House from dawn

House of Dawn (Original title: House Made of Dawn ) is a novel by American writer N. Scott Momaday from 1968. It was in 1969 the first book of a Native American that the Pulitzer Prize was awarded in the Fiction . House of Dawn is widely known for its role in the breakthrough of American indigenous literature and its relevance to American indigenous anthropology .

background

The story of the novel House of Dawn was originally told by the author in a collection of poems. He later rewrote them into little stories and then put them together into a complete novel. The narrative is largely based on Momaday's personal experiences as part of the Jemez Pueblo in the US state of New Mexico , which he associates with fiction and is also inspired by beliefs and rituals.

Similar to the protagonist of the novel, Momaday lived both outside and within Western society. He grew up on a reservation and later attended school and university outside the reservation. Some details of the novel are based on real events. In his memoirs, Momady tells of an incident in Jemez, on which the murder in the novel is based. A Native American killed a New Mexico State Trooper at the time, which sparked heated debates throughout American society. The resettlement workers' program also comes from reality: Many of Momaday's friends from the reservation lived with the help of this program in Los Angeles , Chicago or Detroit and were not happy there, like the protagonist in the novel. According to various historians, the novel is very precise in its portrayal of the Peyote religion , a Native American church. However, the peyote rituals usually take place in a desert, not in a city.

action

The storyline of the novel is between July 20, 1945 and February 28, 1952. The narrative consists of an undated prologue and four dated sections that were recorded in Walatowa (traditional name for the Jemez), New Mexico and Los Angeles, California, play. In addition to the framework story, which tells current events from Abel's life, various flashbacks and memories from the perspectives of different characters are embedded.

Abel is the novel's protagonist , a young Native American . Born in 1920 to an unknown father and a Walatowa mother, he grew up after their death with his grandfather Francisco in a tribe of the Pueblo people in the US state of New Mexico. At the beginning of the novel, Abel returns from World War II traumatized , has a drinking problem, and has difficulties getting used to life within the tribe's community.

He takes up a job as a wood chopper, which was arranged by the village priest Father Olguin. He then works for Angela St. James, a wealthy, newly married, white woman who stays in the area without her husband because of the healing properties of the mineral springs. Angela seduces Abel and promises to help him leave the reservation and find opportunities for a better job. Through this affair, too, Abel realizes that his return to the reservation was unsuccessful. He no longer feels at home. After a ritual to celebrate the Santiago Festival, he is humiliated by the albino Juan Reyes and then stabs him. During the trial, Abel protests the murder as justified and states that he would do it again. He is given a 6 year prison sentence.

After his time in prison, Abel first joined a group of local, also resettled young men from various reservations in Los Angeles, but didn't really feel part of them either. He only makes friends with Benally (called Ben), who like Abel comes from a reservation in New Mexico. Ben gets him a job and takes him into his apartment.

Abel's social worker Milly becomes his steadfast friend and he has happy days with her and Ben. Still, he keeps getting into trouble - blamed primarily on the social workers, probation officers, police officers, and other former Los Angeles reservation residents who ridiculed and humiliated him. After he reacts to this by consuming alcohol and staying away from work, he is also humiliated by his boss and Abel resigns. A downward spiral begins and Abel is regularly drunk, borrowing money from Ben and Milly, which he never repays while he is only in the apartment and sleeps. Ben finally throws him out. Abel then wants revenge on Martinez, a corrupt police officer who robbed Ben and hit Abel with his baton. Abel finds Martinez and is beaten almost to death by him and left on the beach with injuries. Angela St. James visits him in the hospital and gives him new courage to face life. Then he is put on the train by Ben and he drives back to his reservation.

On his return to the New Mexico reservation, Abel takes care of his dying grandfather Francisco, who tells him stories from his youth. As one of the tribal elders he is familiar with numerous ceremonies and rituals, he emphasizes the importance of solidarity with the traditions of his people. After his grandfather's death, Abel takes part in a ritual that he had told him about - the running of the dead. As he runs, he begins to sing for himself and the deceased. So he finally returns mentally to his people and finally finds his place in the world.

