House Made of Dawn

PART 1, PROLOGUE-CHAPTER 7

Reading Check

1. Imagery, repetition, figurative language (Prologue)

2. Their estrangement (Chapter 1)

3. Memories (Chapter 2)

4. Othering/Alienation (Chapter 3)

5. Cultural differences (Chapter 3)

6. The wolf (Chapter 5)

7. The Navajo/Diné (Chapter 6)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. In many Indigenous cultures, the land is central to being and existence, and it is through the intimate relationship with the land and seasons that a people, a language, and a culture arise. Momaday’s choice to begin with setting anchors land and setting as the origin, the point from which the story emerges. (Chapter 1)

2. Blending past and present tenses emphasizes a contradiction between the eternity of the land and seasons with the rapid generational changes taking place for humans in the 20th century, a contradiction that is difficult for characters to reconcile and that contributes to the estrangement between Francisco and Abel. (Various chapters)

3. His father is unknown and might have been Zia, Isleta, or Navajo/Diné. (Chapter 2)

4. He does not understand the experience of being an outsider, which contributed to Abel’s choice to go to war. He also does not understand how that experience impacted Abel. (Chapter 2)

5. Momaday’s use of contrasting imagery places these characters at odds with each other and foreshadows a clash between them, despite their shared status as outsiders. This can be seen in the contrast between Reyes’s light skin and hair and Abel’s dark skin and hair, Reyes’s stout and powerful body against Abel’s lithe and stiff body, and Reyes’s brazen, confident demeanor against Abel’s quiet hesitance. (Chapter 4)

6. His homecoming is a failure because he is only further estranged from the land, language, and traditions, which manifests as an inability to speak common greetings or voice prayers. He is also growing more dependent on alcohol. (Chapter 5)

7. As outsiders in the community, their perspectives illustrate contrast between Indigenous attitudes and colonial attitudes toward Ritual, Witchcraft, and Whiteness. Father Olguin struggles to reconcile the Indigenous traditions with those of the Church at such events as the Feast of Porcingula and feels powerless to convey and enforce his own ideas of ritual and faith. Angela objectifies Abel’s body throughout their affair, using him as a tool to reject her own whiteness and achieve acceptance within the community even as Abel pursues her in an attempt to find belonging through integration with her whiteness. (Various chapters)       

PART 2, CHAPTERS 8-9

Reading Check

1. Listening (Chapter 8)

2. Dispose of him (Chapter 8)

3. It blurs time. (Chapter 8)

4. His pain (Chapter 8)

5. Sun and plain (Chapter 9)

6. Deicide (Chapter 9)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. By creating a counternarrative that questions the validity of the original, Tesomah undermines all of Christianity; his versions of this story and others take power away from the white status quo. (Chapter 8)

2. Because he comes from the land-locked high desert, Abel does not understand the ocean or the tides, and so the story of the fish’s intimate relationship with the moon underscores his complete alienation and marginalization. (Chapter 8)

3. The way the many words reduce a whole person to a narrow set of answers recalls Tesomah’s claim that John’s embellished words reduce the divine to nothingness. Both examples serve to critique the white status quo. (Chapter 8)

4. White perpetrators of colonization have systematically removed Indigenous people from their various homelands and separated generations of youth from their traditions and language by forced assimilation in boarding schools and relocation programs like the one Abel is in. The peyote ceremony Tesomah hosts in his Pan-Indian Rescue mission is an attempt to create a distinctly Indigenous ritual untouched by whiteness. (Chapter 8)

5. Momaday uses Tesomah to share a multilayered counternarrative that challenges the white status quo. The story provides both an Indigenous perspective of origin, ritual, and the divine in contrast to the Christian origin and an Indigenous perspective of American history that recasts the process of colonization as an apocalypse systematically carried out by agents of the United States government. (Chapter 9)

6. Elders such as Abel’s grandfather, Francisco, and Tesomah’s grandmother, Aho, are the last generation to have spoken their languages and taken part in all their sacred rituals from birth and away from white colonial influences. The story of Aho’s death illustrates the reality of colonization as an apocalypse, because as elders pass on, so does the deep cultural knowledge and language of their people, leaving the new generations without a solid cultural identity. (Chapter 9)     

PARTS 3-4, CHAPTERS 10-12

Reading Check

1. Connection to homeland (Chapter 10)

2. Understanding of land (Chapter 10)

3. A womb (Chapter 11)

4. His pain (Chapter 12)

5. A circle or spiral (Chapter 12­)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Used disdainfully, Tesomah uses the term to imply that he is too traditional to fit in in Los Angeles. (Chapter 10)

2. Benally implies that Tesomah’s judgment of Abel stems from a hidden insecurity regarding his own alienation and lack of connection to his homeland and traditions, illustrating the multiplicities of Indigenous identities and the ways in which victims of colonial violence can become perpetrators of it as they assimilate. (Chapter 10)

3. Whereas Angela’s aim is to seduce Abel, subconsciously pantomiming an act of conquest in line with earlier forms of colonization, Milly wants to make a life with him in Los Angeles, subconsciously forcing him to assimilate in line with modern forms of colonization. (Chapter 10)

4. Benally’s story of a return from boarding school to the cycles and rhythms of life in his homeland represents a glimpse into a life removed from whiteness and colonization, but his repeated assertion that “you never saw [Pony] again” communicates a profound sense of loss. Written in the second person, Momaday puts the reader into an intimate and participatory role so that the loss feels close and conveys Benally’s own alienation from the experience and way of life. (Chapter 10)

5. The story of his first bear hunt illustrates a relationship between hunter and hunted that is in tune with the eternal cycles of the land. The story represents a cultural tradition and the knowledge he is passing on before he dies so that Abel has it to pass on to future generations. (Chapter 11)

6. Abel has been reborn in the womb of his grandfather’s house. In donning his ceremonial clothing, preparing his body, and taking part in the race for the dead, Abel takes his grandfather’s place as keeper of the stories and memories. In using memories and stories and giving himself over to the race for the dead, he is able to push past his pain and persevere. Like the cycles of nature, he comes full circle, returning to the beginning of himself, his people, and the book. (Chapter 12)