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Martinez was corrupt; one night, he stole money from Abel and beat him with his nightstick. However, he was too inebriated to fight, and Martinez beat him so badly that he had to go to the hospital. Ben visited Abel in the hospital and called Angela to ask her to visit Abel to lift his spirits, as he helped her many years before. One night, too drunk and helpless to answer Tosamah's taunts, he sets out to seek some kind of release, to kill the evil spirit, the culebra, that has brought about his misery. Instead of exorcising the evil, he undergoes a mortal combat (presumably at the hands of Martinze, the sadistic cop) that leaves him broken and near death.
Father Olguin
An elderly man, Francisco is mentioned in an old journal, written by Fray Nicholas. The protagonist of the story, Abel is a Native American war veteran who struggles to find his place in the world. Some critics have interpreted Abel's behavior as being caused by the strain of trying to balance the expectations of white culture with Indian culture. Others assert that the novel's flashbacks indicate that Abel was estranged and uncommunicative even before he left the reservation for the army.
House Made of DawnN. Scott Momaday1968
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Though Tosamah ridicules Anglo cultural arrogance and the stereotypes that feed it, Abel—alcoholic, at times violent, and inar-ticulate—seems to him to lend credence to the stereotypes; thus Tosamah, educated and articulate as he is, feels misrepresented, degraded by association. Seeing Abel through Indian eyes, Tosamah cannot help but admire him as a kind of modern-day warrior who refuses to give in meekly to the torment and tribulations of urban Indian life. But if Tosamah as an Indian is vicariously elevated by Abel's integrity, he is at the same time humbled by the lack of his own. Viewed from either perspective, then, white or Indian, Abel engenders in Tosamah self-contempt so strong that it is beyond enduring; he is anathema to the illusory conception of his own superiority that is Tosamah's primary means of emotional and psychological survival.
Return to Nature
In fiction, any abnormality like that has to have a symbolic level, especially when it has to do with something as important as sight. Father Olguin is introduced in the same scene as Angela St. John, and it is his connection to the protagonist, Abel, through her that solidifies his position in the story. She appears first, disrupting the natural serenity of the reservation with a car that is noticeable from a great distance. Since the publication of House Made of Dawn, Momaday's literary reputation has rested on his work as a poet and critic, and he has been praised for his ability to blend Kiowa sensibilities with Western literary methods. After World War II, the resources on Native American reservations became economic assets. Some politicians in the government argued that it was wasteful to allow Indians to keep such valuable property when they were not using it.
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The Postwar Reservation
Abel continues to run despite his exhaustion, and as he takes in the beauty of the natural world, he sings the song of the house made of dawn. House Made of Dawn employs a nonlinear narrative to follow its protagonist, Abel, as he navigates coming of age as a Native American man in a changing society. The story opens with Abel running along an empty Southwestern landscape. It then shifts back in time to July 20, 1945, as Abel returns from World War II to Walatowa, his home in the Jemez Pueblo.
Moreover, it is clear at the time of the murder that Abel regards the albino as a snake. He feels "the scales of the lips and the hot slippery point of the tongue, writhing." But that Abel is "acting entirely within the Indian tradition" when he kills the albino is wrong. His re-entry into the village spoiled, Abel turns not to the ceremonial structure of the pueblo for support but to Angela. And it is the Benevides house, not the land, which provides "the wings and the stage" for their affair. Abel's first sexual encounter with Angela is juxtaposed in the novel with Francisco's encounter with the albino witch in his cornfield. Indeed, Angela, who "keened" to the unnatural qualities of the albino during the corre de gaio, echoes the auditory symbols of evil mentioned earlier.
Though Mexican, his Catholic training has accustomed him to Western thought; as a result, he is as curious about Native American customs as I would be in his position. At the same time, I find that Father Olguin's story provides a parallel version of the book's main story. The best approach one can take to an unfamiliar text is to burrow into it at any point of access possible, like a termite forcing an attack upon a tree. I will admit that there is much I find perplexing and uninviting about N. At times it seems pointlessly convoluted, while at other parts it seems painfully simplistic. There were some points in my first reading where I wanted to put the book aside, to write it off as a case of weak writing masquerading as a work of substance.
