Analysis Of Frank Waters's 'The Man Who Killed The Deer'

An emphasis on family is one of the central facets of Native American culture. There is a sense of community between Native American. Louise Erdrich, a Chippewa Indian herself, writes a gripping bildungsroman about a thirteen year old boy named Joe who experiences all forms of family on the Native American Reserve where he lives. He learns to deal with the challenges of a blood family, witnesses toxic family relationships, and experiences a family-like love from the members of the community. In her book, The Round House, Louise Erdrich depicts three definitions of the word family and shows how these relationships affect Joe’s development into an adult.

Throughout human existence, mankind has had to overcome difficult obstacles in order to prosper. In Diane Glancy’s “Pushing the Bear”, the reader discovers how the Cherokee Indians overcome their hardships and flourish into a new, thriving community. In this novel, the audience observe how these Cherokee Indians outlast the harsh environment during the Indian Removal Act. Additionally, Glancy creates a human experience during the Trail of Tears; giving a different perspective of various characters. Through the eyes of characters such as Maritole and Knobowtee, the reader is able to sense the desperation that the Cherokee endured. The upheaval of being forcefully removed from the land stripped the Cherokee of their identity. This disruption left the Cherokee confused, causing frustration to arise because they were unable to live their familiar roles. Men were no longer able to farm. Women had a loss of property and wealth. The bear symbolizes these struggles throughout this novel. Maritole explains, “The bear had once been a person. But he was not conscious of the consciousness he was given. His darkness was greed and self-centeredness. It was part of myself, too. It was part of the human being” (183). In other words, the “bear” is the personal dilemma each character is put up against during this removal. Furthermore, each character has their own personal struggles to overcome; whether that be Knobowtee’s loss of masculinity or Maritole’s loss of family. These struggles,

Popular culture has shaped our understanding and perception of Native American culture. From Disney to literature has given the picture of the “blood thirsty savage” of the beginning colonialism in the new world to the “Noble Savage,” a trait painted by non-native the West (Landsman and Lewis 184) and this has influenced many non native perceptions. What many outsiders do not see is the struggle Native American have on day to day bases. Each generation of Native American is on a struggle to keep their traditions alive, but to function in school and ultimately graduate.

In American Indian life, they believe their life is interconnected with the world, nature, and other people. The idea of a peoplehood matrix runs deep in Indian culture, in this essay the Cherokee, which is the holistic view of sacred history, language, ceremony, and homeland together. This holistic model shapes the life of the American Indians and how their sense of being and relationship to their history is strong and extremely valuable to them. This essay will try to explain how each aspect of the peoplehood matrix is important and interconnected to each other and the life of the Native Americans.

The Man I Killed is the story of the man that Tim O’Brien killed. However, this story is not true. He later mentions that he did not in fact kill the man, yet he was present and that was enough. This story, according to him, is told to show the reader how he feels, because O’Brien feels as though the truth is that by doing nothing, he killed the man, so in his story, he does kill the man. Imagery is the biggest literary device seen in this story, but diction also helps make the story seem more true, it helps the reader to truly believe that O’Brien did in fact throw the grenade that killed the man. This story is told from O’Brien’s point of view, which would be first person, despite the fact that the word “I” is

When the first colonists landed in the territories of the new world, they encountered a people and a culture that no European before them had ever seen. As the first of the settlers attempted to survive in a truly foreign part of the world, their written accounts would soon become popular with those curious of this “new” world, and those who already lived and survived in this seemingly inhospitable environment, Native American Indian. Through these personal accounts, the Native Indian soon became cemented in the American narrative, playing an important role in much of the literature of the era. As one would expect though, the representation of the Native Americans and their relationship with European Americans varies in the written works of the people of the time, with the defining difference in these works being the motives behind the writing. These differences and similarities can be seen in two similar works from two rather different authors, John Smith, and Mary Rowlandson.

In Alexie “Do Not Go Gentle,” there is a recurring element of assimilation for the Native Americans. I will be discussing how it is problematic as it shows how the underlying issue of societal pressure towards the Native Americans freedom and liberty as a human being. In the article, “Italian American Identity: To Be or Not To Be” Michael Parenti focuses on the subject of acculturation and assimilation being formed in the United States. This article goes hand in hand with Alexie “Do Not Go Gentle” with race domination being a factor in assimilation against the minorities versus the larger society.

Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation. This book explores an avenue of advocacy against social injustices. The most observable plight Joe suffers is figuring out how to deal with the injustice acted against his mother, which has caused strife within his entire family and within

In the short story, Compatriots, one would read about Lucy and Hilda - two women who vastly differ from each other. Lucy has grown up on the reserve her whole life, where Hilda had just arrived from Germany and is seeking to observe “real Indian culture”. In comparison, David Goes to the Reserve also features two fairly diverse people of opposite cultures: the Aboriginal narrator of the story, and her Caucasian friend David.Within the story, David travels to a reserve to observe the culture of the First Nations people. Both stories contain wonder and excitement, but also presents a sense of culture that the First Nations have; it is this culture that the main characters struggle to grasp.

In her novel, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, Deborah A. Miranda theorizes that the underlying patronage of her father’s violent behavior arises from the original acts of violence carried out by the Spanish Catholic Church during the era of missionization in California. The structure of her novel plays an essential role in the development of her theory, and allows her to further generalize it to encompass the entire human population. “In this beautiful and devastating book, part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir, Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems.” Patching together every individual source to create the story of a culture as a whole, Miranda facilitates the task of conceptualizing how Societal Process Theory could play into the domestic violence she experiences growing up as the daughter of a California Indian.

“The drink had me snared. I spoke less and drank more, and I became the Indian again; drunken and drooling and reeling, a caricature everyone sought to avoid,”(Wagamese,181). This stomach-turning quote displays what several First Nations thought their identity to be. With this in mind, to begin, “Indian Horse,” by Richard Wagamese is a somber and intriguing novel, with many thought-provoking points within the book. To illustrate this, the book follows a First Nations boy through his youth to adulthood. It is filled with traumatic events, depressing stories and even a few joyful moments. In addition, the novel takes place from around 1960-1980 throughout Ontario. Furthermore, this essay will explore several events and factors which impacted, Saul, the main character's identity.

D'Arcy McNickle, through the collection of essays put together by Birgit Hans in The Hawk is Hungry & Other Stories, is able to rather clearly express many of his feelings towards The Reservation, Montana, and The City, primarily conveying a sense of belonging, disappointment, and diversity regarding each location, respectively. In his essays regarding The Reservation, McNickle emphasizes his respect for the culture and traditions of Native Americans while exploring and humanizing the ideas of those who are working to destroy these traditions. As he continues by discussing Montana, McNickle is able to express a sense of unfulfilled promises and general dissatisfaction with the offerings of this location. Finally, as he moves into the discussion

In his conclusion George cries “my culture is like a wounded deer that has crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone” (102). This simile represents what is happening to the Aboriginal culture, in that the culture is slowly dying just like a deer slowly dies when it is hunted. This is a good comparison because just as a deer is a beautiful animal that North Americans admire and kill, the Native culture is also beautiful. However, George is trying to emphasize the importance of preserving the Native culture, because he does not want to see the Native culture die, just like a wounded deer. George causes North Americans to feel a sense of guiltiness for their unloving actions towards the Natives, because if they do not imminently learn to love from the Natives, the Native culture will die. North Americans often kill deer for amusement, but George does not want them to kill the Native culture through their unloving actions, because the Native culture is significant. Therefore, George hopes to encourage his North American readers to raise awareness for this issue, and make individual changes to rejuvenate his culture by expressing love. George continues the conclusion of his essay with another simile: “and we must love you-with a genuine love that forgives and forgets...a love that forgives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian features two main settings, the Pacific Northwest towns of Wellpinit and Reardan. These contrasting locations – one an impoverished Indian reservation and the other an affluent white community – become very important to the ever-shifting identity of our narrator, Arnold Spirit, Jr.

In Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven(1993), nearly all of the characters suffer from alcoholism. Those who do not drink, cannot escape the external backlash from an alcoholic environment. Through the stories of the characters in the book, both on and off the reservation, the author is able to distinguish arguments for and against the white people on whether or not they are to blame for the problems Native Americans have faced related to alcoholism. The fate of the Native Americans is seemingly inevitable. Do the Native Americans deserve the stereotypes that have been inflicted upon them, or were they unable to prevent it? Through Sherman Alexie’s novel, he sheds light on the stereotypes placed on Native Americans not only by other races of people, but also self-inflicted, relating to the damaging effects alcohol has had on their people.