A theme of landscape
appears throughout N. Scott Momaday’s House
Made of Dawn as a character of its own that heals, but it also appears to
be perceived differently by characters of opposing color. Indians view the
landscape as a beautiful housing place while Whites view the landscape as
property. The Indian view is less restricting and open because Whites have a
lust for words: in books, contracts, etc. This White word usage subtracts
instead of adds to the truth of the matter.
For example, Angela’s
view of the land is described on page 33 of the novel, when she describes an
Indian dancing ritual:
“Probably
they saw nothing after all, nothing at all. But then that was the trick, wasn’t
it? To see nothing at all, nothing in the absolute. To see beyond the
landscape, beyond every shape and shadow and color, that was to see nothing. That was to be free and finished,
complete, spiritual. To see nothing slowly and by degrees, at last; to see
first the pure, bright colors of near things, then all pollutions of color, all
things blended and vague and dim in the distance, to see finally beyond the
clouds and the pale wash of the sky – the none and nothing beyond that.”
Although Angela’s view
has some valid points, it is overall singular. She understands that the dancers
are free and complete, and that what they perform is spiritual, but her vision
becomes blurry: “all things blended and vague.” Angela is blind to the healing
nature of the landscape because she cannot see past the land as land itself.
Her wordy description reveals the aspects of property; the land reduced to
“shapes” and “shadows.” In fact, Lawrence Evers argues that Angela does not
value the landscape at all when he states, “As persuasive as Angela’s
interpretation of the Cochiti dancers may seem, it is finally a denial of the
value of the landscape which the novel celebrates. Angela’s assumption that the
Cochiti dancers possess a kind of Hindu metaphysics which rejects phenomena for
noumena is a projection of her own desires to reject the flesh.” Angela is
damaged by her pregnancy which causes her to deny many things, like the landscape.
Angela’s pregnancy is
not the only factor that affects her view of the landscape. Angela is White,
and does not feel that the land signifies or represents her in any way. She is
disconnected from the land and remains an individual throughout the entire
novel. Fortunately, Abel realizes that he has become lost in White culture and
must find his way back. Abel is a lost character because he has become confused
with his own Indian identity; he rejects the prize of the eagle capture,
crying, and cannot defeat an albino at a chicken ritual, bleeding. Once he
realizes that White culture will never suit him, though, he returns to the
pueblo.
One significant
instance of place that occurs when Abel decides to come back to the reservation
is the moment he returns to his grandfather from White life. Evers describes
Abel’s and Francisco’s positions via relative location:
“These
journey and emergence themes begin to unfold in the following scene as
Francisco goes in his wagon to meet the bus returning Abel to Walatowa after
WWII. The wagon road on which he rides is parallel to the modern highway on
which Abel rides. The two roads serve as familiar metaphors for the conflicting
paths Abel follows in the novel, and Momaday reinforces the conflict by
parallel auditory motifs as well.”
Abel’s arrival is the
first step toward finding his sense of place among his people, and therefore a
first step toward his healing process, and it could not be more obvious what
Abel has left. The roads and means of transportation are symbolic of Abel’s
choices and shifts of culture in life. Francisco is riding in a wagon, on a
dirt road, using donkeys to carry him. Abel is riding on a bus, on a paved
road, using gasoline and electricity to propel him. They are complete opposite
representations of culture, not to mention that Abel is drunk when his
grandfather picks him up. Francisco’s way of life is simpler and more surreal
while Abel’s previous life was hellish and cruel and deteriorating, although
considered progressive by Whites.
In fact, many people
wonder how White progression has not reached the pueblo Indians. Matthias
Schubnell explains the lack of progression perfectly when he asserts, “Walatowa
literally means ‘the people in the canyon.’ It is the native name of Jemez. As
a result of their geographical isolation and their cultural conservatism the
Rio Grande Pueblos have succeeded in keeping their languages, religions, and
traditional customs relatively intact despite the pressures of Spanish and
Anglo-American cultural encroachment.” So, Abel is able to return to his
original culture smoothly because of the tribe’s isolation, but also because
the Indian traditions of the pueblos have been instilled in Abel since he was a
little boy.
Schubnell describes how
Francisco taught Abel and Vidal to discern their position in relation to the
landscape in order to place themselves among the world, and in turn to know
where they belong:
“Francisco
teaches his grandsons, Abel and Vidal, to observe the sun. he tells them that
‘they must know the long journey of the sun on the black mesa, how it rode in
the seasons and the years, and they must live according to the sun appearing,
for only then could they reckon where they were, where all things were, in
time.’ In revealing the connection between the sun, the landscape, and the
rhythms of Indian life, Francisco roots the two boys in the old ways of the
tribe.”