Motifs and symbols

Similar to many works of indigenous American literature, the motif of alienation and the associated search for one's own identity is very central in Haus aus Dawn . Growing up on the reservation, Abel not only has major problems with the experiences of the war and its effects, but also with life in the metropolis of Los Angeles. Because of his absence during the war, like many Native Americans during and after World War II, he lost touch with his people. Merging the tribe's way of life with the presence of a modern world is a fundamental problem for every generation of Native Americans, potentially including those who did not go to war.

Grandfather Francisco represents the traditional values ​​of the tribe. It is symbolic of the older generation who preserve the cultural heritage and try to pass it on to the younger members of the community. Through his upbringing, Abell develops a bond with his tribe and a sense of nature, life and death. However, Francisco's upbringing also temporarily hindered Abel in his identity formation, for example he forbade him to have a relationship with his symbolic surrogate mother Josie.

Another symbol of Abel's isolation and detachment from his origins is his problem with articulation. Especially within tribes that have a long oral tradition, the loss of power over one's own words is a decisive factor. The word has a high priority, especially in ritual traditions, and the language itself has an important meaning. The greater the vocabulary and the knowledge of traditional stories and legends, the better everyone can be integrated into the tribe - or not.

While the eagle and the snake in the religions of the southwestern tribes of the Native Americans often stand for the gain of supernatural powers or the coming of the water, for Abel the eagle symbolizes above all freedom and beauty as well as liveliness. Abel does not accept that the members of the Eagle Guard Society ultimately want to keep this symbol of freedom captive. That he frees the male eagle, kills the female and thus harms the community, again symbolically shows the alienation from his tribe and thus the values ​​of his people. The killing of the female eagle in particular shows Abel's rebellion against the old traditions that arouse incomprehension in him.

His alcoholism, which is very evident right at the beginning of the novel, is a sign of his inability to process what he experienced during the war and of his inner instability, which stems from his bicultural situation.

A particularly clear reflection of his inability to come to terms with the identity crisis after the war is the murder of the albino Juan Reyes. Abel holds a grudge against his opponent for his loss to Reyes. Since he looks so different, of all things, Abel also imagines he is a witcher and must be killed. This prejudicial thinking shows Abel's inability to deal with the unknown. His social and personal isolation culminates in this outbreak of violence and aggressiveness, which is also representative of his revenge on the world of the white man in general. His fear of a supernatural power that could influence him also describes a widespread phenomenon within indigenous societies.

After Abel immersed himself in the western way of life of the people in Los Angeles, his attempts to adapt culturally are particularly underlined by the symbol of the shoe. While shoes in many indigenous communities are only allowed to be worn with or without heels cut off, they are a status symbol especially in Los Angeles and there for Abel too. Another symbol of the western world are the tanks he encounters in war. They represent the deadly power of an aggressive society. The created image of the tanks as an embodiment of destruction and death stands in stark contrast to the image of the eagle, which Abel associates with freedom and life.

A symbol, which is also connected to a bird, appears when Abel is injured and lies near death on the beach. The image of the dying bird resembles its situation. The motif of the moon also appears here, which specifically connects Abel's past with his present. By remembering the dying water bird, in whose eyes he hadn't seen fear, he can take some courage himself. The moon stands symbolically for the possibility of rebirth, so rebirth itself is symbolized by dawn. The moon is also a cross-novel link between different episodes in Abel's life.

The symbolic walking with which the novel begins and ends, in connection with dawn, can accordingly be seen as a representation of resurrection or, in Abel's case, a return to the origin and associated healing. The fact that Abel runs at dawn and sings the previously lost words of the "Night Chant" symbolizes the end of his identity crisis and the return to the values ​​of the tribe.

