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Similes
3. The Longhair, July 24
Explanation and Analysis—Stereotypes:
Two instances of situational irony surrounding Abel and Angela's relationship help Momaday push back against the idea that any person can be reduced to cultural stereotypes. The first instance occurs in Chapter 3, when Angela compares Abel's woodcutting to the ceremonial corn dance she recently witnessed:
[The corn dancers'] eyes were held upon some vision out of range, something away in the end of the distance, some reality that she did not know, or even suspect. What was it that they saw? Probably they saw nothing after all, nothing at all. But then that was the trick, wasn't it? To see nothing at all, nothing in the absolute. To see beyond the landscape, beyond every shape and shadow and color, that was to see nothing. That was to be free and finished, complete, spiritual.
Angela hates her own body and the changes it is undergoing during her pregnancy. She is transfixed by the corn dance and by Abel's woodcutting because she sees them as transcendent practices. She clings to the stereotype that American Indian people are somehow able to access a distilled, spiritual existence that has nothing to do with their bodies or physical reality. Angela wants to have sex with Abel because she believes that it will give her access to this aspect of his indigenous identity. She longs not for him, but for "finished, complete, spiritual" freedom from her body.
What's ironic, though, is that Angela's desire rests on a fundamental misunderstanding. As Momaday demonstrates through abundant imagery, American Indian traditions are often about becoming deeply in touch with the physical world. They involve death, sacrifice, pain, and overwhelming sensation. Angela has no idea what is going on internally for Abel when he chops wood. The idea that he is able to transcend the physical reality in which all of his trauma is rooted in what attracts her to him, but it is completely ignorant. Giving space to Angela's mistaken beliefs about Abel allows Momaday to emphasize both the seductive power and the insulting inaccuracy of stereotypes.
Years later, another instance of irony further complicates the reader's picture of Angela and her relationship to Abel. In Chapter 10, Ben Benally recalls what Abel said to him after they ran into Angela in Los Angeles:
She was going to help him, he said. She liked him a lot, and, you know, they fooled around and everything, and she was going to help him get a job and go away from the reservation, but then he got himself in trouble.
Even though Momaday has already described Abel and Angela's affair, it is not until this moment in Chapter 10 that the reader learns of Angela's promise to help Abel leave the reservation. It casts her in a different light; maybe she cared about Abel and his desires more than the earlier chapters let on. This revelation raises the question of the reader's own projected stereotypes. The earlier chapters made it easy to see Angela as a caricature of an exploitative White woman. Her behavior and attitudes toward Abel are still worth critiquing, but Momaday encourages the reader to notice the way even she exceeds the limitations of cultural stereotypes.
Related Themes:
10. The Night Chanter, February 20
Explanation and Analysis—Silly Questions:
In Chapter 10, Ben Benally recalls a time when Abel disappeared for three days and turned up again with broken hands. He describes the situational irony of the questions the nurses asked him at the hospital:
After a while it got light outside, and one of the nurses came up to me and started asking me a lot of questions. They were silly questions, all about his family and his medical record and insurance and everything like that. I didn't know how to answer most of them, and I kept trying to get her to tell me how he was. She just went on, like those questions were the most important thing of all and acting like maybe I wasn't telling her the truth.
Ben takes his friend to the hospital because he is worried about him. Abel does receive treatment for his hands, but Ben also discovers that his trust in the colonialist medical system is naive. Ben expects (as he should be able to) that the hospital staff will want to focus on Abel's well-being. After all, he is a patient, and hospitals exist to treat patients. Instead, the nurses seem more interested in paperwork, which they wield like a weapon. They almost seem to hope that they can catch Ben in a lie. The entire process seems designed to keep people like Abel and Ben from seeking treatment. As American Indians without the proper paperwork to prove that they have assimilated to colonialist culture, they are inherently suspicious to the hospital.
The hospital's reluctance to provide care may be ironic, but it is just one of many ways in which colonialist culture excludes and even punishes American Indians. Ben Benally manages to blend in fairly well with his White neighbors in Los Angeles. Still, even Ben does not know how to answer the nurses' questions. Were he ever to need medical treatment himself, it is possible that he would appear "respectable" (meaning, in this racist context, White) enough that the nurses would treat him with less suspicion. However, because he has come in with a drunk and battered American Indian man, they immediately distrust him. The encounter demonstrates an even greater situational irony: Ben's loyal trust in colonialist institutions puts him into situations like this one, where his race becomes a target on his back. He tries to assimilate because it seems like the safest option. In fact, participating in White-dominated spaces increases the chance that he will face direct discrimination.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Stereotypes:
Covered in "3. The Longhair, July 24 Explanation and Analysis—Stereotypes"
Two instances of situational irony surrounding Abel and Angela's relationship help Momaday push back against the idea that any person can be reduced to cultural stereotypes. The first instance occurs in Chapter 3, when Angela compares Abel's woodcutting to the ceremonial corn dance she recently witnessed:
[The corn dancers'] eyes were held upon some vision out of range, something away in the end of the distance, some reality that she did not know, or even suspect. What was it that they saw? Probably they saw nothing after all, nothing at all. But then that was the trick, wasn't it? To see nothing at all, nothing in the absolute. To see beyond the landscape, beyond every shape and shadow and color, that was to see nothing. That was to be free and finished, complete, spiritual.
Angela hates her own body and the changes it is undergoing during her pregnancy. She is transfixed by the corn dance and by Abel's woodcutting because she sees them as transcendent practices. She clings to the stereotype that American Indian people are somehow able to access a distilled, spiritual existence that has nothing to do with their bodies or physical reality. Angela wants to have sex with Abel because she believes that it will give her access to this aspect of his indigenous identity. She longs not for him, but for "finished, complete, spiritual" freedom from her body.
What's ironic, though, is that Angela's desire rests on a fundamental misunderstanding. As Momaday demonstrates through abundant imagery, American Indian traditions are often about becoming deeply in touch with the physical world. They involve death, sacrifice, pain, and overwhelming sensation. Angela has no idea what is going on internally for Abel when he chops wood. The idea that he is able to transcend the physical reality in which all of his trauma is rooted in what attracts her to him, but it is completely ignorant. Giving space to Angela's mistaken beliefs about Abel allows Momaday to emphasize both the seductive power and the insulting inaccuracy of stereotypes.
Years later, another instance of irony further complicates the reader's picture of Angela and her relationship to Abel. In Chapter 10, Ben Benally recalls what Abel said to him after they ran into Angela in Los Angeles:
She was going to help him, he said. She liked him a lot, and, you know, they fooled around and everything, and she was going to help him get a job and go away from the reservation, but then he got himself in trouble.
Even though Momaday has already described Abel and Angela's affair, it is not until this moment in Chapter 10 that the reader learns of Angela's promise to help Abel leave the reservation. It casts her in a different light; maybe she cared about Abel and his desires more than the earlier chapters let on. This revelation raises the question of the reader's own projected stereotypes. The earlier chapters made it easy to see Angela as a caricature of an exploitative White woman. Her behavior and attitudes toward Abel are still worth critiquing, but Momaday encourages the reader to notice the way even she exceeds the limitations of cultural stereotypes.
Related Themes:
