House Made of Dawn
Encyclopedia
House Made of Dawn is a novel
by N. Scott Momaday
, widely credited as leading the way for the breakthrough of Native American literature
into the mainstream. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
in 1969, and has also been noted for its significance in Native American Anthropology.
. Like Abel, Momaday lived inside and outside of mainstream society, growing up on reservations and later attending school and teaching at major universities. In the novel Momaday combines his personal experiences with his imagination - something his father (Al Momaday) and especially his mother taught him to do, according to his memoir
The Names.
Details in the novel correspond to real-life occurrences. Momaday refers in his memoir The Names to an incident that took place at Jemez on which he based the murder in House Made of Dawn. A native
resident killed a New Mexico
state trooper, and the incident created great controversy. Native American beliefs and customs, actual geographical locations, and realistic events also inspired elements in House Made of Dawn. According to one of Momaday's letters:
According to one historian, the novel is highly accurate in its portrayal of a peyote
service, though in southern California
such services normally take place in the desert, not the city.
, Abel, returning to his reservation
in New Mexico
after fighting in World War II
. The war has left him emotionally devastated and he arrives too drunk to recognize his grandfather, Francisco. Now an old man with a lame leg, Francisco had earlier been a respected hunter and participant in the village's religious ceremonies. He raised Abel after the death of Abel's mother and older brother, Vidal. Francisco instilled in Abel a sense of native traditions and values, but the war and other events severed Abel's connections to that world of spiritual and physical wholeness and connectedness to the land and its people, a world known as a "house made of dawn."
After arriving in the village, Abel attains a job through Father Olguin chopping wood for Angela St. John, a rich white woman who is visiting the area to bathe in the mineral waters. Angela seduces Abel to distract herself from her own unhappiness, but also because she senses an animal-like quality in Abel. She promises to help him leave the reservation to find better means of employment. Possibly as a result of this affair, Abel realizes that his return to the reservation has been unsuccessful. He no longer feels at home and he is confused. His turmoil becomes clearer when he is beaten in a game of horsemanship by a local albino Indian named Juan Reyes, described as "the white man." Deciding Juan is a witch, Abel stabs him to death outside of a bar. Abel is then found guilty of murder and sent to jail.
, six and a half years later. Abel has been released from prison and unites with a local group of Indians. The leader of the group, Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah, Priest of the Sun, teases Abel as a "longhair" who is unable to assimilate to the demands of the modern world. However, Abel does become friends with an Indian named Ben Benally from a reservation in New Mexico and develops an intimate relationship with Milly, a kind, blonde social worker. However, his overall situation has not improved and Abel ends up drunk on the beach with his hands, head, and upper body beaten and broken. Memories run through his mind of the reservation, the war, jail, and Milly. Abel eventually finds the strength to pick himself up and he stumbles across town to the apartment he shares with Ben.
Early reviewers such as Marshall Sprague in his "Anglos and Indians," New York Times Book Review (9 June 1968) complained that the novel contained "plenty of haze" but suggested that perhaps this was inevitable in rendering "the mysteries of cultures different from our own" and then goes on to describe this as "one reason why [the story] rings so true." Sprague also discussed the seeming contradiction of writing about a native oral culture — especially in English, the language of the so-called oppressor. He continues, "The mysteries of cultures different from our own cannot be explained in a short novel, even by an artist as talented as Mr. Momaday". The many critics—such as Carole Oleson in her "The Remembered Earth: Momaday's House Made of Dawn," South Dakota Review II (Spring 1973)—who have given the novel extended analysis acknowledge that much more explanation is needed "before outsiders can fully appreciate all the subtleties of House Made of Dawn." Baine Kerr has elaborated this point to suggest that Momaday has used "the modern Anglo novel [as] a vehicle for a sacred text," that in it he is "attempting to transliterate Indian culture, myth, and sensibility into an alien art form, without loss."
However, some commentators have been more critical. In reviewing the "disappointing" novel for Commonweal (September 20, 1968), William James Smith chastised Momaday for his mannered style: "[He] writes in a lyric vein that borrows heavily from some of the slacker rhythms of the King James Bible . . . It makes you itch for a blue pencil to knock out all the intensified words that maintain the soporific flow" [link added]. Other critics said it was nothing but "an interesting variation of the old alienation
theme"; "a social statement rather than . . . a substantial artistic achievement"; "a memorable failure," "a reflection, not a novel in the comprehensive sense of the word" with "awkward dialogue and affected description"; "a batch of dazzling fragments".
Overall, the book has come to be seen as a success. Sprague concluded in his article that the novel was superb. And Momaday was widely praised for the novel's rich description of Indian life. Now there is a greater recognition of Momaday's fictional art, and critics have come to recognise its unique achievement as a novel. Despite a qualified reception the novel had succeeded in making its impact even on earlier critics though they were not sure of their own responses. They found it "a story of considerable power and beauty," "strong in imaginative imagery," creating a "world of wonder and exhilarating vastness." In more recent criticism there are signs of greater clarity of understanding of Momaday's achievement. In his review (which appeared in Western American Literature 5 (Spring 1970)), John Z. Bennett had pointed out how through "a remarkable synthesis of poetic mode and profound emotional and intellectual insight into the Indians' perduring human status["] Momaday's novel becomes at last the very act it is dramatizing, an artistic act, a "creation hymn."
. Many major American Indian novelists (e.g. Leslie Marmon Silko
, Gerald Vizenor
, James Welch, Sherman Alexie
and Louise Erdrich
) have cited the novel as a major inspiration for their own work.
, the Penguin Group
, Econo-Clad Books and the University of Arizona
Press.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by N. Scott Momaday
N. Scott Momaday
Navarre Scott Momaday is a Kiowa-Cherokee Pulitzer Prize-winning writer from Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona.-Background:...
, widely credited as leading the way for the breakthrough of Native American literature
Native American Renaissance
The Native American Renaissance was a term originally coined by critic Kenneth Lincoln in his 1983 book of the same title. Lincoln’s goal was to explore the explosion in production of literary works by Native Americans in the decade and a half after N. Scott Momaday had won the Pulitzer Prize in...
into the mainstream. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...
in 1969, and has also been noted for its significance in Native American Anthropology.
Background
With 198 pages, House Made of Dawn was conceived first as a series of poems, then replanned as stories, and finally shaped into a novel. It is based largely on Momaday's firsthand knowledge of life at Jemez PuebloJemez Pueblo, New Mexico
Jemez Pueblo is a census-designated place in Sandoval County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 1,953 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Albuquerque Metropolitan Statistical Area.The CDP is named after the pueblo at its center...
. Like Abel, Momaday lived inside and outside of mainstream society, growing up on reservations and later attending school and teaching at major universities. In the novel Momaday combines his personal experiences with his imagination - something his father (Al Momaday) and especially his mother taught him to do, according to his memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
The Names.
Details in the novel correspond to real-life occurrences. Momaday refers in his memoir The Names to an incident that took place at Jemez on which he based the murder in House Made of Dawn. A native
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
resident killed a New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
state trooper, and the incident created great controversy. Native American beliefs and customs, actual geographical locations, and realistic events also inspired elements in House Made of Dawn. According to one of Momaday's letters:
Abel is a composite of the boys I knew at Jemez. I wanted to say something about them. An appalling number of them are dead; they died young, and they died violent deaths. One of them was drunk and run over. Another was drunk and froze to death. (He was the best runner I ever knew). One man was murdered, butchered by a kinsman under a telegraph pole just east of San Ysidro. And yet another committed suicide. A good many who have survived this long are living under the Relocation Program in Los AngelesLos ÁngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, ChicagoChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Detroit, etc. They're a sad lot of people.
According to one historian, the novel is highly accurate in its portrayal of a peyote
Peyote
Lophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote , is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico...
service, though in southern California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
such services normally take place in the desert, not the city.
Part I: The Longhair
House Made of Dawn begins with the protagonistProtagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
, Abel, returning to his reservation
Indian reservation
An American Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs...
in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
after fighting in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The war has left him emotionally devastated and he arrives too drunk to recognize his grandfather, Francisco. Now an old man with a lame leg, Francisco had earlier been a respected hunter and participant in the village's religious ceremonies. He raised Abel after the death of Abel's mother and older brother, Vidal. Francisco instilled in Abel a sense of native traditions and values, but the war and other events severed Abel's connections to that world of spiritual and physical wholeness and connectedness to the land and its people, a world known as a "house made of dawn."
