Second Draft
Karen Kristy Dial
Running and Stories: Constructing
the Path to Identity
To be nobody – but – yourself
in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody
else – means to fight the hardest battle any human can fight; and never
to stop fighting.
- E.E. Cummings
As E.E. Cummings aptly observed,
being oneself, attaining a firm sense of identity, can be a formidable
task, for any person. For the Native American, this task is doubly
difficult. The Native American struggles between two worlds – the
world of the white man, and the traditional world of his ancestors.
Countless scholars have tried to establish exactly what the difference
is between these two worlds. N.Scott Momaday, author of the pulitzer
prize-winning novel, House Made of Dawn, understands the difference to
be one of perspective. Native Americans see the world in a different
way. For example, the white man perceives time as being linear, a
moving entity, progressing. Conversely, the Native American understands
there to be only a “dimension of timelessness” or “an extended present”
(53). These two views of time are just one facet of the different
perspectives of the world.
Different perspectives often
fuel antagonism and conflict. One need only recall the history of
United States policy and actions toward Native Americans to note this truth.
With policies such as relocation and termination, the United States government
consistently tried to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant culture,
stripping them of their traditions and culture. Yet, Native Americans
held onto their traditions, and today strive to live in two worlds.
Balancing two worlds is not easy, but important. As Momaday states,
“It is imperative that the Indian defines himself, that he finds the strength
to do so, that he refuses to let others define him”(76). Only by
attaining a strong sense of identity can the Native American hope to survive
in two worlds.
It is not enough to know
that a sense of identity is needed. One must understand how it can
be attained. In the phenomenal novel, House Made of Dawn, Momaday
details the loss and recovery of a Native American character’s identity.
Momaday once made the following statement:
We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in
our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at
least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy
that can befall us is to go unimagined (Schubnell, 100).
For Momaday, imagination is the key to identity, and it is this key that
he offers as a solution to the problem of identity. In House Made
of Dawn, the protagonist, Abel, cannot imagine who he is. In chronicling
Abel’s effort to regain his ability to imagine, Momaday offers inextricably
intertwined methods to regain one’s ‘imagination’.
The prologue of House Made
of Dawn begins with the word ‘Dypaloh’. This word signals a shift into
the Native American oral tradition. Traditionally, stories have definite
responsibilities. According to Louis Owens in Other Destinies, the
responsibilities are: “to tell us who we are and where we come from,
make us whole and heal us, to integrate us fully within the world in which
we live and make that world inhabitable, to compel order and reality” (93).
In defining the responsibilities of stories, Owens also gives a description
of the ‘identified individual’, one who has a strong sense of identity
and is fully self-imagined. The identified individual knows where
he is from and where he is going. He is not fragmented, and knows
his place within the world. He is within the order of the universe.
These characteristics are embodied in Momaday’s imagination of self.
The path to imagination and identity lies in those things that show us
who we are, that heal and make us whole, and that promote order and reality.
Throughout House Made of
Dawn, two of Momaday’s methods to attaining identity reveal themselves
to be, on this same path, running and stories. These methods are
not separate, but intermingle and cross over one another at different times.
Ultimately, through the utilization of these methods, one can gain a sense
of identity and the ability to imagine oneself. At the novel’s ending,
this is exactly what Abel does.
In the second paragraph
of the prologue, Abel is running. The prologue begins with Abel running
and ends with Abel running. The prologue, in mythic time and place,
tells the story, and how it will end, in accordance with traditional storytelling.
(Owens, 96). We, the reader, know that Abel with find himself by
the novel’s end. However, what is important is “the way the story
is told” (Owens, 96). Thus, in finding running at the beginning and
ending of the prologue, one can infer that running must be important to
identity, because only when Abel has his sense of identity does he run.
The portion of the novel following the prologue proves this to be true
throughout. Owens says that for the Jemez Pueblo, the native community
and culture in which the novel is set, “running can have serious ceremonial
applications” and that each season there are running ceremonies (94).
Francisco, Abel’s grandfather remembers such a running ceremony, when he
remembers the winter races for good hunting.
Aside from the running ceremonies,
or perhaps in correlation to them, the importance of running is still evident.
As has already been noted, when Abel has a sense of identity, he is running.
However, it is important to note that, in the prologue, Abel never stops
running. Even when the sun goes into eclipse and “a dark and certain
shadow came upon the land”, Abel still runs. Yet, Abel does not run
in the main portion of the novel until the end, when he has regained his
identity. Again, the prologue is to be seen as mythic in time and
place. Thus, we do not necessarily have to abandon the claim that
running correlates with a strong identity. The fact the Abel never
stops running might suggest that he never gives up. He never stops
striving to find himself, to regain what he has lost. In the novel,
whenever Abel is in dire straits, or in an unenviable position or situation,
he is waiting. He is in limbo, neither forsaking his purpose nor
continuing on. Before Abel kills the albino, there is a two word
sentence: “He waited” (82). Abel waits, and then he commits murder.
