¶ … Rainy Mountain
Memory and its preservation have always played an important role in man's life. Memories make him a unique person, different from others because of his different and unique life experiences, and for this reason preservation of memory is an important concern especially where their evaporation is a constant threat. In cultures and societies, where old traditions are rapidly being replaced by new values and beliefs, it is considered important to preserve memories of the days gone by. However people differ in the way they choose to preserve memories. In our modern life, we choose to protect our important memories by video taping important occasions. However the same technological facilities were unavailable to older generations and for them, the most important preservation method was story telling. People would preserve their traditions by orally transporting their stories from one generation to another. However these oral traditions have now been replaced by literary narratives that are available to us in the form of literature.
Momaday's "The Way to Rainy Mountain" is one such commendable attempt of the author to preserve memory by writing it down in detail. The method Momaday uses is description whereby the author describes everything in great detail so as to preserve the rapidly evaporating reservoir of memories that were once the trademark of Kiowa culture. While the description method may have its flaws and may appear incoherent at times, it is still more reliable a method of preserving memory than story telling, even if far less absorbing. In this paper, we shall only focus on the introduction to her book, The Way to Rainy Mountain and see how the author uses description to protect her cultural...
In describing what sounds like the perfect symbiotic relationship: "The words we had were the right ones; we were easy and right with each other, as it happened, natural, full of love and trust. 'Look,' one of us would say to the other, 'here is something new, something that we have not seen together'" (154). This last sentence is especially important -- it is not only the ability to
Reckoning Life has some form of development through a range of events that could be considered rites of passages for every person. These experience that individuals face during their lives is substantial different yet contains many similarities at the same time. This essay will look at two accounts of different experiences by two famous authors that tackle aspects of what it means to face different stages in one's life. Both stories
Lost in Translation This story is a typical immigrant success tale. It is a rich and an ambiguous story with the first section of the narrative representing, "Paradise," and revolves around Hoffman's childhood and adolescence in Cracow. The most prominent image in Eva Hoffman's mind during her family's immigration to Canada was the crowd gathered at the shore to see the ship off. She was thirteen years old and left
Memory, a Voyage Into History N. Scott Monday and Sherman Alexie are both story writers that focus on the environment. Storytelling is an important activity to the Native American culture that passes down information through each generation and imparts wisdom as it is retold. Although the stories told by N. Scott Monday and Sherman Alexie are 25 years apart, they share some similarities along with some differences. Every writer offers a
Prejudice The Many Faces of Prejudice If I walk in to a bookstore or browse online I will find hundreds, in fact thousands, of essays, books, articles, and speeches about prejudice. Obviously, most of them are predictably against prejudice. Begin reading any of them at random and chances are good that they will contain the phrases 'don't have prejudice towards people' or 'prejudice is a bad thing,' but what puzzles my mind
Black Elk utilizes his visions to create understanding of nearly all things he is later exposed to. The discussion in closing will further illuminate his utilization of vision, to ask for help for his people in a time of crisis. To discuss the vertical model of artistic communication it is difficult to narrow the filed to just one example, as Native American literature, and to a lesser degree film have
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