Opposing Views of the Landscape (Momaday)

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.