Allusions and references

The novel's success is also attributed to its closeness to reality. Allusions to known problems and true events can be found, for example, in the subject of the return from the Second World War and the Jemez people in general. But also the change of residence, which Abel has to cope with several times, and the religion of the peyote can be seen as references to reality. The so-called "Sun Dance" and the "Night Chant" as well as the tradition of running ( Jemez runners) are taken from actual customs of the indigenous people of America.

The Second World War can be seen as the point of the first major exodus of Indians from the reservations. Approximately 25,000 indigenous people, a third of the indigenous men between the ages of 18 and 50, fought for America in World War II, most of them in the Army . For many of these men, the war was the first opportunity to come into contact with non-indigenous Americans, as they themselves had lived largely isolated on the reservations until then. Allison Bernstein writes that many of the Aborigines were held in high esteem by their non-indigenous comrades as the image of a tough Indian warrior had become part of American identity. This contact with the culture outside the reserves also changed the indigenous culture within the tribes. The US Indian Commissioner said in 1945 that this war had the greatest cultural impact on indigenous life since the indigenous people were driven into the reservations. He changed the habits, attitudes and the economic situation of many tribal members permanently. In particular, the newly discovered opportunity to find well-paid work outside the reserve caused significant changes. Nevertheless, as in the rest of the country, there were of course great losses within the indigenous population. Of the approximately 1,200 Pueblo members who went to war, only about half came home alive. Those who did return often faced problems such as alienation and difficulties in reintegration. Depending on the tribe, their reputation was also seriously endangered. While some tribes received the veterans back as heroes, others treated them like lepers after coming into contact with white Americans. This was one of the many reasons many young reservation residents became addicted to alcoholism. In general, alcohol addiction is a widespread problem among indigenous young men and a tool often used to deal with problems inside and outside the reserve.

House of Dawn also deals with topics that extend into the late 1800s. Reverend Tosamah tells the old story of the Kiowa who hunted buffalo and their expulsion. The Kiowa are an impressive example of the displacement and control of American indigenous tribes by the US troops and their government. This story, told by the Reverend, is also relevant when it comes to America's resettlement policy and the problems of the veterans' economic situation. Many soldiers had got used to a regular paycheck and thus had only more difficulties to find their way back into the tribe and its tense economic situation. The resettlement workers often failed, just as Abel's resettlement to Los Angeles failed. This is also a common phenomenon among Native American veterans. Abel's path - from the war back to the reservation, from there to the large, modern city and, after the failed attempt to establish himself in society outside the reservation, finally returning to the reservation - was not unusual for indigenous veterans.

Closely related to the Kiowa is the peyote religion , which is mainly taught in the book by John Big Bluff Tosamah. It is a religion that believes in the supernatural abilities of the peyote cactus , which is capable of working miracles. The Kiowa used peyote even before they settled on their reservation in the 1870s, but it was several decades before the belief spread to other tribes. The "Sun Dance" is also based on a true tradition. The ritual of the sun dance also comes from the Kiowa tradition and is supposed to settle disputes, celebrate the harvest and ensure a continued splendid buffalo population. In addition, the Kiowa promise victories in battle, success in marriage and the recovery of the sick from this ritual. The rather brutal tradition was banned by the United States government in 1881, but was revived in the late 1950s.

A very specific allusion is the story of the bear, which Abel first tells Angela and which appears a second time when Angela visits Abel in the hospital and tells him that she now always tells this story to her son. The story is about a young Indian warrior who had a bear and a girl as parents and was very noble and wise. The warrior has had many adventures in the course of his life and eventually he becomes a great leader and saves all of his people. This story is based on an ancient Navajo myth.

reception

Just published, the novel did not make any big waves in America and especially in Germany - perhaps because, as one review suggested, it would be very un-American to criticize the novel by an indigenous American writer.

The first reviewers complained that the novel was too opaque, so Marshall Spargue in his book review in the New York Times. However, he also admitted that this might be inevitable if one wanted to accurately portray a culture and its mysteries, alien to most readers. Furthermore, he thought the opacity was a possible reason for the authentic effect of the novel. Spargue also brings up the difficulty of writing about an oral culture, especially since it is written in English - the language of the original oppressor of the indigenous tribes. He argues that the mysteries of a culture foreign to the reader could not be comprehensibly described in such a short novel, even by a talented writer like N. Scott Momaday.

