Analysis Of N. Scott Momaday's The Way To Rainy Mountain

In The Way To Rainy Mountain, the author N. Scott Momaday makes a clear use of figurative language throughout the story and descriptive language to describe the nature around them, explains their myths about how their tribe came to be a part of nature, as well as the importance in nature that are a part of the Sundance festival and the tai-me. The story made clear how the Kiowas appreciate and respect the nature around them. Momaday gives a deep explanation of what it was like to be in Rainy Mountain when he describes the changes in weather: “Winter brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds arise in the spring, and in summer the prairie is an anvil’s edge. The grass turns brittle and brown, and it cracks beneath your feet”(Momaday 5). The way the

To explain the unexplained the Kiowas had myths, and Momaday tells these myths of their journeys in a historical voice. One of their myths explained how they came into this world and why their numbers are so small: “the Kiowas came one by one into the world through a hollow log. They were many more than now, but not all of them got out. There was a woman whose body was swollen up with child, and she got stuck in the log. After that, no one could get through, and that is why the Kiowas are a small tribe in number”(16). The few of them that managed to come out of the log saw so many things that it made them glad to which they decided to call themselves Kwuda, and later Tepda, both of which mean “coming out”(17). The Kiowa saw an amazing new world as they came out of the hollow log; Another of the unexplained that they explain through the myths is the story of how the big dipper came to be, “Eight children were there at play, seven sisters and their brother. Suddenly the boy was struck dumb; he trembled and began to run upon his hands and feet. His fingers became claws, and his body was covered with fur. Directly there was a bear where the boy had been . . .The seven sisters were borne into the sky, and they became the stars of the Big Dipper”(8). This story shows how they explain the unknown of nature through stories. With this story Momaday uses a great deal of

Their Sundance ceremony surrounds the story of the tai-me, “The Kiowas were hungry and there was no food. There was a man who heard his children cry from hunger, and he went out to look for food. He walked four days and became weak. On the fourth day he came to a great canyon. Suddenly there was thunder and lightning. A voice spoke to him and said, ‘Why are you following me? What do you want?’ The man was afraid. The thing standing before him had the feet of a deer, and its body was covered in feathers. The man answered that the Kiowas were hungry. ‘Take me with you,’ the voice said, ‘and I will give you whatever you want.’ From that day Tai-me has belonged to the Kiowas”(36). This story is used to tell how the tai-me came to be a part of the Kiowa tribe and why they worship it as a part of the sun dance ceremony. Momaday describes that the “great central figure of the kado, or sun dance, ceremony is the taime”(37). It was a small image representation of the tai-me on a dark-green stone. As a symbolic part of this ceremony, it is kept preserved in a rawhide box of which it is never exposed to be viewed other than during this