The first is the world of his father’s, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world—modern, industrial America—pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, claiming his soul, and goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of depravity and disgust. But the other world—modern, industrial America—pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, trying to claim his soul, and goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of depravity and disgust. The third section of the novel is dated February 20, 1952, and is narrated by Ben Benally, a Navajo relocated to urban Los Angeles. Benally's rambling narration includes references to more of Abel's life in Los Angeles — his job at a box-stapling factory, his encounters with a sadistic policeman named Martinez, his participation in the peyote services, and socializing with Milly. Benally also recollects the recent encounter with Angela St. John, who visited Abel in the hospital when he was recovering from the brutal beating that left his hands broken.
Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah, the pastor of the Holiness Pan-Indian Rescue Mission and the Priest of the Sun, preaches to Native Americans in the city. Tosamah is a Kiowa, and he recalls stories told him by his grandmother, who had been present for the last of the Kiowa tribe's sun dances in 1887. He passes these Indian stories along to those in his congregation, many of whom are from other native groups. At the feast of Santiago, Abel participates in a competition that is based on a folk story about Santiago, who founded the town by sacrificing a rooster. The townspeople believe that the discarded feathers and blood of the rooster produced plants and animals from the ground.
Abel returns to Walatowa in time to care for his dying grandfather and perform the appropriate burial rituals. Having seen to this duty, he begins a ceremonial run into the dawn. The novel has moved in a circle, returning to the event depicted in the prologue. Francisco is dying, and Abel forces himself to push through his alcoholism and the remaining pain from Martinez’s attack to care for his grandfather. As Francisco dies, he reflects on his life in Walatowa, speaking in a jumbled mix of Spanish, English, and Jemez about meaningful experiences throughout his life. In his last memory, Francisco recalls losing stamina in a race but continuing to run despite being out of breath.
The extent and cost of his self-deception, however, are most painfully revealed in his comments about the land. By manipulating a variety of verbal styles in "The Gospel According to John," Tosamah keeps his parishioners off balance, dazzling as much as enlightening them. Through an ever-shifting combination of biblical oratory, street talk, exposition, and the simple, direct narrative style of the storyteller, Tosamah tries to relate to his audience on several levels simultaneously, to establish at once his oneness with and superiority to them. He wants to be perceived as a follow Indian sharing a similar culture and values, as a ghetto brother sharing the hardship of the streets, and as a teacher in both the shamanistic and professorial senses. The sermon is full of insight, but it is a masterpiece of verbal gymnastics as well.
The bad news is that this prevents readers from learning much about either world; the good news is that this alienation mirrors what Abel is going through, and it therefore takes us closer to the soul of the story. Moreover, Angela is staying at Los Ojos, translated as "The Eyes." Father Olguin is aware of her from the time that she walks into his church. Readers could take his curiosity to mean that he is a man of the reservation—that his way of thinking is not like that of the outside world.
But he also feels the same need with regard to his heritage and his people. When Tosamah speaks so lovingly, so evocatively in his second sermon, "The Way to Rainy Mountain," of his journey to rediscover his Indian self, we cannot doubt his sincerity. This sermon is longer than his first, and it is free of the verbal gamesmanship that characterizes much of "The Gospel." Still, he needs to be a winner. He sees in his parishioners, and even more clearly in Abel, the fate of Indians in a white world, and he cannot accept such a density.
The albino or, significantly, the white man, has been seen earlier as a figure of evil when Francisco heard whisperings from the corn and was afraid; after he left, the albino emerged or rather seemed to materialize from the green leaves. Since corn is life itself to the Indian, to hear an evil spirit breathing in the corn is a dangerous thing. A snake, or culebra, is likewise a symbol of evil, and when the albino threatens to turn into a snake, Abel's course is clear. Significantly, after his years in prison his attitude is unchanged. "They must know," Ben says, "that he would kill the white man again, if he had the chance … for he would know what the white man was, and he would kill him if he could. A man kills such an enemy if he can."
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