Many critics, such as Carole Oleson, who published a detailed analysis of the novel in 1973, point out that the reader needs significantly more information in order to be able to understand all the subtleties, subtleties and allusions of the work as the ignorant. Baine Kerr developed this idea further and argued that Momaday uses the modern English novel as a draft horse for an important text that tries in itself to rewrite Indian culture, as well as its myths and feelings, into a new art form without losing any of its value.

Other critics thought the novel was just an interesting twist on the familiar theme of alienation. So it is more of a social statement than a substantial, academic achievement. The novel is more a reflection than a novel in the broadest sense of the word. Others criticized the unpleasant, cumbersome dialogues and the descriptions themselves as a bunch of garish fragments.

Most of the time, however, the book was rated a success. Spargue finally concluded in his article that the novel was excellent. Author Momaday earned praise for the rich descriptions of indigenous life in the novel. In the meantime, recognition for Momaday's fictional works has risen significantly, and his critics have also recognized the value of Haus von Dawn as a special form of the novel. Momaday's performance is being valued more and more, especially by contemporary critics. In a review from 1970 it was already emphasized that the novel offers a remarkable synthesis of poetry and well-founded emotional and intellectual insight into the thought processes of an Indian young man. The book has recently been seen time and again as an artistically valuable work. Critic Kenneth Lincoln called the award of the Pulitzer Prize to House of Dawn as the moment when the so-called Native American Renaissance began.

The Native American Renaissance and the associated flowering of Native American Literature did not become a particularly significant phenomenon in Germany. Only SPIEGEL editor Gunar Ortlepp called Haus von Dawn in 1990 the first classic of this “blossoming Native American literature”.

Awards

• 1969: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Publications

Original editions

Initially, House Made of Dawn was published by Harper & Row . Other editions were later brought out by HarperCollins , the PeguinGroup , Econo-Clad Book, and the University of Arizona Press .

German translations

A German translation of the novel was published in 1971 by Ullstein Verlag under the name Haus aus Morgendämmerung . In 1978 he also published an unabridged version of the novel. In 1988 the Diederichs Verlag in Munich published the German translation by Jochen Eggert again. In the same year a Reclam version of the novel was published.

See also

• Navajo Nation Reservation
• Kiowa
• Indians of North America / Indians
• Peyote