Indeed, Abel has
learned the placement of the sun in relation to the land, but he temporarily
forgets, leaving him in a lost state for a while. Abel must therefore return to
his former state as a well-informed, well-placed Indian man. Schubnell claims
that “Abel is feeling his way back to a center which has been lost to him. Only
by relating himself to this center can he reestablish order and overcome his
inner chaos. His search is informed with religious meaning, as it aims at a
communion with the land which is sacred to his people.” Abel achieves his
center right at the end of the novel, when Francisco dies and Abel runs with
the dawn:
“The
soft and sudden sound of their going, swift and breaking away all at once,
startled him, and he began to run after them. He was running, and his body
cracked open with pain, and he was running on. He was running and there was no
reason to run but the running itself and the land and the dawn appearing. The
sun rose up in the saddle and shone in shafts upon the roads across the
snow-covered valley and hills, and the chill of the night fell away and it
began to rain. He saw the slim black bodies of the runners in the distance,
gliding away without sound through the slanting light and the rain. He was
running and a cold sweat broke out upon him and his breath heaved with the pain
of running. His legs buckled and he fell in the snow. The rain fell around him
in the snow and he saw his broken hands, how the rain made streaks upon them
and dripped soot upon the snow. And he got up and ran on. He was alone and
running on. All of his being was concentrated in the sheer motion of running
on, and he was past caring about the pain. Pure exhaustion laid hold of his
mind, and he could see at last without having to think. He could see the canyon
and the mountains and the sky. He could see the rain and the river and the
fields beyond. He could see the dark hills at dawn. He was running, and under
his breath he began to sing. There was no sound, and he had no voice; he had
only the words of a song. And he went running on the rise of the song. House made of pollen, house made of dawn.
Qtsedaba” (Momaday, 185).
At last, Abel is able
to view the land through renewed Indian eyes. Words cannot express the beauty
Abel experiences through his pain, his journey, his relocation. Abel now
regains his ability to sing and disrupts his muteness. He is only able to
overcome his muteness through the dawn run, as Sharma details:
“He
wants to write a creation song ‘of the first world, of fire and flood, and of
the emergence of dawn from the hills.’ He is able to sing that song only when
he becomes the dawn runner, when he is able ‘to see at last without having to
think.’ As he discovers his vision, he runs and begins to sing, ‘There was no
sound, and he had no voice; he had only the words of a song.’ He at last discovers
the words that he needs to be a dawn runner but that comes only after he cuts
his way through the Babel that surrounds him.”
Notice how Abel must “cut
his way through the Babel that surrounds him,” meaning White man’s language. The
only reason he is unable to understand his grandfather is because he has
forgotten his own language, and taken on the language of the White man. To explain
the flaws of White man’s language is the religious Indian man Tosamah. Sharma
details Tosamah’s explaination:
“The
indictment of a purely verbal culture comes sharply in Tosamah’s indictment of
the Anglo love for words: Now, brothers and sisters, old John was a white man
and the white man has his ways. Oh gracious me, he has his ways. He talks about
the word. He talks through it and around it. He builds upon it with syllables,
with prefixes, and suffixes and hyphens and accents. He adds and divides and
multiplies the word. And in all this he subtracts the truth.”
White man subtracts the
truth with his words, much like Angela does with her description of the ritual
dancers. Abel begins to see life, his life, with the “Anglo love for words,”
but since he participates in the dawn run, he is able to fins his place among
the land once more. Willard Hylton writes this phenomenally; “When Abel leaves
the mission, rubs himself with ashes, and goes on to join the other dawn
runners, he is not only assuming his role as male survivor of his family, but
also completing the final phase of his own spiritual healing. As he runs, as he
becomes a part of the orderly continuum of interrelated events that constitute
the Indian universe, Abel is the land, and he is of the land once more.” The dawn
run does more for Abel than any other significant event in his life. He “assumes
his role as male survivor of his family” and “is of the land once more.” Abel becomes
part of the land again and repositions himself because he does not have to
think about it. He does not need to describe the landscape in words, but
instead feel his sense of place among the landscape. Evers illustrates this
difference in words between Abel and Angela exquisitely:
“That
very question – ‘Where are you going?’ – must ring in Abel’s ears as he begins
the race. The time and direction of his journey are once again defined by the
relation of the sun to the eastern mesa, ‘the house made of dawn.’ Out of the
pain and exhaustion of the race, Abel regains his vision: ‘he could see at last
without having to think.’ That vision is not the nihilistic vision of Angela – ‘beyond
everything for which the mountain stands.’ Rather, Abel’s ‘last reality’ in the
race is expressed in the essential unity and harmony of man and the land. He feels
the sense of place he was unable to articulate in Part 1. Here at last he has a
voice, words and a song. In beauty he has begun.”
So, Abel’s healing
process has ended with a sense of place with his people, among the landscape,
and in his actions. Momaday clearly had this idea of place in mind when he
wrote the book, and expresses his opinion about the landscape consicely:
“I
feel deeply about the landscape and I mean that literally. I think it is
important for a person to come to terms with landscape. I think that’s
important; it is a means to knowing oneself. I think one’s idea of the self
involves the environment. You can’t really know who you are until you know
where you are in a physical sense. You need to know what the things in you are,
how they feel, how they change in various lights” (Morgan 45).
Abel would have never
been able to heal properly without knowing “where” he was as well as “who” he
was. For this reason, the landscape is arguably a character in and of itself in
the novel, because Abel comes running back to it as if the landscape were
family. Even though Abel comes back to the landscape he was born on, it is even
better that he was able to make his way past the White view and into the traditional
Indian view that seems to belong to him now, as it did when he was a boy. Abel is
a man at the end of the novel because he relocated his sense of place.
