Analysis Of Michael Dorris A Yellow Raft In Blue Water

Most Minnesotans remember loving Minnesota one month, then the next month absolutely hating it. During the summer and fall months many people love the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, the beautiful colors, and the Great Minnesota Get Together; the State Fair. A few months later when Minnesota’s long, cold, and icy winter sets in, Minnesotans start to feel differently about their state. When things start to melt and the sun comes back out, many people start to love the state again. Just like Minnesota seasons, many things can have both a positive and a negative side. In Michael Dorris’ novel, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, the color yellow is frequently repeated to positively represent security and contentment as well as negatively represent escape

and cowardice.
One very apparent use of the color yellow is the yellow raft in Bearpaw Lake.

The yellow raft represents many things but it very importantly positively represents security for Rayona. Before Rayona swims to the raft her life has been very chaotic and uncontrolled. Rayona swims through the cold water to the raft and lays herself out in the sun."I pull myself over the side and lie on the sun-warmed dry boards, panting and soaking up the heat. The silence is wide as the sky” (Dorris 59). The raft seems to enlarge her life which has been a lot of racism and chaos in the past. Initially, she feels content and secure on the raft. When father tom arrives, the feeling of content that Rayona was experiencing leaves her immediately. Father Tom experiences a cramp and Rayona saves him. They lie close and father Tom advances onto Rayona, violating her sense of security and her feeling of content that

she
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experienced when all her thoughts of her crazy life left her. The raft initially provided a sense of security and a feeling of content before Father Tom violated both of these.
The yellow raft also represents a negative escape for Rayona. She first sees this escape when she sees Ellen DeMarco diving off the raft into the water. Rayona takes escapes in an illusion in where she imagines herself with the perfect life that Ellen has. Rayona wishes she could do everything and be exactly like Ellen at that point. Rayona compares herself to Ellen and falls much below Ellen. While watching every perfect move of Ellen, Rayona says, "I'm afraid to see anything more, to see something wrong, something out of place, something to ruin the picture....In that moment she's everything I'm not but ought to be" (Dorris ). This shows that the raft symbolizes a figurative escape for Rayona where she can imagine herself in Ellen’s perfect life. Rayona continues to use Ellen on the yellow raft as an escape from her complicated life until she finds out the truth about Ellen.
The security that the color yellow represents is later broken when Rayona has to face up to all the lies she has created about her life.

Rayona tries to deny who she is by saying, "I'm stopped, halfway down the trail, with my eyes fixed on the empty yellow raft floating in the blue waters of Bearpaw Lake. Somewhere in my mind I've decided that if I stare at it hard enough it will launch me out of my present troubles" (Dorris 104). Rayona eventually spills her story to Evelyn, who just happens to be wearing a yellow blouse. Rayona’s security of having a perfect life back at home is broken, but she is knocked out of the illusion of the perfection of Ellen with the yellow raft. Rayona thinks Evelyn will reject her once she tells her the truth, running her job, but in fact, telling the story actually makes it real for Rayona. She is able to gain control of her real life and feel more content with what is really going on. Evelyn in her yellow blouse positively dispels the negative illusion of Rayona’s perfect life which began with the yellow

raft.
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The color yellow is also apparent in Christine’s section of the novel. At first for Christine, the color yellow is negatively associated with cowardice which leads to failure. When Christine was young, she faced a challenge of crossing a yellow stone bridge and is unable to cross alone. Lee, her brother comes in and helps her cross. Christine becomes dependent on others, “I had crossed the bridge, but not on my own, and we both realized it” (Dorris 148). Faced with her own cowardice, Christine becomes a totally different person. She becomes reckless and abandoning. Later in Christine's section, she regained herself and has created a reasonable family environment for Rayona. Christine is heading home after acknowledging the mistakes that she's made and the hurt that she's caused the people whom she cares for. She puts on yellow tinted sunglasses and says “When I put them on, they turned the world yellow as an old photograph” (Dorris 239). The world as an old photograph is comforting to Christine and represents how she has found her place in the world and is feeling content with her life. This yellow represents content and security, but not the same contentment and security as Rayona felt with her figurative escape. For Christine, this contentment and security is very real.