In the novels Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich and The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday, the reader gains views of Native American culture, both past and present, through two disparate means of delivery. Both authors provide immensely rich portrayals through varying literary devices in efforts to bring about a better understanding of problems contemporary Native Americans face, especially regarding their own self-identity.
The story of Love Medicine revolves around a central character, June Kashpaw, and the many threads of relationships surrounding her, both near the time of her death, and in what has gone on before. The novel is an exploration of a family web that June was a key component of. Her character is a pivot point that all other characters revolve around: a love triangle, illegitimate children, life and death, and other issues involving religion, marriage, fidelity and sex. Erdrich uses a method of disjointedness to isolate the various threads as they unravel to shed light on other threads.
In Momaday's work, the reader is on a journey through myth, past and present, as the author draws on oral traditions of Native American storytelling to align-in-parallel a personal journey for understanding of himself, and perhaps the nature of man. Through an inventive technique, Rainy Mountain serves as a way to collect, preserve and disseminate the oral storytelling traditions of Native American storytellers. Momaday has attempted to bridge the oral traditions to written form by weaving three continual strands as a single long braid throughout the text.
When evaluating and analyzing plot between the two stories, one gets a sense that both novels are collages of scenes, with Rainy Mountain having more of a unifi...
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... stronger in its roots. The edginess of Love Medicine relates to contemporary reservation life and culture, and it does so powerfully, but it invests itself so deeply in symbols and humor, and is suitable subject matter for almost any culture, that appears almost vaudevillian compared to the more majestic and down-to-earth Rainy Mountain. While both works are worthy of repeated readings, Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain is the one work that stands as a monument to the true roots of Native American history and culture, and especially provides an appropriate foothold on self-identity; and Erdrich's Love Medicine stands more as a passing evaluation of a culture's quirks.
WORKS CITED
Momaday, N. Scott. The Way to Rainy Mountain. The University of Arizona Press, 1969.
Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine: New and Expanded Version. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
The Way to Rainy Mountain was written in 1969 by Pulitzer Prize winning author N. Scott Momaday. The novel is about Scott Momaday's Kiowa ancestors and their journey from the Montana area to Fort Sill near Rainy Mountain, Oklahoma, where their surrender to the United States Cavalry took place. In The Way to Rainy Mountain, Momaday traces his ancestral roots back to the beginning of the Kiowa tribe while not only learning more about the Kiowa people but rediscovering himself and finding out what his true identity is. The death of his grandmother prompts Momaday to dig deeper into the background of his family. To better help him become closer with his ancestral roots, Momaday returns to Rainy Mountain to visit his recently deceased grandmother’s grave where the spirit of the Kiowa tribe was thought to be very strong. Scott Momaday’s grandmother was believed to be the last of the Kiowa’s; with her death came the death of the Kiowa culture. Momaday wouldn’t let such a spiritual people who meant so much to him be forgotten so he created The Way to Rainy Mountain with this motivation. As Momaday works through each of the Kiowa’s mythical stories, he begins to learn a lot about his ancestors and, in turn, about himself. After reading the novel, it is evident to the reader that from beginning to end, Momaday has grown tremendously and has an increased sense of knowledge and appreciation for his Kiowa ancestors and their spiritual way of life. While Scott Momaday’s was creating his world renowned novel, The Way to Rainy Mountain, his relationship with past events greatly contributed to the overall meaning of the book in three major ways. During the novel, Momaday uses his recollections of the past to help understand Kiowa myths a...
Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation. This book explores an avenue of advocacy against social injustices. The most observable plight Joe suffers is figuring out how to deal with the injustice acted against his mother, which has caused strife within his entire family and within himself.
These stories have a continued overlapping influence in American Fiction and have remained a part of the American imagination; causing Americans to not trust Native Americans and treat them as they were not human just like African Americans. In conclusion to all these articles, Mary Rowlandson and John Smith set the perception for Native Americans due to their Captivity Narratives.
Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of the value of the Native American past, these literary works have also revealed knowing perspectives on the meaning of the modern world in the lives of contemporary Native Americans.
Born and raised in a family of storytellers, it’s no wonder that this author, Louise Erdrich became a prolific writer. Louise was born in Little Falls, Minnesota. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, near the Chippewa Reservation with her mom, who had Native American roots and her dad who was of German descent. Her parents encouraged and challenged her at an early age to read, also to write stories and even paid her a nickel for each one that she wrote. Lorena Stookey states that Louise Erdrich’s style of writing is “like William Faulkner, she creates a fictional world and peoples it with multiple narrators whose voices commingle to shape her readers’ experience of that world” (Stookey 14). Louise writes this moving story “The Shawl” as she is haunted by the sorrows of the generations of her people, the Anishinaabeg. I initially saw this tale as a very complex reading, but after careful reading and consideration, saw it as a sad and compelling story.
Louise Erdrich’s novel Love Medicine, is a series of connected stories told from the viewpoints of several characters. All of these characters are presented with conflicts throughout their lives, and one character in particular that stood out was Nector Kashpaw. The conflicts he faces in his life are unfolded and further explained over the course of the novel, from his easy beginnings to his accidental death.
