The River Symbol Analysis

The river—and water imagery more generally—permeate nearly every scene of this story, making the river the most complex symbol within the text. The river is the setting for the story’s opening, the guiding path for much of the narrator’s journey, and symbolizes not only the narrator’s connection to home, but the constant presence and evolving nature of storytelling that is central to the narrative. Yellow Woman first meets Silva, the supposed ka’tsina mountain spirit, as she is following the river, and they spend the night next to the river making love. Like the lens of folklore through which the character see one another and themselves, the river brings them together. In the morning, when Yellow Woman questions his identity and insists that he cannot be ka’tsina, Silva washes his face in the river, almost as if to demonstrate that his face is clear and uncovered—he isn’t hiding his identity. As Silva and Yellow Woman ride farther north into the mountains, Yellow Woman loses sight of the river, and this distance makes her somewhat disoriented; she no longer sees her home, and imagines that she sees towns in the distance where in fact there are none. After Silva tells her to ride back up the mountain, Yellow Woman rides until she spots signs of the river, which guides her back home again. In this way, the river guides her in and out of her experiences as the mythical Yellow Woman.

The Yellow Woman stories weave in and out of the narrator’s mind just as the river winds through the story’s landscape. Like the stories, the river is a constant and familiar presence in the narrator’s life. Both the stories and the river have shaped the people and communities around them over time, and remain central to the narrator’s personal and communal identity.