Native Americans Use Of Oral Traditions In The Film Ice Age

Native American literature began before pen and paper, and before the Europeans came to North America. The Native Americans had already developed a rich history of their own using oral tradition to pass on their stories and myths. This was because the many tribes were so diverse, and at the time, they lacked an actual written language. The oral tradition was not only the telling of a story, but a performance to retell the story of many different themes and ideas. These ideas include a tribe's cultural background, historical events, but most Native American literature contains morals or being creation myths or folklore. Many of their stories had aspects such as relationships between humans and animals and respect for nature and the entire natural

A much-unprepared animal is the young sloth named Sid, who is scurrying to give himself a slight chance to survive. During his adventuring for food, he encounters a pair of furious animals, but is saved by the wooly mammoth known as Manny. Sid, impressed by Manny's bravery and intelligence, decides to be by his side throughout the ice age. As they begin to band together, they come across a human baby that was left by his own tribe by mistake after an attack by saber-tooth tigers. Manny and Sid retrieve the baby, and are now determined to return this baby to his family. On the other side of the attack, Diego, another saber-tooth tiger in his pride, is sent to track the mammoth and sloth along with the baby so they can get a good meal. He later catches up to the group, and takes claim to the baby since him and his pride were hunting the humans, but Manny refuses because he genuinely cares about getting this baby home.

Another time, the child is eager to play and begins to slide around on Manny as if he was a jungle gym. Manny sees this within the child, and moves his trunk around and plays with the baby, as if Manny was playing with the baby, instead of the baby playing with Manny. Another aspect present in Ice Age is the actual theme of the entire movie, this being togetherness. Being one with a tribe and being together was very important to Native American literature. Thus, the idea of the tribe all together being one family almost is very abundant among Native American literature. (Snipes)The main characters banded together, and all had a common task that they wished to accomplish. This task was to return the baby to his own family. This common goal led these characters across many obstacles, but these obstructions caused Manny, Sid, and Diego all to become friends, and almost like a family, just as Native Americans did. This relationship is mainly displayed through the dialogue of the movie. An example of this dialogue is during a scene in the movie shortly after Manny has saved Diego’s life, and have continued their journey, “Diego: Why would you do that? You could've died trying to save me. / Manny: That's what you do in a herd: you look out for each other.” (IMDb) This dialogue is showing not only a friendship, but also a personality trait is shown through Manny's words. Knowing that he needs to get this baby home, Manny not only begins to care about the