces the unique qualities of his characters, he takes care to acquaint the reader with the settings that impact those characters as well.

Narrative

Donal has scarcely begun his journey before he enters a conversation with a fellow bus passenger. For his part, Donal casually creates entirely false narratives about the family he is from, where he is going, and who will meet him. While Gram has cautioned him about his tendency to create tall tales, on the bus there is no responsible adult to force him to be honest. This ability to create believable stories at the spur of the moment, Doig reveals, is a quality Donal shares with his great-uncle and with Aunt Kate.

In the first part of his journey, Donal mostly hones his skill at creating quick fictional accounts of his life. During the second journey, his storytelling rescues him and Herman several times. He convinces a group of young Indigenous people that he is a member of the Blackfoot nation so that they do not turn him into the Crow police, who are searching for a red-headed, freckle-faced white boy. At Yellowstone, he makes a nurse believe he has a fishbone stuck in his throat so that she will introduce him to the resort doctor, Dr. Schnieder, whom he asks for financial help. Bidding to gain the respect of the migrant workers who quiz them on the bus, Donal effortlessly persuades them that Herman lost his eye in a knife fight and that he is a military veteran with a mental health condition around whom they should be cautious. It’s also noteworthy that Donal and Herman stop making up stories when they finally find themselves in a place where they wish to remain, working for someone they trust.

Colloquialism

Donal collects and frequently employs colloquialisms, which are casual or informal words or phrases. He is most impressed by and interested in acquiring the vulgar expressions casually used on the ranch and in the migrants’ bunkhouse. Herman disapproves of Donal’s pronounced effort to learn new, profane expressions. When Donal uses a slang expression he has just learned from the rough-hewn migrant workers, Herman feels that he has failed in protecting him.

Doig employs Donal’s collection of regional sayings and colloquial expressions to demonstrate the distinctions among regions. Dinner—which is lunch in rural Montana—means supper, the evening meal, in Wisconsin. Doig introduces several expressions that Donal returns to repeatedly, depending on the sort of situation he encounters in a given moment. When good fortune seems to have elevated him with resources and security, Donal remarks that he “has it knocked” (112). When circumstances take a bad turn that one must simply endure, Donal says he much “hunch up and take it” (133). Doig strives to capture the colorful expressions that set apart each region that Donal visits as well as the speech patterns of other travelers with whom he engages.