Literary Analysis: N.Scott Momaday

The desire to learn about family and its history can lead a man to great monuments of nature. Scott Momaday is Kiowa in the blood, but doesn’t know the impact of his ancestry, what they had to endure, and how they adapted to the obstacles thrown at them. Scott Momaday decides to travel 1,500 miles to “see in reality” what his family went through. He writes this story with a mixture of folklore, myth, history and personal reflections. Scott Momaday uses nature as a main component of his story, incorporating different voices and his memory to bring personal vision into the story with different time frames to give the ultimate experience of the Kiowa and his family.

The Kiowa were a peaceful tribe. “Warfare for the Kiowa’s was pre-eminently a matter disposition rather than survival.” The Kiowa’s were a tribe that cherished nature and were a part of nature. They lived off of the land and gave back to it. They didn’t know that the U.S cavalry was coming and they had been torn apart, unprepared for the environment they were being disposed of into. They abandoned all that they had to focus on survival. Thrown into giant stone corrals after their surrender at Fort Sill. The Kiowa were victims of expansion and had been ripped from the lands that they put their hearts and souls into.

Scott Momaday decided to travel 1,500 miles on a pilgrimage to Rainy Mountain. He travelled to his late grandmothers’ grave, as well as her old house. He centers his travels and experiences on nature and what he saw. Scott Momaday also uses multiple voices to portray a sense of past and present to give the reading a different dimension. He includes tales of folklore, self-experience and a poetic twist as well.

To dissect a bit of the nature in the story, t...

... middle of paper ...

... writing about different genres and topics. He also adds personal experiences which interests many readers. He knows from his schooling and experience how to engulf a reader and keep them glued to his stories.

Ultimately completing his story, Scott Momaday infused many angles to the history of Kiowa creating a multidimensional vision of what he was trying to portray. He used nature as the building block of his story and added different experiences and voices to build the story. He also used folklore and myths to give a view of lesson telling and how the Kiowa would teach young children about dangers. Finally he included his memory, his own experiences which brought the story down to a personal level for the reader. In bringing all of those aspects together he made the story multidimensional, and gave us a look at the Kiowa and his family from different angles.