The Sister Brothers is an old western styled novel written by Patrick deWitt. The story follows two bounty hunters and assassins Elie and Charlie Sisters. A powerful and ruthless gangster named Commodore sends them to kill a certain Hermann Kermit Warm. The brothers set out on their mission for blood. They meet many interesting and bold characters and have several odd and often drunken adventures along the way.
Elie and Charlie are polar opposites. Elie, the narrator, is a sensitive and sentimental man who struggles with the violent nature of their occupation. Charlie, on the other hand, thrives upon the carnage and is crude and unkindly. Elie trots after Charlie and always feels slighted by his older brother crassness. The two banter and bicker in a tastefully comical manner throughout the trip.
After many people have been shot, fought or otherwise harassed by the brothers they find Warm, the man they are after. They discover that there is more to the request for assassination than just theft. Warm has engineered a brilliant formula to illuminate gold in the water and the brothers are drawn to his enigmatic ways. The brothers find themselves in a more complicated situation then they had anticipated and the delightful plot thickens.
MEET THE CHARACTERS
Elie is the narrator of the story. He is a sensitive and lonely soul. He is constantly seeking the approval and acceptance of his older brother, Charlie and often wishes he could marry and own a store instead of being a bounty hunter. Elie has a sort of self-deprecating character which makes him endearing and his attempts to charm a woman are admirable while also hilarious.
Charlie is dangerously practical. He leaves no room for sentimentality or pity, he just gets the job done. His weakness lies in the saloon. Charlie rarely is sober and when he is drunk he lacks motivation and grace and the ability to stay astride a horse. He is not afraid to throw his weight around though and therefore he calls all the shots in the journey.
Hermann Kermit Warm is the man that the Sisters brothers are sent to find and kill. Warm has many eccentric and unpleasant qualities and gives a terrible first impression. The brothers soon find that he turns out to be a brilliant scientist with an incredible formula that changes their careers forever.
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Posted: June 2, 2013 in Character Description
ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT PATRICK DEWITT
Patrick deWitt was born on Vancouver Island, British Columbia in the year 1975. Despite moving to numerous areas in the United States since his teens, deWitt is still considered a Canadian writer. He currently resides in Oregon, U.S.A, which is where he wrote his two novels, Ablutions and The Sisters Brothers. For more information on his books and background visit http://patrickdewitt.net/index.html
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Posted: June 2, 2013 in Uncategorized
Elie is very uncomfortable with his occupation as bounty hunter. He refuses to give it up however. Why are people so unwilling to give up something they do not enjoy for something that might possibly make them happier?
The Sisters Brothers contains many characters which initially seem unpleasant and nasty but as the story progresses you begin to understand why they behave the way they do. In today’s society one often hears the words “damaged” or “been through a lot” when a person displays negative attitude. Does the cause -if legitimate- for a person’s bad attitude excuse the individual from social judgment?
The Truth about Buying Happiness
Money. It is the anthem of success. There is hardly an artist who does not mention it, a movie that does not involve it or a book that does not have that word marked upon its pages: money. It only makes sense that society is so devoted to money though. Children are educated to acquire a higher education than their peers, the young spend their youth learning to be more successful than their classmates, and while they are in their thirties they actually believe they are thriving. When they enter their middle ages they realize that they have swindled away their strongest years on the desire to be successful only to realize they do not know what that even means. They age further still and begin to try to direct the youth in a path better than their own because they feel they now know what success is and how to achieve it. Finally, when the person is old, frail and stooped they realize that success does not exist. There is just a brilliant breath of life and the story of what you do with it.
The riveting novel written by Patrick deWitt called The Sisters Brothers is a western styled novel about two notorious, lethal bounty hunters. This novel beautifully illustrates the frustration that can be experienced when a person is disappointed by the lack of happiness that is brought upon by money. People are so geared towards money and are fed the notion that successful people are rich and happy, The Sisters Brothers so subtly and tastefully illustrates the presence of this façade.
In the very first page of Patrick deWitt’s novel money is already mentioned. “I felt we should have been given money to purchase horses of our own choosing, horses without histories and habits and names they expected to be addressed by” (deWitt 5). As it turns out, the used horse -who expected to be addressed as Tub- became a sort of pet to Elie and when a newer, better horse came along he turned it down and keep an injured Tub around. Therefore, it can be seen in this example that although the horse was not worth much money at all, and Elie was initially upset by this fact, the horse brought him great satisfaction which was completely unrelated to the animal’s worth in gold.
Contrary to this image of happiness and success skipping hand in hand down the yellow brick road, happiness is actually a state of mind that is entirely isolated from any excessive amount of wealth, achievement or sort of better-ness.
The Sisters soon meet an interesting dentist named Reginald Watts. Watts explains “without bitterness or remorse” how he failed to make a profit in any profession he tried (deWitt 24). The man freezes Elie’s face when he needed teeth pulled and Charlie, growing interested in the painkiller offers to buy the medicine. The man replies that the pursuit of money has done nothing for him except cause him to grow weary. This man shows a glimpse of insight into the life of a man who works to get sustain himself but has no desire for money or earning any kind of respected living. He is happy.
Money is actually only affective to boost a person’s mood when they have worked hard to earn it. This is why a person who has bought scratch cards for five years straight, and wins, is happier than a “beginner’s luck” winner.
The next incident where Elie and Charlie fall upon money involves a red-pelted bear. The boys sell the bear to a wealthy pelt collector for a very handsome price and they stay the night in his inn. The brothers are pleased with their transaction and are tickled that a man would pay them such money for a pelt. The pelt is stolen in the night however and as Elie had donated his money to a woman he fancied and Charlie had been robbed by a prostitute, they could not pay back the now accusing customer. The man’s goons come after the Sisters brothers and the shootout ends in the favour of the latter. The Sisters are left penniless and no happier for their earnings, not to mention the resulting fate of the four deceased.
The brothers return to the customer’s home and steal his considerable fortune. The man attempts to make a stoic retreat, planning to seek revenge upon an old enemy of his and earn his living that way. After realizing the immense amount of money that he has obtained from this transaction Elie reflects that he was happy but also felt “an emptiness that [he] did not feel more glad” and was concerned that his feeling of joy was false (deWitt 162). He spends a ludicrous amount of money on a meal he bitterly deems below average.
Journalist Jennifer Horton would validate this anticlimactically feeling that Elie experiences. In her article Can Money Buy Happiness she states that achievement in a person’s workplace such as a raise or the completion of a piece of work is the culprit behind happiness, not the extra money it drags in. Horton would explain that Elie did not feel as though he had earned the money and therefore did not feel accomplished or proud for obtaining it (howstuffworks.com).
The final time the men earned a great fortune was while they were in the company of Warm and a gentleman named Morris. The loot cost the two men their lives and Charlie lost his hand. The following night the gold was stolen from them. Warm had created a solution that caused the gold in the water to glow a brilliant yellow. While harvesting it the men were overwhelmed by the eerie beauty of it, the value of the gold literally paled in comparison to the glowing pool in the darkness.
The Sisters Brothers is not a novel about money. It is about gunslingers, the bond between two brothers and real, gritty people. Yet the plot is saturated with currency and propelled by silent greed. This is how warped life in the 21st century has become. Man claims to be a superior and innovative species but all that sets them apart is their desire to be the best of the best and to “go far” in life. All other creatures that tread the Earth live for the moment and the urge that it carries. Money is neither tasty nor pleasing to them, delightfully shinny but useless. Humans place too much emphasis on earning money and this gets in the way of true living.
The Sisters Brothers 