Analysis Of Leslie Marmon Silko's The Man To Send Rain Clouds

The story I'm choosing is The Man to Send Rain Clouds by Leslie Marmon Silko. The theme of the story is about the strength of Native American customs and traditions and bridging the gap between Native American customs and Christian customs. The author uses the setting and the mood to surface the theme throughout the story. The Man to Send Rain Clouds helps to set up a recurring theme that Silko will use in many of her other stories.

The short story “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” by Leslie Marmon Silko is a deceptively simple narrative about the death and funeral of an old man of the Laguna Pueblo tribe of Native Americans. Set in the desert southwest of the United States, the story is narrated from an omniscient point of view, and describes the discovery of the old man’s body, the preparation of the body for burial, and the interaction between the family of the dead man and the Catholic priest who lives on the reservation. The author uses very simple language and unsophisticated descriptions to describe an intricate and complex relationship between the Christian culture of the priest and the religious culture of the Pueblo culture. Descriptions of the bleak landscape

Within the two passages, two Native American writers, N.S. Momaday and D. Brown, deliver two contrasting views on the Native American landscape and experience. Momaday’s awestruck diction and peaceful imagery revel in the seclusion of a scenario which promotes creation. On the other hand, Brown’s forlorn diction and passive tone mourn the lifeless landscape and loss of people forcibly detached from their land. While Momaday writes to explain the admirable beauty of Rainy Mountain, Brown writes to mourn the loss of life stripped in the barren landscape.

In Latin America it is a custom for families to celebrate a daughters fifth-tenth birthday. This is a tradition to announce to the community that their daughter is ready to be part of the community as a woman. By this time, young girls know how to clean and cook, but most of all have the capability to bear children. The celebration is also a reminder that they soon will one day be married. Or the tradition can have a new meaning to a young girl’s life. Instead of motherhood they build their confidence and see themselves with potential to do what they dream of. Once Upon a Quinceañera by Julia Alvarez is ineffective because the quinceañera has and will always be associated to the grooming and preparation of young women into motherhood: As long

Novarre Scott Momaday's book The Way to Rainy Mountain is both a personal and anthropological exploration of the ways of the Kiowa Indian tribe. Momaday was raised on a Navajo Reservation, but was educated within the 'white' university system, where he first gained a reputation as a poet. His work straddles the borders of the genre of autobiography and ethnography. The book is the story of a tribe, a chronicle of both history and myth. "There are on the way to Rainy Mountain, many landmarks, many journeys in the one" (Momaday 4). Although about a people whose lives have been displaced and forever changed as a result of colonialization, the book functions less as a political critique and polemic and more as an internal spiritual journey. "Rather, it describes a process: a people, one person and one family at a time, preserves essential aspects of its heritage, connects through imagination to that heritage, and in so doing, assures its survival" (Charles 66).

     In Conclusion the author, Leslie Silko, displays the poverty and hopelessness that the Native Americans faced because of the white man. The Author elaborates this feeling of hopelessness in the Indians myth explaining the origin of the white man. As a result

Some of the short stories featured in “Woman Hollering Creek” explores various aspects of domestic violence, teen pregnancy, and interracial relationships. The author Sandra Cisneros challenges the social standards of how we normally view interrelationships, physical abuse, and sexual promiscuity among teens. Significant recurring themes that are presented are victimization of women, sexual love as an exercise of power, and conflicts in cultural traditions. These central themes compel the readers to think critically about these issues and how they impact our identities.

The author’s universal insight about life is that the white man and the Native American must learn to live in harmony with each other. Silk develops this into Ceremony by showing us the history of Native Americans and their struggles with the American government and the white man. American setters have attempted to destroy the Native American people and their traditions just so they can use the land for their own personal purposes. The Native American people are subjugated by the white people by forcing them onto Indian reservations, forcing them all to live only in certain places. “They see no life when they look they see only objects. The world is a dead thing for them” (Silko 135). To the Native American their land meant more than anything and they felt the white people just possessed the power to use the land for their own uses.