After arriving in the village, Abel attains a job through Father Olguin chopping wood for Angela St. John, a rich white woman who is visiting the area to bathe in the mineral waters. Angela seduces Abel to distract herself from her own unhappiness, but also because she senses an animal-like quality in Abel. She promises to help him leave the reservation to find better means of employment. Possibly as a result of this affair, Abel realizes that his return to the reservation has been unsuccessful. He no longer feels at home and he is confused. His turmoil becomes clearer when he is beaten in a game of horsemanship by a local albino Indian named Juan Reyes, described as "the white man." Deciding Juan is a witch, Abel stabs him to death outside of a bar. Abel is then found guilty of murder and sent to jail.
Part II: The Priest of the Sun
Part II takes place in Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, six and a half years later. Abel has been released from prison and unites with a local group of Indians. The leader of the group, Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah, Priest of the Sun, teases Abel as a "longhair" who is unable to assimilate to the demands of the modern world. However, Abel does become friends with an Indian named Ben Benally from a reservation in New Mexico and develops an intimate relationship with Milly, a kind, blonde social worker. However, his overall situation has not improved and Abel ends up drunk on the beach with his hands, head, and upper body beaten and broken. Memories run through his mind of the reservation, the war, jail, and Milly. Abel eventually finds the strength to pick himself up and he stumbles across town to the apartment he shares with Ben.
Part III: The Night Chanter
Ben puts Abel on a train back to the reservation and narrates what has happened to Abel in Los Angeles. Life had not been easy for Abel in the city. First he was ridiculed by Reverend Tosamah during a poker game with the Indian group. Abel is too drunk to fight back. He remains drunk for the next two days and misses work. When he returns to his job, the boss harasses him and Abel quits. A downward spiral begins and Abel continues to get drunk every day, borrow money from Ben and Milly, and laze around the apartment. Fed up with Abel's behavior, Ben throws him out of the apartment. Abel then seeks revenge on Martinez, a corrupt policeman who robbed Ben one night and hit Abel across the knuckles with his nightstick. Abel finds Martinez and is almost beaten to death. While Abel is in the hospital recovering, Ben calls Angela who visits him and revives his spirit, just as he helped revive her spirit years ago, by reciting a story about a bear and a maiden which incidentally matches an old Navajo myth.Part IV: The Dawn Runner
Abel returns to the reservation in New Mexico to take care of his grandfather, who is dying. His grandfather tells him the stories from his youth and stresses the importance of staying connected to his people's traditions. When the time comes, Abel dresses his grandfather for burial and smears his own body with ashes. As the dawn breaks, Abel begins to run. He is participating in a ritual his grandfather told him about—the race of the dead. As he runs, Abel begins to sing for himself and Francisco. He is coming back to his people and his place in the world.Literary significance & criticism
House Made of Dawn produced no extensive commentary when it was first published—perhaps, as William James Smith mused in a review of the work in Commonweal LXXXVIII (20 September 1968), because "it seems slightly un-American to criticize an American Indian's novel"—and its subject matter and theme did not seem to conform to the prescription above.Early reviewers such as Marshall Sprague in his "Anglos and Indians," New York Times Book Review (9 June 1968) complained that the novel contained "plenty of haze" but suggested that perhaps this was inevitable in rendering "the mysteries of cultures different from our own" and then goes on to describe this as "one reason why [the story] rings so true." Sprague also discussed the seeming contradiction of writing about a native oral culture — especially in English, the language of the so-called oppressor. He continues, "The mysteries of cultures different from our own cannot be explained in a short novel, even by an artist as talented as Mr. Momaday". The many critics—such as Carole Oleson in her "The Remembered Earth: Momaday's House Made of Dawn," South Dakota Review II (Spring 1973)—who have given the novel extended analysis acknowledge that much more explanation is needed "before outsiders can fully appreciate all the subtleties of House Made of Dawn." Baine Kerr has elaborated this point to suggest that Momaday has used "the modern Anglo novel [as] a vehicle for a sacred text," that in it he is "attempting to transliterate Indian culture, myth, and sensibility into an alien art form, without loss."
However, some commentators have been more critical. In reviewing the "disappointing" novel for Commonweal (September 20, 1968), William James Smith chastised Momaday for his mannered style: "[He] writes in a lyric vein that borrows heavily from some of the slacker rhythms of the King James Bible . . . It makes you itch for a blue pencil to knock out all the intensified words that maintain the soporific flow" [link added]. Other critics said it was nothing but "an interesting variation of the old alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
theme"; "a social statement rather than . . . a substantial artistic achievement"; "a memorable failure," "a reflection, not a novel in the comprehensive sense of the word" with "awkward dialogue and affected description"; "a batch of dazzling fragments".
