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Papoose Analysis

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It is safe to say that Laura has a fascination with the Indians. It is the promise of seeing Indians, and most importantly Indians babies, that allows Pa to secure Laura’s desire to move west. However, she does not associate the Indians with humanity but rather views them as a form of entertainment; more specifically a form of animalistic entertainment. Laura’s main obsession with Indians is their babies. She asks several times “Pa, when are we going to see a papoose?” (Wilder 123). Her pleading resembles the attitude I would have when going to the Phoenix Zoo as a child. Whenever there was a new baby animal, I was so excited to go and look at it. I’d race passed my favorite animals just so I could view the baby faster. Laura does not want to see a “papoose” because it is a baby and babies are cute. She already has a baby in the family, and she doesn’t show as much interest in Baby Carrie as she does in a baby Indian. She is interested in the exotic nature of the Indian baby, and treats it like a different species baby at a zoo. While Laura likely never visited what we think of as a zoo today, …show more content…

They are described as mostly naked and often wearing animal furs, presently them in a physically animalistic context, and were free to roam where they pleased. But not that the area is being colonized, they are being herded out of the way. The portrayal of Indian in an animalistic way restates the attitudes towards slaves, attempting to “…collapse the boundaries between human and animal” (Ginsberg 91). Wilder does not describe the communication between the two Indians that enter their home as language, but as “short, hard sounds” (140). Making a “sound” rather than speaking depict animalistic communication between the Indians. The language barrier between the Ingalls and the Indians parallel the language barrier between humans and

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