House Made Of Dawn Chapter Summary

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The Expression of Native American Culture through Storytelling In 1968, N. Scott Momaday published a book by the name of House Made of Dawn. The book displayed many examples of Native American storytelling. In addition, N. Scott Momaday used his heritage and family history throughout the book to show great detail about New Mexico. The book used several major characters and the setting to portray the theme: The expression of Native American culture through storytelling. The novel House Made of Dawn by Navarre Scott Momaday is on the subject of a young Native American male who has totally forgotten who he is and where he came from. However, throughout a series of major events and storytelling, he finds his way back to his origin, culture,…show more content…
This theme is very supportive throughout this book for many reasons. First, Abel and the rest of the Native American priests told many cultural and historical in House Made of Dawn. As a child, N. Scott Momaday learned the stories, which are in the novel, orally just like the priest told in their sermons. “The character of the Priest of the Sun sermonizes many of the Kiowa legends Momaday has addressed in his other works, such as The Way to Rainy Mountain”(Sparknotes). In the novel, the Priest of the Sun had learned the stories from his grandmother who was a known storyteller. The Priest of the Sun said in the novel that his grandmother was “a storyteller, she knew her way around words. She never learned to read or write…” (Sparknotes). This is relevant to N. Scott Momaday’s biography because his father was a story teller. He used his lifestyle throughout the novel to create major characters like the Priest of the Sun. In addition, the priest would tell the congregation how different the Natives were from the “white man”. He told his members that the Natives would value the stories, keep their words sacred like religious object, and express their stories through mouth and sound. Whereas the white man would write the story, put it on paper, advertise it, use words by the millions, use pamphlets, receipts, and so on (Sparknotes). In the Native American culture, words and stories were valuable, and they could not sold and they would never leave them. Everything they said was worth keeping to them, and it was like religious text. The stories resembled real life situations into folk tales and rain

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