Overall, the book has come to be seen as a success. Sprague concluded in his article that the novel was superb. And Momaday was widely praised for the novel's rich description of Indian life. Now there is a greater recognition of Momaday's fictional art, and critics have come to recognise its unique achievement as a novel. Despite a qualified reception the novel had succeeded in making its impact even on earlier critics though they were not sure of their own responses. They found it "a story of considerable power and beauty," "strong in imaginative imagery," creating a "world of wonder and exhilarating vastness." In more recent criticism there are signs of greater clarity of understanding of Momaday's achievement. In his review (which appeared in Western American Literature 5 (Spring 1970)), John Z. Bennett had pointed out how through "a remarkable synthesis of poetic mode and profound emotional and intellectual insight into the Indians' perduring human status["] Momaday's novel becomes at last the very act it is dramatizing, an artistic act, a "creation hymn."
Influence
Critic Kenneth Lincoln identified the Pulitzer for House Made of Dawn as the moment that sparked the Native American RenaissanceNative American Renaissance
The Native American Renaissance was a term originally coined by critic Kenneth Lincoln in his 1983 book of the same title. Lincoln’s goal was to explore the explosion in production of literary works by Native Americans in the decade and a half after N. Scott Momaday had won the Pulitzer Prize in...
. Many major American Indian novelists (e.g. Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American writer of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the second wave of what Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...
, Gerald Vizenor
Gerald Vizenor
Gerald Robert Vizenor is a Native American writer, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. One of the most prolific Native American writers, with over 30 books to his name, Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where...
, James Welch, Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie
Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr. is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and occasional comedian. Much of his writing draws on his experiences as a Native American. Two of Alexie's best known works are The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven , a book of short stories and Smoke Signals, a film...
and Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich
Karen Louise Erdrich, known as Louise Erdrich, is an author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American heritage. She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...
) have cited the novel as a major inspiration for their own work.
Publishers
Originally published by Harper & Row, editions have subsequently been brought out by HarperCollinsHarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
, the Penguin Group
Penguin Group
The Penguin Group is a trade book publisher, the largest in the world , having overtaken Random House in 2009. The Penguin Group is the name of the incorporated division of parent Pearson PLC that oversees these publishing operations...
, Econo-Clad Books and the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
Press.
See also
- Code talkerCode talkerCode talkers was a term used to describe people who talk using a coded language. It is frequently used to describe 400 Native American Marines who served in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages...
- Indian removalIndian RemovalIndian removal was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river...
- Jemez runners
- KiowaKiowaThe Kiowa are a nation of American Indians and indigenous people of the Great Plains. They migrated from the northern plains to the southern plains in the late 17th century. In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma...
- Native Americans and World War IINative Americans and World War IINative Americans and World War II Some 44,000 Native Americans served in the United States military during World War II. By 1940, a large fraction of American Indians lived off reservations; their experiences in the war mirrored the general population. Of special interest was the enormous impact...
- Native American ChurchNative American ChurchNative American Church, a religious denomination which practices Peyotism or the Peyote religion, originated in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans in the United States...
- Navajo NationNavajo NationThe Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
- Diné Bahaneʼ
- Sun DanceSun DanceThe Sun Dance is a religious ceremony practiced by a number of Native American and First Nations peoples, primarily those of the Plains Nations. Each tribe has its own distinct practices and ceremonial protocols...
Release details
- 1968, USA, Harper & Row (ISBN 0-06-093211-2), Pub date ? ? 1968, hardback (First edition)
- 1989, USA, Borgo Press (ISBN 0-8095-9141-3), Pub date ? October 1989, hardback
- 1989, USA, SOS Free Stock (ISBN 0-06-091633-8), Pub date ? October 1989, paperback
- 1996, USA, University of Arizona Press (ISBN 0-8165-1705-3), Pub date ? September 1996, hardback
- 1999, USA, HarperCollins (ISBN 0-06-093194-9), Pub date ? August 1999, hardback
- 2000, USA, McGraw Hill Higher Education (ISBN 0-07-243420-1), Pub date 1 June 2000, paperback