The Ghostway Analysis

521 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The cultural difference argument

Throughout the story The Ghostway, readers see Jim Chee being pulled to both the Anglo culture and the Navajo. Between his career and ex-girlfriend, Mary Landon, Chee feels as if the Anglo culture would be interesting. However, Chee struggles with the idea of giving up his own culture due to the fact that the culture needs people to carry on the legacy. Over the storyline, the readers find out that Chee is attracted to the Anglo culture because there is career potential for him with the FBI. He is good at his job and why wouldn’t he want to take that opportunity. However, the Navajo Tribal Police and the FBI seem to have built tensions. For example, there was some information the FBI had not told the Tribal Police when they handed the case over to start a partnership, and there was some suspicion that Sharkey had pocketed the photo when they found Leroy Gorman’s body near Hosteen Begay’s death Hogan. …show more content…

Mary Landon wanted to start a life with Chee, but she was white and was incredibly insistent about continuing a life with Chee without the influences of the reservation. When there is a discussion of kids, the two agree that they can’t raise the children as half and half’s, but they didn’t have a solution to who will give up what they have always known and accept the other individual’s life style. For Mary Landon, the best case scenario would be for Chee to leave the reservation, accept a job with the FBI, and raise their children in the Anglo

Show More
Related

  • Such A Good Boy: How A Pampered Sons Greed Led To Murder: Summary

    2400 Words  | 5 Pages

    children in the farming family. Doris was a good student when she went to school,

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Book 'Reviving Ophelia' By Mary Pipher

    563 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mary Pipher shows how different levels of affection and control lead to various problems in a teen-parent relationship. She talks about her encounter with a fourteen-year-old named Franchesca, who was an adopted Sioux Indian. As a child Franchesca had no issues with her white parents, but when

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: Jim Burden

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jim Burden’s early years follows the structure of the idealized childhood of the American West, one where he can run freely in the country and is surrounded by the natural world. However, prejudices are still prevalent in his community, and have a noticeable effect on its inhabitants as they mature. From a young age, members of the Black Hawk, Nebraska community are instilled with the idea that daughters

    Read More

  • The Importance Of The Ghost Map

    1275 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book, The Ghost Map, tells the story of the cholera outbreak that took place in England during the medieval era. During this time, London became popular, causing it to become one of the most populous urban cities in England. However, it suffered from overcrowding, a large lower class, and little health regulations. As a result, living conditions and water supply were not the cleanest, and many died from the disease cholera. Though this epidemic led to many deaths/illnesses during it’s time, it has proven to be helpful and important to public health today. Some public health advancements that have occurred as a result include healthier, cleaner, and longer lives lived.

    Read More

  • Skinwalkers Essay

    751 Words  | 2 Pages

    For my summer assignment, I read the book Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman. Skinwalkers is about a Navajo police officer named Jim Chee. The story takes place on the Navajo Reservation spanning several states (Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico). Throughout the book, Chee works with Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn to solve three seemingly connected homicides. Over the course of the story, the Officers find several strange bits of evidence, such as small bones and strange stories about things happening around the reservation. As the case progresses, Chee and Leaphorn discover that the motive may be much deeper than just hate, it may have to do with witchcraft. As the story concludes, Leaphorn realizes that Chee has been led into a trap and rushes

    Read More

  • The Ghost of Devil's Den

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    This ghost story was told by a nineteen-year-old Caucasian student at the University of Maryland. She is from the Baltimore Metro Area and lives with her mother and younger sister. I decided to approach her since she is a notorious lover of ghost stories and folklore. While we were hanging out with friends, I asked her to tell me a ghost story. As soon as I asked, her eyes lit up and she took me to the side, out of earshot of our friends. With great energy and enthusiastic facial expressions, she proceeded to tell me the following story about the Civil War site of the Battle of Gettysburg:

    Read More

  • Lakota Woman

    6839 Words  | 14 Pages

    Mary was born with the name Mary Brave Bird. She was a Sioux from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. She belonged to the "Burned Thigh," the Brule Tribe, the Sicangu. The Brules are part of the Seven Sacred Campfires, the seven tribes of the Western Sioux known collectively as the Lakota. The Brule rode horses and were great warriors. Between 1870 and 1880 all Sioux were driven into reservations, fenced in and forced to give up everything. Her family settled in on the reservation in a small place called He-Dog. Her grandpa was a He-Dog and told about the Wounded Knee massacre. Almost three hundred Sioux men, women, and children were killed by white soldiers. Mary was called a iyeska, a breed which the white kids called her. She had white peoples blood in her. Her face was very Indian, but her skin was light. She hated being "white" and loved the summer because she would tan and make her look more Indian. She had a husband from the Crow Dogs which were full-bloods. They were the Sioux of the Sioux. Her people had very strong family ties and everyone cared for everyone. Still even though the white man has ruined their close family ties they have many traditions which keep the intermediate family closely tied together. The whites however completely destroyed the tiyospaye, which is the extended family like the grandparents, uncles and aunts, in-laws and cousins. The government tore the tiyospaye apart and forced the Sioux into the kind of relationship now called the nuclear family. Those who refused to be ruined by the government were pushed back in the country and into isolation and starvation. Her father, Bill Moore, was only part Indian and mostly white. He left almost immediately after Mary was born becaus...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Passing By Clare Kendry

