House Made of Dawn Essay
Jake Scaduto
ENG 359
10/1/12
Different Eyes Yield Different Results As is true in any facet of life, your experiences and the events that you have encountered throughout your time on this planet shape everything you know about things in the world. This remains true for the characters in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn. The characters of Abel, Francisco, Benally, and Tosamah have all been through various different adventures during their lifetimes. Thanks to pre-existing biases, racism, and life changing events, Abel, Francisco, Ben, and Tosamah all have different conceptions of the world, especially in their attitudes toward Native Americans as well as the white society and these attitudes shape the identity of each individual character. The character that shows the most outward signs of his differentiating views toward Native Americans and white society is Abel. One of the hardest things to go through in life and one of the most frequently used devices by authors to show devastation to characters in fiction is the loss of a loved one. Abel is one of those characters that has experienced the loss of his mother and brother and the way he viewed the world after their loss is very different in comparison to someone who has not experienced it. He was without that nurturing figure in his life that could be there at all time telling him that everything would be okay after a rough day and be there for him during the strict upbringing of Native American life. In the death of his older brother, Vidal, Abel lost someone he could look up to and someone who could begin to teach him the ways of Native American life and instill in him the traditions of their culture. The loss that Abel experiences leads to him being reckless in life and without any direction. Without this, he feels out of place and that lack of direction leads him to joining the Army. Although we don’t hear much about his time in the Army, the one part we do learn about it is very
ENG 359
10/1/12
Different Eyes Yield Different Results As is true in any facet of life, your experiences and the events that you have encountered throughout your time on this planet shape everything you know about things in the world. This remains true for the characters in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn. The characters of Abel, Francisco, Benally, and Tosamah have all been through various different adventures during their lifetimes. Thanks to pre-existing biases, racism, and life changing events, Abel, Francisco, Ben, and Tosamah all have different conceptions of the world, especially in their attitudes toward Native Americans as well as the white society and these attitudes shape the identity of each individual character. The character that shows the most outward signs of his differentiating views toward Native Americans and white society is Abel. One of the hardest things to go through in life and one of the most frequently used devices by authors to show devastation to characters in fiction is the loss of a loved one. Abel is one of those characters that has experienced the loss of his mother and brother and the way he viewed the world after their loss is very different in comparison to someone who has not experienced it. He was without that nurturing figure in his life that could be there at all time telling him that everything would be okay after a rough day and be there for him during the strict upbringing of Native American life. In the death of his older brother, Vidal, Abel lost someone he could look up to and someone who could begin to teach him the ways of Native American life and instill in him the traditions of their culture. The loss that Abel experiences leads to him being reckless in life and without any direction. Without this, he feels out of place and that lack of direction leads him to joining the Army. Although we don’t hear much about his time in the Army, the one part we do learn about it is very