Character Analysis Of Tracks

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.

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

Many were forced to evacuate to other regions within the country and endure the infamous Trail of Tears. While Native Americans are not forcibly removed from their homes anymore, this story shows a modern-day example of mistreatment or borders that Native Americans deal with. While the mother faced many different conflicts, externally and internally, she readily accepts the challenge and is not willing to step down. She displays the pride of the Blackfoot Indians and is not willing to let the government tell her who she is and let them define her. She sets an example for Native Americans, standing up against a government that has held them down for so long. That they should always have pride in who they are, and where they came

Parents always warn their children to steer clear from shady and unreliable characters. Real life situations are the target of this notion, but such a claim also stands true for literature. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Nick, the narrator, is a shady character who disclosed no personal information about himself and expected the viewer’s trust in return. As a result, Scott Donaldson, in his article “The Trouble with Nick” deliberates his opinion over what a terrible person Nick is, however later determines that regardless of how shady Nick may be, he is still the only one fit to narrate The Great Gatsby. Some of Scott Donaldson’s views of Nick as an unreliable narrator may stand true; however, it is definitely agreeable that Nick Carraway is the only acceptable narrator for The Great Gatsby.

“A Yellow Raft in Blue Water” is divided into three sections narrated by three different Native American women: Rayona, Christine and Ida. All three of these women are all related. Rayona is the daughter of Christine, and Christine believes she is the daughter of Ida, but Ida is actually her half-sister and cousin. All three sections were a part of a larger story; they all helped support or complete each other. The structure of this novel forces us as readers to be more active. It causes us to look more closely, and fit together the stories of the three women. When the ladies’ are explaining the same event, it sometimes feels

2.How does the writer let us know that this is an unreliable narrator telling the story?

The Cherokee were Stripped from their homelands and forcefully evacuated through a perilous journey from miles on end; this was due to the implementation of the Indian Removal Act in 1838. In Diane Glancy’s “Pushing the Bear”, the reader discovers how the Cherokee Indians overcome their hardships and flourish into a new, thriving community during what is known as the “Trail of Tears.” In this novel, the audience observe how these Cherokee Indians outlast the harsh environment after 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 can sense the desperation that the

“The Way of a Cherokee” by Foxxy is about her memories and experiences growing up as a young child with her sister, Sierra, and grandpa. She is a Native American that has lived in a world that is different from the world her grandpa grew up in. In addition, she learned to love and appreciate nature just like her grandpa did. I can relate to her relationship with her grandpa because I have created many memories with my grandpa. My grandpa told me stories about his childhood. In Foxxy’s essay she explores the relationship between identity and cultural history through physical location, family relationships, and language differences.

Traditions and old teachings are essential to Native American culture; however growing up in the modern west creates a distance and ignorance about one’s identity. In the beginning, the narrator is in the hospital while as his father lies on his death bed, when he than encounters fellow Native Americans. One of these men talks about an elderly Indian Scholar who paradoxically discussed identity, “She had taken nostalgia as her false idol-her thin blanket-and it was murdering her” (6). The nostalgia represents the old Native American ways. The woman can’t seem to let go of the past, which in turn creates confusion for the man to why she can’t let it go because she was lecturing “…separate indigenous literary identity which was ironic considering that she was speaking English in a room full of white professors”(6). The man’s ignorance with the elderly woman’s message creates a further cultural identity struggle. Once more in the hospital, the narrator talks to another Native American man who similarly feels a divide with his culture. “The Indian world is filled with charlatan, men and women who pretend…”

The American Indian occupies a unique place in the White American imaginary. Indians, one is told, are cordial, wise, poor in the “humble poverty” sort of way, brown, there assist whites with either mystic knowledge or humorous ignorance. Figures such as Squanto, Tonto and Disney’s Pocahontas along with a large smattering of Westerns and cartoonish depictions have created this image of the Native American – an image which rarely translates into the present day. In contrast to this, Sherman Alexie’s novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a Native American coming-of-age story centered around the first-person point of view of the Native protagonist Arnold “Junior” Spirit, Jr. and his dual life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and his time off the reservation at an all-white public school in the town of Reardan, Washington. The novel revolves around themes like race, identity formation and mortality and details life on Indian reservations as it attempts to give a realistic account of contemporary Native American life, each which shape the novel in unique ways.

In the beginning of the story we are introduced to Nick, his father and uncle George who arrive to an Indian camp on an Island in Michigan. The Indians in the camp are not very privileged and they live in shanties. Nick, his father and uncle George are lead to a shanty were a young Indian woman is

     In Louise Erdrich’s “Tracks';, the readers discovers by the second chapter that there are two narrators, Nanapush and Pauline Puyat. This method of having two narrators telling their stories alternately could be at first confusing, especially if the readers hasn’t been briefed about it or hasn’t read a synopsis of it. Traditionally, there is one narrator in the story, but Erdrich does an effective and spectacular job in combining Nanapush and Pauline’s stories. It is so well written that one might question as he or she reads who is the principal character in this story? Being that there are two narrators, is it Nanapush, the first narrator, him being a participant in the story, who tells his story in the

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 the many different stories, and novels we read this semester, we saw many different characters that had to strength in hard times. These characters faced so many things that they could have given up on, but they were strong, and kept pushing through their hardships and struggles. Three different characters that have shown strength in the face of adversity are, Mattie Silver Phoenix Jackson, Ethan Frome, and Phoenix Jackson.

The drawing of narrative inferences by the reader is very important to interpret the work well. However, the author, while writing a story, can treat some incidents in detail and barely mention or even omit others. He may distort these incidents, may not observe chronological sequence, he can use messengers or flashbacks, and so on and so forth. The function of resorting to these varied narrative techniques is to emphasize or de-emphasize certain story-events, to interpret some and to leave others to inference, to show or to tell, to comment or to remain silent, to focus on this or that aspect of an event or character. The use of the unreliable is a very important and unconventional narrative technique used by authors in