    740 Words  | 2 Pages

    The two contrasting life choice make for an interesting interpretation on how black people view class status of race in America during that time. I feel like Clare represents the black people who feel try to “act white” in order to have success. She abandoned everything, including her black pride, in order to achieve financial success. You are able to see that her husband explains why he calls her Nig, “Well you see, it’s like this. When we first married, she was as white as – as – well as a lily. But I declare she’s getting’ darker and darker. I tell her if she don’t look out, she’ll wake up one of these days and find she’s turned into a nigger” (pg. 67). The disrespect she takes from him in order to be financially successful is tragic, but it is very similar to what to what black people go through today. She just takes it to a whole new level. I understand that people thought she was black and it was a different time so it is understandable that what she went through. The problem is then, just like now, that people believe they have to change to be successful. That the only way to have financial success is to act, or in Clare’s case be whiter. That

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Wife Of His Youth

    1466 Words  | 3 Pages

    The characters are torn between who they are and who they need to be. Racial passing further perpetrates discrimination within American society, especially within the black community. Mr. Ryder’s actions further perpetrates the notion of race as a social and cultural construction. Mr. Ryder does not want to be accepted as black and he must live up to his principle through disassociation with the black culture. Mr. Ryder’s hope for a better future meant erasing his “blackness” and identify with his “whiteness”. Eliza’s narration of her slave life awaken his moral conscious. The path Mr. Ryder wishes to obtain is unrealistic in a post-American society because he cannot erase his past. In a post reconstruction era it was vital to connect in a time of instability. Mr. Ryder’s re-telling of Eliza’s story is connecting their fragmented family. Mr. Ryder’s acknowledgement Eliza, despite knowing the fact that he must go against his principles, he proposes that individuals must unite as a family if they want to promote change. Chesnutt short story proposes that black Americans need to unite in the struggle to end racial and social

    Read More

  • The Wife Of His Youth Analysis

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    Charles W. Chesnutt, an American author, wrote The Wife of His Youth, a short story first published in July 1898. Chesnutt was born in Cleveland to free parents. Also, he is known for realism, local color, and folk tales. Chesnutt writes African American characters that challenged racial stereotypes and enjoys exploring race, specifically, the troubles of mixed-race people and social tensions in the South. The Wife of His Youth is about a bi-racial man named Mr. Ryder, who was born before civil war. He is the head of the Blue Veins Society, which is a social organization for colored people in a Northern town that consists of people who look more white than black. Mr. Ryder’s story focuses on realism, the analysis of race relations, and folk tales. Chesnutt leaves so many unanswered questions about this story, but the real question is why?

    Read More

  • Catherine A. Lutz - Unnatural Emotions

    1107 Words  | 3 Pages

    A reader of Sherman Alexie’s novel Reservation Blues enters the text with similar assumptions of Native American life, unless of course, he or she is of that particular community. If he or she is not, however, there is the likelihood that the ‘typical’ reader has images of Native Americans based upon long-held social stereotypes of the Lone Ranger’s Tonto and Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves,” possibly chastened with some positive, homey images of the First Thanksgiving as well. However, Alexie’s prose forces one to apprehend Native American life anew, and to see Native Americans as fully-fledged individual characters, with wants and needs and desires, not as those who are simply stoic and ‘other.’

    Read More

  • dine

    742 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Navajo take pride in their family life and the events that surround them. Their seclusion from society is the base of their customs and activities they treasure used to entertain their People. The Navajo culture is rich in past heritage, ceremonies, and rituals. In everything they do whether it be the birth of a child, planting crops, or healing the sick, some type of ritual is done. These rituals and ceremonies can last fro...

    Read More

  • Cognitive Couple V. Baby Girl Essay

    721 Words  | 2 Pages

    A baby girl named Veronica is given to her mother then put up for adoption, then taken from her new parents all before she turns three. A father of 2% Native American gives his child up to her mother before the baby is even born; however, four months after Veronica is born, she is put up for adoption, Dusten decides he wants his child back. Then the South Carolina court takes Veronica away from her adoptive parents and gives her back to her father, Dusten Brown (Totenberg). The Capobiancos, her adoptive parent, then decide to take the case to the supreme court (“Dusten Brown speaks for the 1st time since handover of Veronica”) . Upon further examination of the ICWA rules the Supreme Court decides the Capobiancos are correct and Veronica should

    Read More

  • The Effectiveness Of The Signalman As A Ghost Story

    2034 Words  | 5 Pages

    is as a ghost story. A complexity arises in the story and that is was

    Read More

  • Cultural Conflict In Ama Ata Aidoo's Dilemma Of A Ghost

    1244 Words  | 3 Pages

    The conflict within Dilemma of a Ghost by Ama Ata Aidoo seems to arise from the Eulalie’s foreignness, however; it arises from both party’s lack of knowledge of the others culture and Ato’s new Americanized beliefs. The world is comprised of diverse cultures and beliefs. Ideals of one’s culture can be tested when influences from the outside changed a person’s ideals. In Dilemma of a Ghost, not only does culture conflict arise between Ato’s wife Eulalie and Esi but also from Ato himself and how his ideals have changed since going to school in America. The culture conflict between Eulalie and Esi seemed to be conveyed through many mediums. It is conveyed through roles of the family, differences in food choices, difference in language.

    Read More

More about The Ghostway Analysis

Open Document