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This understanding sends him out to run in the canyon at dawn, as Francisco had done long before. By carrying on this tradition he accepts his past and perhaps himself. I can, however, experience it through the eyes of Father Olguin—the man who comes to the reservation just as I have come to Momaday's world through the book, and tries to understand.
Culture Clash
Angela, now the mother of a son, told Abel a story with a heroic theme, intimating that he reminded her of the hero. Ben puts Abel on a train back to the reservation and narrates what has happened to Abel in Los Angeles. First, he was ridiculed by Reverend Tosamah during a poker game with the Indian group.
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Literary Devices used in House Made of Dawn
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Many whites met real Indians for the first time, and many Indians met their first whites. Examples of this harmony can be found with the characters in the novel. Francisco, an old farmer, is said to have "an ethnic, planter's love of harvest, and of rain." Abel chops wood in a way that indicates a special understanding of the inanimate object, a relationship that the white woman Angela wonders about.
John Big Bluff Tosamah
He spent the days lounging around the apartment in an angry, drunken haze. He became frustrated with his roommate’s behavior and threw him out. During this time, a police officer named Martinez was hassling Abel.
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Angela is unhappy and hopes that an affair with Abel will distract her. House Made of Dawn describes several ceremonies and festivals detail to showcase various Southwestern Native American religions. These ceremonies grant a sense of community, ecstasy, and understanding to the participants. They often coincide with revelations or moments of growth for the characters; for instance, Francisco is accepted as a voice in his community when he performs well as a drummer, and Abel first encounters the albino man during a ceremonial fight at a festival.
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A patient requires a chantway ritual when his life is in some way out of order or harmony. In order for that harmony to be restored he must be taken through a ritual re-emergence journey paralleling that of the People. It is important to note the role of the singer and his ritual song here, for without songs there can be no cure or restoration of order. Through the power of the chanter's words the patient's life is brought under ritual control, and he is cured.
In Western culture, readers look for the "moral" of a story, especially one that is told in the context of a religious lesson. In the case of the folklore, interpretation for an audience of outsiders is almost impossible, so it is hard to explain the culture that values them. On the contrary, the fact that Western myths can be made so accessible is one of the factors that has helped Western culture dominate the globe during the age of colonization. Some critics interpret Momaday's novel as a statement about the difficulty faced by Native Americans as they are forced to assimilate into the outside world. This struggle is reflected in the experiences of the protagonist, Abel, as he returns home after a stint in the army during World War II. Francisco recalls taking part in the Winter Race and has a page in his ledger with a drawing of himself running the race and the caption "1889." In the 1940s, when the novel begins, Francisco is a farmer working on the communal land owned by the reservation.
He was alone, and he wanted to make a song out of the colored canyon, the way the women of Torreón made songs upon their looms out of colored yarn, but he had not got the right words together. It would have been a creation song; he would have sung lowly of the first world, of fire and flood, and of the emergence of dawn from the hills. Through their knowledge of the Navajo cultural landscape the Twins proved who and what they were to the Sun. The Native American novel House Made of Dawn … presents the failure of Christianity. Further, its mythic vision of existence becomes an alternative not only to Christianity but to modern civilization based on secular, technological structures….
Point of View
Therefore, because of the guilt he feels, a guilt stemming from a profound sense of his own inadequacy, he projects upon Abel his own diminished sense of self. After a brief prologue describing a man named Abel, who is running in the Southwestern countryside, the story proper opens on July 20, 1945, when Abel, an orphan raised by his traditionalist grandfather, Francisco, returns to Walatowa after serving in World War II. Alienated and disorganized by war experiences (and also, it is suggested, by the early loss of mother and brother and from bouts of malaise), Abel is unable to make a meaningful reintegration into the life of the village. Ben helps Abel catch a train from Los Angeles back to New Mexico. The perspective switches to Ben, who gives an account of Abel’s life in California as he understands it.
Father Olguin's enlightenment finally comes in the simple realization that to the Indians, as to death, the question "Do you know what time it is?" is irrelevant. The lesson of his predecessor, the temptation of the flesh, the humbling experience of his crippling illness all lead him toward this moment, just as Abel is guided to it by Angela, the albino, Benally, Tosamah, and all the rest. Whatever old Francisco carried within him passes on to Abel at his death.
"He had lost his place. He had long ago been at the center, had known where he was, had lost his way, had wandered to the end of the earth, was even now reeling on the edge of the void … The sea reached and waned, licked after him and withdrew, falling off forever in the abyss." Where he has understanding based on knowledge, she has understanding based on love. "She was a lot like Ben. She believed in Honor, Industry, the Second Chance, the Brotherhood of Man, the American Dream and him—Abel; she believed in him." She also loved him; she gave him money, a place to stay, and ministered to his needs out of love. They are drawn together by their awful loneliness, but it is not enough. All her experience had been a getting away from the land where his had been a returning.
"He brings American readers to a new sense of maturity through the use of the traditions of America," Meredith maintained. When he arrives back at Walatowa drunk, it is clear that he has not assimilated the standards of the white culture; yet after a short time, it becomes obvious that he is not comfortable with Native American culture either. While his grandfather, Francisco, remembers trying to instill "the old ways" into Abel, Abel remembers his advice as, "You ought to do this and that." He makes "a poor showing, full of caution and gesture" when he tries at the rooster-grabbing competition during the festival. Later, he kills the competition champion when he sees turning into an animal—the sort of transformation common to Native American stories such as Benally's story about a Bear and a Snake. Exposition — The novel opens in the late 1940s, with Abel returning to his reservation in Walatowa, New Mexico, after serving in World War II. The reservation is a place where traditional Native American culture collides with the influences of modern American life.
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