I am, after all, not a complete American brat, dear mother. Every morning I write, rendering memories into words. I write, going back further, invoking the past precisely because it is irretrievable.” (Lam,1). Lam has created his own traditions that he feels connected with and meanwhile honors his mother’s rituals as well. In result of this, he has been able to find his identity through the quest of life. It was not easy for him, “I wish I could say that I will pick it up as naturally as any Vietnamese in Vietnam would. I wish I could assure her that, after she is gone, each morning I will light incense for her and all the ancestors’ spirits before her, but I can’t” (Lam,1), but now he has found internal peace of being who he is. “The solemnity of the act — my fingers gliding on the keyboard, my mind on things ethereal — is something akin, at last, to my mother’s morning prayers” (Lam,1). He understands that what his mother is saying about old traditions dying may be true, but new ones have already begun. His morning rituals of writing give him a connection to his mother’s morning rituals.

Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” share a common theme of the expectations of ones heritage. For instance “Everyday Use” explores cultural norms of cultural practices. Dee and Mama argue over whether the family heirlooms should be preserved or used. While “Girl” focuses on the strict culture norms of what it means to be a respected women in her environment. The girls’ mother has a set of rules that her daughter must obey so she can be viewed positively. “Everyday Use” and “Girl” challenge the norm of their time. “Everyday Use” which was published in 1973 goes against thoughts held during the black power movement regarding cultural preservation. “Girl” which was published in 1978 argues that girls should not have to follow the social norm to be respected. Both stories challenge the commonly held beliefs of their time.

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Marquez employs the motif of flowers within the novel to illustrate the role of women within a Latin American society; the cultural and symbolic implications of this associate flowers with purity, victimization, gender barriers, and deceit. In doing so, Marquez creates a microcosm of Latin America, exposing the core of Columbian culture and society with all its aspects such as ethnicity, and social norms and conventions that led to a series of insecurities and poverty in the community, and its affect on the role of women. The cultural context of this novel must first be considered before examining the symbolic importance of flowers.

In Leslie Silko's novel, Ceremony, Tayo's healing process takes him on an extensive spiritual journey to find his way back to his roots. On that journey, he encounters several mental challenges in order to let go of traumatic events he has faced throughout his life. While he embarks on this journey to happiness, Tayo encounters many symbols that help aid him in developing this sense of freedom. Having grown up Native American, Tayo learns that nature is a fundamental part in not only his life, but in his healing process altogether. Thought this novel, the reader witnesses Tayo’s connection to the natural world and to that of the rain, the sun, and the earth.

The Rain Man stars Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. The movie was made in 1988. The movie is about an autistic man named Raymon, who is a idiot savant played by Dustin Hoffman and his fast, talking self absorbed, egocentric brother Charlie Babbitt, who is played by Tom Cruise. A egocentric person is a person with the simple recognition that every living thing views the world from a unique, self-oriented perspective(LIFE: Inherently Egocentric written by James Craig Green http://pw2.netcom.com/~zeno7/ego.html).

The traditions in Chronicle of a Death Foretold are revealed to be very important in this Latin American society. From arranged marriages, to greeting the bishop, we see tradition affecting the lives of many of the people in the river village. However we can also see this through the roles of women in this society. Purisima del Carmen, Angela Vicario’s mother, has raised her four fine daughters to be good wives. The girls do not marry until later in their lives, and only seldom socialize beyond the confinements of their home. The women spend their

The books I’ve chosen to review are set on two different continents. This makes the comparison of the lives of women across the world more efficient and broader. What makes the comparison more practical, realistic and interesting is the fact that the characters in the two books 'The Woman Warrior ' and 'Wild ', lived in the same century. The authors specifically bring out the duties and the expectation that mothers were held to in the upbringing of their daughters as at that time and place. The authors, however, present the picture of motherhood in a fairly narrow view. They ignore the role of mothers in the upbringing of their sons and instead dwell on their duties and responsibilities in the bringing up of their daughters (Kingston & Gordon 2005). Therefore, I chose to compare how the theme of motherhood has been portrayed in the two ethnically diverse texts.