What Are The Ecological Elements Of The Names A Memoir

autobiography, he completely describes the natural resource of Navajo reservation and the language which helped him to trace his identity in a biased world. This seclusion to reservation in a way has helped him to reflect over the nation. Since autobiography is nothing but the reflection of the past, the complete work The Names: A Memoir stands for the ecological element Reflection. The other four ecological elements - Revelation, Reciprocity, Resistance and Ritual have also played a major role in moulding Momaday as a “Nature Writer”. Revelation is a moment of insight that reset renews and reconstitutes the life of an individual towards an ecological awakening. This sense of revelation draws the truth of ‘a sense of belonging to a sacred whole’.

An element of darkness, however vague and tentative on the midsummer sky, implies a thin and colorless luster upon the sand and the cliffs and the dusty boughs of cedar and pine, and there is a quality like vain resistance in the air. (House Made of Dawn 63)

House Made of Dawn, the novel has evolved through the process of ritual i.e. the creative writing caused due to the revelation with a passion to reciprocate the love for nature. Momaday too had a great sense of resistance to protect our mother earth. His autobiography exposes “the tribal tales, his boyhood memories with a double focus on the possibility of reconciling Indian-white conflicts along with a rediscovery of the lost unity of natural world and self” (House Made of Dawn

We haven’t done a very good job in protecting our planet. We have failed to recognize the spiritual life of the earth” (House Made of Dawn 192). For Momaday dreams have also lead to the process of revelation. After the revelation it is through the process of reciprocity, writers often fosters a stronger commitment to the ecological whole. In the duration of achieving reciprocity, one has to move from sympathy to empathy, i.e. the mode through which one can establish the kinship with all life. Momaday also insisted on this reciprocity, where “people has to invest themselves in the land and simultaneously incorporate the land into their most fundamental experience” (Schauffler, 99). When the process of reciprocity happens, the earth becomes a sacred ground through rituals and