literature

• Fatim Boutros: Revision as an Illusion? The coming to terms with slavery in recent novels. Königshausen and Neumann, 2004.
• Christopher Douglas: The flawed design: American imperialism in N. Scott Momaday's “House Made of Dawn” and Cormac McCarthy's “Blood Meridian” . In: Studies in Contemporary Fiction , Fall 2003, Vol. 45 i1 p. 3.
• R Jane Hafen: Pan-Indianism and Tribal Sovereignties in House Made of Dawn and the Names . In: Western American Literature , 34, 1, 1999, pp. 6-24.
• Bernard A. Hirsch: Self-Hatred and Spiritual Corruption in House Made of Dawn . loc. cit., Vol. XVII, No. 4. Winter, 1983, p. 307.
• Marion Willard Hylton: On a Trail of Pollen: Momaday's House Made of Dawn . In: Critique , Vol. XIV, No. 2, 1972, p. 60.
• Helen Jaskoski: House Made of Dawn: Overview . In: Jim Kamp (Ed.): Reference Guide to American Literature . 3rd ed. St. James Press, 1994.
• David Kelly: Overview of “House Made of Dawn” . In: Novels for Students , Vol. 10, 2000, the Gale Group.
• Carole Oleson: The Remembered Earth: Momaday's House Made of Dawn . In: South Dakota Review , Vol. 11, No. 1, 1973, pp. 59-78.
• Susan Scarberry-Garcia: Landmarks of Healing: A Study of "House Made of Dawn" . University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1990.
• Matthias Schubnell: N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background . University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.
• Marilyn Nelson Waniek: The Power of Language in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn . In: Minority Voices , Vol. 4, No. 1, 1980, pp. 23-28.
• Thekla Zachrau: N. Scott Momaday: Towards an Indian Identity . In: American Indian Culture and Research Journal , 3, 1.1979, pp. 39-56.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} N. Scott Momaday: The Names . University of Arizona Press, 1987.
2. ^ ^{A b} Lawrence J. Evers: The Killing of a New Mexican State Trooper: Ways of Telling a Historical Event. In: Andrew Wiget (Ed.): Critical Essays on Native American Literature . GK Hall, Boston 1985.
3. ^ N. Scott Momaday: The Way to Rainy Mountain . New Mexico University Press, 1969.
4. ↑ Omer C. Stewart: Peyote Religion: A History . University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
5. ^ Alan R. Velie: House Made of Dawn: Nobody's Protest Novel . In: Four American Indian Literary Masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor . University of Oklahoma Press, 1982, pp. 52-64 .
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Allison R. Bernstein: American Indians and World War II . University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
7. ^ Thomas E. Sanders, Walter W. Peek: Literature of the American Indian . Glencoe Press, Beverly Hills 1973.
8. ^ Elsie Clews Parsons: Pueblo Indian Religion . vol. 2. University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
9. ^ ^{A b} Lynn Domina: Liturgies, Rituals, Ceremonies: The Conjunction of Roman Catholic and Native American Religious Traditions in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn . Paintbrush 21, 1994, p. 7-27 .
10. ^ ^{A b c} Joseph F. Trimmer: Native Americans and the American Mix: N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn . The Indiana Social Studies Quarterly, No. 28.2 , 1975, p. 75-91 .
11. ↑ ^{a b c} Donald Sandner: Navaho Symbols of Healing . Healing Arts Press, Rochester VT 1991.
12. ^ Mircea Eliade: Patterns in Comparative Religion . Bison Books, 1996.
13. ↑ Omer C. Stewart: Peyote Religion: A History. University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.
14. ↑ Omer C. Stewart: Peyote Religion: A History . University of Oklahoma Press, 1987 (In this ritual, wooden skewers are pushed through folds of skin in the chest or back of the participants. A leather rope is attached to the end of the skewer as well as to the end of the Sun Lodge so that the "dancer" is hung up and in the Air hangs until the skin folds tear and he falls to the ground.).
15. ↑ Gladys Amanda Reichard: Navaho Religion: A Study of Symbolism . In: Myth Series . Princeton University Press, 2014.
16. ^ William James Smith: Review . In: Commonwealth . tape LXXXVIII , September 20, 1968.
17. ^ Marshal Spargue: Book Review Digest . Ed .: Josephine Samudio. Vol. 64. HW Wilson, New York 1969.
18. ^ Marshal Spargue: Review Digest . Ed .: Josephine Samudio. Vol. 64. HW Wilson, New York 1969.
19. ↑ Baine Kerr: The Novel as a Sacred Text: N. Scott Momaday's Myth-Making Ethic . Vol. 63, No. 2 . Southwest Review, 1978, pp. 172-179 .
20. ^ ^{A b} John Z. Bennett: Review of House Made of Dawn . In: Western American Literature . Vol. 5, No. 1 , 1970, p. 69 .
21. ↑ Brigham Narins: N. Scott Momaday - Introduction . In: Contemporary Literature . Vol. 95. Gale Cengage, 1997.
22. ^ JG Ravi Kumar: Vision and Form in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn . In: International Journal of Multidisciplinary Approach and Studies . Vol. 01, No. 3 , 2014.
23. ↑ Kenneth Lincoln: Native American Renaissance . University of California Press, Boston 1983.
24. ^ Gunnar Ortlep: Love spells for underdogs . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1990 ( online ).