Black Elk Analysis

Black Elk Speaks describes a young Native American’s, Black Elk, life growing up. In the text Black Elk is a selfless person, whose main goal in life is to protect his people. He takes this goal upon himself after he experiences a great vision. In this vision, on pages 20 and 21, Black Elk is given a great power. He uses this power not only to destroy the villages enemy, “the blue man,” but he also is able to heal all of those that are sick or dead in the village by flying by them. Black Elk understands this vision as a sign that he must protect and care for his people. He answers this higher calling without a second thought and places his people’s lives above his own, despite only being a child.

Black Elk truly shows how selfless he was during the Battle of Wounded Knee. It what was more of a massacre rather than an actual battle, Black Elk armed himself only with a ceremonial bow and dressed himself as he was in his vision. He did this to inspire his people to fight harder and it did work for a time. At the beginning of the battle, on page 161, he implores for his people to “take courage” and to stand fast in the face of danger. He then leads the charge on page 162, essentially unarmed, and his people follow him into battle. Black Elk even turns around in the middle of the fight to rescue a lost baby stranded in the middle of

the battle and hide it away in a safe place. Black Elk clearly acts as a role model in that he places all of his people’s safety and well being above his own.
While Black Elk was a real person who helped Neihardt create this biographical novel, there are parts when Neihardt manipulates Black Elk’s words to over dramatize them. An egregious example of this is found at the very end of the novel. At this point, Black Elk is speaking in a modern context reflecting back upon the aftermath of the Battle of Wounded Knee. The quote is found on page 169 of the text, Black Elk states the following:
I do not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high
hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.
While this is a wonderfully crafted paragraph with a haunting beauty to it, these were Black Elk’s exact words.

In certain editions of the text it is noted that this passage is mostly comprised of Neihardt’s words in an attempt to move his readers. He succeeded in this aspect, but it detracts from the overall human feeling of Black Elk. In these sections, when Neihardt blends his words with Black Elk’s, Neihardt gives Black Elk the appearance that he is speaking and thinking in long and articulate sentence. In reality no one is able to deliver such magnificent sentences without preparation, thus making Black Elk appear above the

readers.
Despite Black Elk’s incredibly selfless actions, he does not come of as a great role model for reader’s. Neihardt attempts to frame him in the most pleasing way possible. Despite this making the text more entertaining to read, it detracts from Black Elk’s humanism and makes him appear otherworldly. That combined with Black Elk’s seemingly endless desire to place all others above himself, despite that aspect being real, create an image with a closer resemblance to a super hero instead of a regular human that any reader could identify with.
Both of these texts display the difficulty that authors have in creating role models for their readers. The influence of being an author and creating a likeable character that readers will look up to is a delicate balance between keeping the character as an upstanding role model and having enough flaws to be relatable. Stephen Crane gives his character enough flaws early in the text so that by the time he finally becomes a role model he takes on the role of a flawed hero. A flawed hero that any ordinary reader would be able to connect and empathize with. Neihardt struggles with this because his character is already a real person. As a result, Neihardt attempts to elevate Black Elk by enhancing his dialogue with Neihardt’s own literary expertise. The result, however, is someone with a status well above any average reader. This prevents readers from making a connection with Black Elk and as a result Neihardt fails to make a proper role model like Crane.