The albino represents evil, and Abel does not understand that evil must
exist along with the good, so he tries to extinguish the evil. Earlier,
when Abel’s grandfather, Francisco feels the presence of the albino, embodiment
of evil, he blesses his corn and leaves the presence. Francisco’s
own “acknowledgment of the unknown was nothing more that a dull, intrinsic
sadness, a vague desire to weep…(Momaday, 66). While Francisco knows
that evil exists, he also knows there must be a balance, and to destroy
the evil would also destroy the balance. Francisco is self-imagined.
He knows his place, and understands the order and reality of the world.
Conversely, Abel’s killing of the albino shows that he does not understand,
and that he is not self-imagined. When Abel “waited”, he stopped
running, stopped striving to achieve identity, and his waiting was detrimental.
He was sent to prison for the murder, and evil triumphed because it cannot
be destroyed in such a manner.
At the lowest point in Abel’s
life, he is again waiting. After Abel is released from prison, he
is sent to Los Angeles as part of the relocation effort. In Los Angeles,
Abel slowly sinks deeper into the abyss of confusion. He has no idea
who he is, and has not even the land or his grandfather to act as guides
of reference points. Toward the end of his stay in LA, Abel is brutally
beaten by a corrupt policeman. The policeman’s name is Martinez,
but those who know him call him ‘culebra’. Culebra means snake.
A snake is a symbol of evil. Abel is beaten by evil, and it lays
him extremely low. He ends up lying on the beach, blind, beaten,
and drunk. Abel is like the silversided fish that are mentioned at
the beginning of the second volume. These fish throw themselves upon the
beach to spawn after high tide. They are “among the most helpless
creatures on the face of the earth” (Momaday, 89). These fish are
a picture of Abel. Abel too is lying on the beach, helpless.
He has again stopped running, and this time he is, for the moment, incapable
of moving, of continuing on. While lying on the beach, Abel thinks
of many things, and he is afraid. On page 116 it states: “He had always
been afraid. Forever at the margin of his mind there was something
to be afraid of, something to fear. He did not know what it was,
but is was always there, real, imminent, unimaginable.” Abel cannot
even imagine of what he is afraid. The fear is in many ways paralyzing,
counterproductive to running. Abel uses alcohol to try to escape
the fear, but it too is ultimately paralyzing.
Abel does not die on the
beach. He realizes he must get up or die. He is quite disoriented
and tired, and when he occasionally stops to rest, “a dizziness [would
come] over him and he had to go on” (126). Abel cannot afford to
wait anymore. When Abel reaches his friend Benally, Benally takes
him to the hospital. Benally calls Angela and tells her Abel is in
the hospital. Angela is a white woman who once came to Jemez for
the healing of the mineral baths. Abel chops wood for her during
her stay in Jemez, and she plays an important role in healing Abel.
She comes to the hospital and tells Abel a story. By this time, Angela
has gained her own sense of identity, and she can pass on her knowledge
through her story. The story is about a bear. It is a story
that Angela has made up, but it reminds Benally of another bear story passed
down from his grandfather. Benally says he can tell the Angela’s
story is “secret and important”, and it is, and it is healing.
Abel returns home shortly
after leaving the hospital. Upon returning, he finds his grandfather
dying. Out of the last seven days of Francisco’s life, Francisco
wakes at dawn six days to tell Abel stories, “and the voice of his
memory was whole and clear and growing like the dawn” (197). Francisco
knows who he is, and he is trying to pass down knowledge to Abel through
his stories. Owens says that storytellers, like Francisco, are “the
bearers of identity and order that are so fragile they may perish in a
single generation if unarticulated (223). It is extremely important
for Francisco to pass down the stories. During one dawn session,
Francisco remembers telling his grandsons that “they must live according
to the sun appearing, for only then could they reckon where they were,
where all things were, in time” (197). These stories are essential
in conveying order, in passing on Francisco’s own journey to identity.
These stories are the final healers for Abel. When Francisco dies,
Abel takes the body to be buried. Then he finds the ‘dawn runners’.
Abel runs; “He was running and there was no reason to run but the running
itself and the land and the dawn appearing” (211). Abel is healed.
Running and stories are
important methods to attaining identity. These are only two elements
that are found in House Made of Dawn. Each element or method is important,
and each work together with the others to achieve the same goal.
When Abel is running, he knows who he is, yet running is also important
is attaining this knowledge. Running is motion. Running is
perseverance. Running is believing that identity can be recovered.
If Abel did not believe it possible to find his proper place, he would
already by lost, stagnant, still waiting. Running is action.
Stories are also action. They are inherently active in passing on
crucial knowledge. A story that is not told, that is not related,
can have no meaning. Stories show the proper order of reality.
Both running and stories are crucial elements in Abel’s recovering his
identity. The things they represent, motion, perseverance, order,
and knowledge, are crucial in anyone’s quest for identity, not just Native
peoples, but the people of the human race.