Karen Kristy Dial
Background Essay - Draft 1

            In 1969, N. Scott Momaday became the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize.  Initially, Momaday could not believe that he had won a prize for a work that began as a poem (93).  One juror explained his reasoning for selecting House Made of Dawn by citing its “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”(93).
            It is suggested in the 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, knowledge of the author and culture must be attained.
            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 (Owens,92).  From the beginning, Momaday was placed between two cultures, and this position would be a powerful influence throughout his life.  In 1946, his family moved to Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, the place that would later become the setting for House Made of Dawn (Schubnell, 15).  Here, Momaday saw swift changes roll through the tribal village, such as: an exploding population, the infiltration of technology and the “culture of Anglo-America”, as well as alcoholism and crime.  Momaday also witnessed the return of World War II’s soldiers, and the confusion and despair that accompanied them (19).  This period of Jemez’s history would return years later in Momaday’s novel.  It would also imprint upon Momaday’s mind “that only a sense of self which embraced both Indian and non-Anglican realities could lead to a worthwhile future”( ).
            Owens suggests that Momaday turned to writing “out of a search for an identity”.  Momaday, himself describes identity in terms of imagination:

        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 (Owens, 93).
In an interview with Schubnell, Momaday says:
 I believe that I fashion my own life out of words and images, and that’s how I get by…Writing, giving expression to my spirit and to my mind, that’s a way of surviving, of ordering one’s life…that’s a way of making life acceptable to oneself (44).
An understanding of Momaday’s motives for writing, and his view of identity or self-knowledge, can lend  greater insight into the novel, and perhaps the actions of the characters of the novel, which perhaps stem from experiences and ideologies of the author.
              There are other elements that one must also take into account before commencing to interpret House Made of Dawn.  One must be aware of cultural information that lends to a greater understanding of the novel’s themes and messages.  The prologue of House Made of Dawn begins with the word ‘Dypaloh’.  Dypaloh is an invocation.  It shifts the novel into the oral tradition, which is “a particular kind of discourse, one which is ‘other’ to the non-Indian reader”(93).  Storytelling was the primary means for communicating histories, legends, and other information among many Native American tribes.  The “responsibility” of the traditional Native American story is “to tell us who we are and where we come from, to 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”(94).  Dypaloh “signals a transformative act”(93).  By understanding this one word, the reader is able to discover new meaning in the novel, and perceive it apart from the linear method in which we define and understand literature or stories.
            An understanding of the Native Americans experiences during World War II is another important element that will improve one’s concept and understanding of the novel.  The main character, Abel, is a veteran of WWII, and the war plays a pivotal role is shaping his identity, for better of for worse.  Approximately 25,000 Native Americans served in WWII, and their experiences were, in many ways, vastly different from the experiences of European Americans. (Steiner, 19).  In The New Indians, S. Steiner states that "the young [Indian] warriors had fought in two wars at once.  One was military; one was cultural.  Both left their wounds." (21) The cultural war Steiner refers began at contact (with the white man).  It did not cease with the second war of the worlds.  Native Americans soldiers were still Indian[s] in a white man's army" (Steiner, 19).  Prejudice and stereotype did not vanish at the commencement of a new war.  Indeed, perhaps it became worse, for many Native Americans isolated from other Indians, representing their tribes and all other Natives, alone.
            Even so, while the war did not last forever, its effects stretched out of sight.  After the war, the hopes and dreams of the Indian warriors, inspired by a knowledge of a vast world beyond the reservation, were dashed as the country and economy returned to the pre-war ideals and aims.  The warriors were forgotten.  In despair, many turned to strong drink, as does Abel in House Made of Dawn (21-23).
    These are but a few examples of the background necessary to fully understand House Made of Dawn.  Yet, even from this brief summary, one can see the necessity in knowing more that just the plot of a work.  It 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:

Owens, Louis. Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place. University of Oklamhoma Press: Norman, 1998

Owens, Louis.  Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel. University of Oklamhoma Press: Norman, 1992,1994

Steiner, S. The New Indians. 1968
 

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