Understanding The House Made of Dawn by Scott Momaday
In 1969, N. Scott Momaday became the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize in the area of Letters, Drama, and Music for best Fiction. As Schubnell relates in N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background, Momaday initially could not believe that he had won a prize for a work that began as a poem (93). Schubnell cites one juror who explains his reasoning for selecting House Made of Dawn as being the work's 'eloquence and intensity of feeling, its freshness of vision and subject, [and] its immediacy of theme' (93). For these reasons and many more, House Made of Dawn hailed the arrival on the American literary scene of a "matured, sophisticated literary artist from the original Americans" (Schubnell, 93).
There are many elements influencing and incorporated into House Made of Dawn that the reader will better appreciate by gaining an understanding of their history or significance in Native tradition. Louis Owens's suggests in his work Mixedblood Messages that "before discussing any aspect of Native American literature, it is important to know what literature we are talking about" (15). Thus, before one evaluates or analyzes House Made of Dawn any further, one should attain knowledge of the author and culture. Also, it will be prudent for the reader to have background knowledge of such elements as stories and running.
Momaday's life greatly affects aspects of House Made of Dawn. Navarro Scotte Mammedaty, a mixedblood of Kiowa and Cherokee descent, (as well as European ancestry on his mother's side) was born on February 27, 1934. Numerous scholars and critics note that from the beginni...
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...seems the more one knows, about Momaday, the Kiowa, the Navajo, and people of Jemez, among other things, the more one grasps the full meaning of House Made of Dawn. It is a work full of possibility and revelations.
Works Cited:
Momaday, N. Scott. House Made of Dawn. Harper & Row: New York, 1968.
The Man Made of Words. St. Martin's Press: New York, 1997.
Nabokov, Peter. Indian Running: Native American History and Tradition. Ancient City Press: Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1981.
Owens, Louis. Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1998
Owens, Louis. Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1992,1994
Schubnell, Mattias. N. Scott Momaday, the Cultural and Literary Background. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1985
Shoemaker, Nancy. “ Native-American Women in History.” OAH Magazine of History , Vol. 9, No. 4, Native Americans (Summer, 1995), pp. 10-14. 17 Nov. 2013
Banks, D., Erodes, R. (2004). Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. Ojibwa Warrior. Retrieved January 20, 2005, from http://www.oupress.com/bookdetail.asp?isbn=0-8061-3580-8
...744,” in The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America, ed. Colin G. Calloway (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994), 101
Homer's great epic, "The Odyssey" was written several thousands of years ago, a time in human history when men played the dominant role in society. The entire structure of civilization was organized and controlled by men; It was an accepted fact that women held an inferior position in society. Society was constructed as if women were around only to serve the men. The involvement of women in any circumstance was almost completely dominated by what the men allowed. The women were valued in society, only they were not given important roles or any decision making power. It is as if they held no power in the ancient Greek society. This is why Homer's Odyssey is very unique, Homer put women into roles that were previously unheard of for women to possess. Unlike in The Iliad, where women served merely as an object to men; female characters of Odyssey are distinctive because they possess personality, and have intricate relationships with the male characters of the Odyssey. By characterizing the women in "The Odyssey", a reader may come to some conclusions about the role of women in this epic. Along with the belief that women played a secondary role to men in society, the female characters displayed certain traits that could not be exhibited by the men. Athena demonstrated the most intelligence and valor out of all the characters in "The Odyssey." The male characters play the most significant roles in this epic, but without the support of the females in "The Odyssey", Odysseus would not have made it through his journey.
Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American from New Mexico and is part of the Laguna tribe. She received a MacArthur "genius" award and was considered one of the 135 most significant women writers ever. Her home state has named her a living cultural treasure. (Jaskoski, 1) Her well-known novel Ceremony follows a half-breed named Tayo through his realization and healing process that he desperately needs when he returns from the horrors of World War II. This is a process that takes him back to the history of his culture.
In Ancient Greek times, women were considered to be inferior to men. They were never part of the action, nor were they given significant roles in a world dominated by men. However, in Homer’s The Odyssey, women were not downplayed to weak, helpless beings blended into the background, dependent on men to survive. In fact, together they shaped Odysseus’s journey and contributed to such a strong feminine attitude that have led some scholars to believe that a man could not have possibly have written such an epic.
In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will discuss the major themes of the book and why the author wrote it, it will describe Native American society, its values and its beliefs and how they changed and it will show how Native Americans views other non-Natives.
Women play an influential role in The Odyssey. Women appear throughout the story, as goddesses, wives, princesses, or servants. The women in “The Odyssey” dictate the direction of the epic. Homer the blind creator may have contrived the story with the aim to depict a story of a male heroism; but the story if looked at from a different angles shows the power women have over men. The Sirens and women that posses the power of seduction when ever they are encountered take the men off their course, and lead many to their death. The power women in the Epic pose can be seen from the goddess all to the wives. From The nymph Calypso who enslaves Odysseus for many years posses all the way back to Penelope who many argue is of equal importance to
McNickle, D'Arcy. "A Different World." Native American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Vizenor, Gerald. United States of America: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, 1995, 111-119.
In many classic novels, authors use biblical allusions to highlight a certain character or situation. By using biblical allusions, authors can help the reader better understand what it is that they want to convey through their literary work. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Golding utilizes symbolism of places and characters to allude to the Bible. Out of the many references, four significant biblical allusions – title of the novel, Simon, beast, and the island itself – emphasize Golding’s theme inherent sin and evil in mankind.
Stensland, Anna Lee. “Indian Boyhood by Charles A. Eastman’” The English Journal 66, no. 3 (1977): 59.
Throughout House Made of Dawn Momaday forces the reader to see a clear distinction between how white people and Native Americans use language. Momaday calls it the written word, the white people’s word, and the spoken word, the Native American word. The white people’s spoken word is so rigidly focused on the fundamental meaning of each word that is lacks the imagery of the Native American word. It is like listening to a contract being read aloud.
The theme of women in the Odyssey is essential in establishing one of the if not the main message in the poem. The paradoxical messages give insights into the lives of the characters and generalizations into the reader's lives. Although this theme would have a noticeable affect on the poem in its absence, it is odd that in a story about war and adventure that they hold such dominating roles. In the setting of the Odyssey, women did not have a status that measured up to that of a man. However, whether seen as demonic or angelic they still hold in the example of Odysseus a significant role in the determination of the final fate of a man.
In The Odyssey, Homer brings one back to Ancient Greek society through his writings about the lifestyles, perspectives, and values of the people. Trapped within a cruel, patriarchal social order society, women hold very low statuses in comparison to men. In fact, they are considered objects of male power. Homer uses female characters such as Penelope, Calypso, and Circe to show views of women and how their portrayals represent the patriarchal perspective of their male-centric society.
Berkhofer, Robert F. The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.