House Made of Dawn

Rating:
Summary: In the beginning was the Word.
Review: "There was a house made of dawn," and N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel begins with his Tano protagonist, Abel, "alone and running," yet "he seemed almost to be standing still, very little and alone." He may leave to fight the white man's war in Europe. He may seek solace in the arms of a white woman or two. He may be sent to prison for a crime that he sees as a necessity. He may end up attempting to work in the industrial world. Yet Abel cannot run from the seemingly boundless, stark land or the traditions with which his spirit is bound. The land, as enigmatic as he is, is there at the beginning and there at the end. It is the constant in his life from and to which he runs. In biblical terms, it is the alpha and omega of his being.

I first learned of House Made of Dawn from an excerpt in American Indian Literature: An Anthology (revised) edited and introduced by Alan R. Velie, in which Abel encounters the "white man," an albino Native who, although he appears only briefly in the novel, is one of modern literature's most compelling characters. Without saying a word, he emanates a vague menace with every look and motion. "Above the open mouth, the nearly sightless eyes followed the old man [Abel's grandfather] out of the cornfield, and the barren lids fluttered helplessly behind the colored glass." You will never forget the white man. "A man kills such an enemy if he can." The white man sets the tone for the rest of the novel.

Nor will you forget Abel's struggles, with his heritage and its expectations, with alcoholism, with his own body, with his own desires, his inability to find his place at home or in the modern white world, and with his emotional and physical pain.

There is the dichotomy of the prevalent Catholic faith, which finds itself oddly interwoven with Native belief in strange ways, as in the feast of Santiago held in Abel's town. The conflict comes to a head in Tosamah, Priest of the Sun, who reveals that "In the beginning was the Word" is all that we need to know of the essential Truth. But by adding and dividing and multiplying the Word, the white man subtracts the Truth-the Truth that eludes Abel. Tosamah says of his grandmother, "She had learned that in words and in language, and there only, she could have whole and consummate being."

House Made of Dawn is much like the life and land it portrays-mysterious and unyielding. There is little action here, but there is a mental and emotional landscape that is, like the backdrop, seared on the minds and hearts of those who experience it. Even the world cannot kill the Word and the rich inner life of a Tano.

Diane L. Schirf, 26 February 2002.

Rating:
Summary: An essential work of Native American literature
Review: "House Made of Dawn," by N. Scott Momaday, is an extraordinary work of American literature. In this book Momaday tells the story of Abel, a Native American whose life journey takes him from the rural world of his ancestors to the harsh urban environment of an American city. Along the way Momaday creates passages of great pain, beauty, and wonder.

Consider the book's opening lines: "Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different colored clays and sands." Prose like this gives the book a timeless, mythic flavor, and is stunningly complemented by naturalistic passages that explore such visceral topics as violence, sexual ecstasy, and alcohol abuse.

Momaday superbly evokes the people, animals, and geography of the rural West. His book also explores the significance of both oral and written cultural traditions. The book features one of the most intriguing characters in 20th century American fiction: The Rev. J.B.B. Tosameh -- "orator, physician, Priest of the Sun, son of Hummingbird" -- in whose character Momaday explores the collision between Christianity and Native American religious traditions.

"House Made of Dawn" has a somewhat fragmented structure. Like William Faulkner, Momaday expects the reader to do some work in assembling the greater story. But such work is rewarding. Recommended as companion texts: "A Son of the Forest and Other Writings," by groundbreaking Pequot Indian author William Apess; and "Mohawk Trail," by Beth Brant, a contemporary author of the Bay of Quinte Mohawk people.

Rating:
Summary: The Great Native American Novel
Review: A few words to sum up my thoughts here: An American Classic. I would not hesitate to put this book on the required reading list for high school lit classes across the country (e.g., along side The Red Badge of Courage and The Catcher in the Rye). What a deep, insightful, emotional journey into the life of a man forced to exist in two completely different worlds. The world of his youth and later return is truly "the house made of pollen, house made of dawn." The other is post-war Los Angeles, California. (Some 35 years later and its still a hellhole.)

The way N. Scott Momaday structures the story may not appeal to all readers. You will want to take your time here, and it doesn't hurt to allow the images to take hold in your mind. Given the pure artistry of each scene in the book, you will be well rewarded.

In my honest opinion, it would be an injustice to the author and his work to attempt to render a nutshell, summary of the book. So, please excuse any attempt I made here.

Rating:
Summary: The Great Native American Novel
Review: A few words to sum up my thoughts here: An American Classic. I would not hesitate to put this book on the required reading list for high school lit classes across the country (e.g., along side The Red Badge of Courage and The Catcher in the Rye). What a deep, insightful, emotional journey into the life of a man forced to exist in two completely different worlds. The world of his youth and later return is truly "the house made of pollen, house made of dawn." The other is post-war Los Angeles, California. (Some 35 years later and its still a hellhole.)