A central tenet to Louise Erdrich’s novels are the narrators she employs to tell her stories. Each character from Nanapush to Marn Wolde offer their own perspective to the larger story as a whole and allow Erdrich to create a web of narrative complexity. Paula Gunn Allen argues in The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions that Native American storytelling and storytellers act as mediators between conflicting views or sides (75). Erdrich takes this notion to heart in her novels; they offer the full scope of a story, branching out and backwards in time to provide the necessary details for a reader to fill in the gaps of the story. An idea mentioned by E. Shelly Reid describes the idea of cohesiveness or “wholeness” of narratives and how a reader is “...encouraged to be suspicious of gaps or hesitations” (69). The Plague of Doves
...ative American dialects there is no statement for “religion,” on the grounds that otherworldly practices are a vital some piece of each part of every day life; they are important for the concordance and equalization, or wellbeing, of the singular, family, clan, and community. Mending and love are viewed as one and the same. For some Native American individuals, the idea of wellbeing and health is a physical state, as well as an otherworldly one too. Customary Native American perspectives of mending and wellbeing underscore the need of looking for congruity insider oneself, with others, and with one’s surroundings. A dynamic relationship between the physical and soul world is underscored alongside with significance of looking for congruity and adjust in both. For some Native American individuals, health through deep sense of being is not a piece of life; it is life.
In fact, Native American medicine men belief is firmly grounded in age-old traditions, legends and teachings. Healing and medical powers have existed since the very beginning of time according to Native American stories. Consequently they have handed down the tribe's antediluvian legends, which i...
McNickle, D'Arcy. "A Different World." Native American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Vizenor, Gerald. United States of America: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, 1995, 111-119.
Native American children were physically and sexually abused at a school they were forced to attend after being stripped from their homes in America’s attempt to eliminate Native peoples culture. Many children were caught running away, and many children never understood what home really meant. Poet Louise Erdich is part Native American and wrote the poem “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways” to uncover the issues of self-identity and home by letting a student who suffered in these schools speak. The poem follows Native American kids that were forced to attend Indian boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries. By using imagery, allusion, and symbolism in “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways”, Louise Erdrich displays how repulsive Indian
D'Arcy McNickle, through his classic novel, Runner in the Sun, is able to articulate a clear and well informed account of the historic cultures and lifestyles of Native Americans, document the struggles of these groups as they adapt to changing environmental and social circumstances, propose solutions to these struggles in the form of new crops, knowledge, and leadership, critique modern culture through the activities of his characters, and support an engaging and well-constructed storyline. The primary struggles demonstrated in this work seem to be those between Native Americans and Nature and those within Native American society. The story documents these people as they work to reconcile these struggles. Solutions are proposed and adopted
Momaday forces upon the reader the idea of language as a remedy for sickness; not only of the mind, but of the heart, also. If a speaker can reach a listener and show the listener what she means, then that is the most honorable achievement. Momaday wants the reader to know the importance of word weaving, of weaving the words to form a beautiful picture that can heal souls if spoken correctly. Momaday believes that the Native Americans who never bothered to learn to read and write, those who depend on their words, are those whose words are most powerful. The love for words, spoken with passion, makes them take on a three-dimensional quality. The words become the images and show a listener instead of telling, making the moment an experience instead of just a moment. The listener can feel what the speaker is trying to say; there is no need for interpretation, everything is already understood. Momaday convinces the reader that the spoken language goes beyond what words are being said; the words become their meaning, transcend into complete understanding and clarity. The experience should be remembered as one of self-revelation and understanding, not a moment filled with monotonous words. Momaday does not think it should be about memorizing the words for intellect, but about seeing the image they create. He wants the reader to know how important the woven web of words is so that the reader is able to understand how Native American tradition has lasted so long without words being written; that it is not the remembrance of words, but the remembranc...
Change is one of the tallest hurdles we all must face growing up. We all must watch our relatives die or grow old, our pets do the same, change school or employment, and take responsibility for our own lives one way or another. Change is what shapes our personalities, it molds us as we journey through life, for some people, change is what breaks us. Watching everything you once knew as your reality wither away into nothing but memory and photographs is tough, and the most difficult part is continuing on with your life. In the novel Ceremony, author Leslie Silko explores how change impacted the entirety of Native American people, and the continual battle to keep up with an evolving world while still holding onto their past. Through Silko’s
There are many different themes in, “Love Medicine” a book written by Louise Erdrich. Some of which are poverty, family, racism, and religion. The one that I am going to write about, is love. Love is one of the most prominent themes in this book. It conveys a mother’s love for her children, a wife’s love for her husband, and a son’s love for the ones whom he perceives his parents to be. This is but to name a few examples of love found in the book by Ms. Erdrich. However, there is also the lack of love that this work of literature portrays. There is mistreatment and betrayal, which are examples that are opposite of love.