The way N. Scott Momaday structures the story may not appeal to all readers. You will want to take your time here, and it doesn't hurt to allow the images to take hold in your mind. Given the pure artistry of each scene in the book, you will be well rewarded.

In my honest opinion, it would be an injustice to the author and his work to attempt to render a nutshell, summary of the book. So, please excuse any attempt I made here.

Rating:
Summary: A dark novel left to wander through a Indians life.
Review: A story of a man named Abel. His reintroduction to his native life, the rebellion on society, murder, the finding of self, and continued race to find real meaning in life. This is all told through the medium of dreams, visions, and realities making this book very hard to follow or understand the meaning that the author is trying to convey.

Rating:
Summary: An elegiac chant....
Review: After reading this powerful novel I went to the Internet and read atranslation of The Navajo Night Chant - House Made of Dawn. This canpresent a kind of framework for reading the book as the story of Abelis not a straight forward narrative, but an elegiac chant on oneNative American's cultural alienation and cycle of self-destructivebehaviours. The same spiritual connection to landscape found in theNavajo Night Chant is displayed by Momaday in this novel, so thatplace is intimately connected with identity and Abel's dislocationfrom his place has as much to do with his alienation as his experiencein war. Momaday's feeling for his main character, for landscape andfor language is deeply moving, making this book a rewarding andlayered experience.

Rating:
Summary: Descriptive story of a Native American in the mid 1900
Review: Although difficult to follow at times, Momaday is a master at description. Using intense situations and vivid illustration, it is a fantastic novel.

Rating:
Summary: the story of a man relocating his faith....
Review: Follow Abel's journey into a hell of loneliness and American alienation toward meanings rooted in his ancestral past....evocative, with images as sensual as paint. Unforgettable Prologue.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful but frustrating prose
Review: Gorgeous writing about the mystical Indian culture and the personal tragedies that concurred with that culture's demise at the hands of the White Man -- authentic, serene, spiritual and heartbreaking. It's the story of Abel, raised in the old Indian culture by his grandfather and swallowed up by the "white man's" culture as an adult.

While it's beautifully written, this is a very hard book to follow. Momaday moves through time freely and the reader is constantly lost as to where he is and who his characters are and what any of them have to do with each other. He's constantly switching, with nothing more than a paragraph break, from myths and dreams and the present and the past and previously unknown characters that he picks up on mid-stream. There is very little background to the story until the very last chapter, and so if you've stuck it out til then you're rewarded. It all makes much more sense in the end. This is a book that merits two readings -- the first for the experience of its spirituality, the second to fill in the blanks of the story. It's only 200 pages but it took me four days to get through it - it slows you down when you're constantly back tracking trying to figure out what you've missed only to find that you haven't really missed anything - at least not anything that you know of yet. It's written very surreally and it gets a bit frustrating to tell the truth. There is alot to give Momaday credit for here though. It was an interesting experience but not one that would make me go and seek out everything else he's written.

Rating:
Summary: Chaotic
Review: House Made of Dawn
House Made OF Dawn, a romantic Native American piece composed of the mystical Indian culture and the personal tragedies that concurred with that culture's demise at the hands of the white man. Momaday plots House Made of Dawn on a series of flashbacks. Francesco lives half in the present and half in the past until his old age when he begins to live almost exclusively in the past. Momaday introduces characters such as Abel, Benally, Tosomah and Father Olguin, who all have one foot in the past and one in the future. The novels plot underlines the theme of the presence of the past in people's everyday lives. That past pushes them through their present lives and pulls them each to the values of wholeness and unity between people and their land.
Momaday establishes a powerful topic, but the book is very hard to follow. Momaday moves through time fully and the reader is, constantly lost as to where they are at in the novel. Momaday also introduces characters without actually introducing them to reader and in contrast we don't know what they share in relation to the supporting characters in the novel. The vocabulary is very basic to understand, but the overall readability is chaotic. Momaday constantly switches ideas with nothing more than a paragraph break, from myths to dreams and the present and the past and adds unknown character's that he has picked up on of not where.
In the beginning there is not prelude to the novel until you reach the last chapter. The first part of the novel you can experience the spirituality of the characters, and the second part fills you in with all the blanks in the beginning of the novel. This was very aggravating, because as a reader you back track to see what information you missed but when you go back and reread you realized that you didn't miss anything and that Momaday just hasn't wrote it. Momday does tie up all the loose ends up I don't agree with how he constructed it.
As an educated reader I would not recommend this book. If you are like me and hate to reread and not being told what's going on you will hate this book. I'm not sure how the novel won the Pulitzer Price? It must have been an under developed year of writing.

By: Josh Sturgill