H Jaskoski - CliffsNotes on Momadays House Made of Dawn

Copyright 1999 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

All rights reserved.

www.hmhco.com

cliffsnotes.com

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

Trademarks: CliffsNotes, the CliffsNotes logo, Cliffs, cliffsnotes.com, and all related trademarks, logos, and trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

eISBN 978-0-544-18206-6
v1.0217

The action of House Made of Dawn takes place between July 20, 1945, and February 28, 1952. The narration comprises an undated prologue and four dated sections set in the pueblo of Walatowa (Jemez), New Mexico (prologue and sections 1 and 4) and the Los Angeles area (sections 2 and 3).

After a brief prologue describing a man named Abel, who is running in the Southwestern countryside, the story proper opens on July 20, 1945, when Abel, an orphan raised by his traditionalist grandfather, Francisco, returns to Walatowa after serving in World War II. Alienated and disorganized by war experiences (and also, it is suggested, by the early loss of mother and brother and from bouts of malaise), Abel is unable to make a meaningful reintegration into the life of the village.

He takes a temporary job cutting wood for Angela St. John, a troubled, sensuous woman who is visiting the area to undertake mineral bath treatments for some sort of chronic fatigue; she is pregnant. Abel has a brief affair with Angela. He also participates in a village festival and is singled out by a strange, ominous-appearing albino man. Meanwhile, the omniscient narration follows a parallel line with the village priest, Father Olguin, as he studies the diary of his predecessor, Fray Nicols, and makes an awkward approach to Angela.

On August 1, in a strange, almost ritualistic encounter, Abel stabs the albino to death in a cornfield. This section of the story ends the next day, with Francisco again alone, hoeing in his fields.

The two chapters of the second section are dated January 27 and 28, 1952. This portion of the story takes place in Los Angeles and centers on the character of John Big Bluff Tosamah, who is a Kiowa, a storefront preacher, and a priest of the peyote religion. The chapter for January 27 contains the first of two sermons by Tosamah, a long discourse on a verse from the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word. Tosamah maintains that language has been debased by white people and its power lost or corrupted. At the time that Tosamah is giving this sermon Abel appears to be lying fifteen miles away, barely conscious after having suffered a terrible beating that has mangled his hands.

The omniscient narrator moves back and forth in time, interspersing fragmentary memories of Abels past with awareness of his pain-wracked body; he fleetingly recalls filling out forms in prison and, afterwards, meeting an earnest social worker named Milly (with whom he has an affair); there are fragments from his time in prison and testimony at his trial by Father Olguin and by one of his buddies in the army. This chapter also contains a depiction of a peyote ceremony and introduces Ben Benally, who will play a significant part in Abels eventual healing.

The January 28 chapter is composed almost entirely of Tosamahs second sermon. This is a passage previously published in an essay in Ramparts magazine and later in The Way To Rainy Mountain, in which Momaday meditates on his Kiowa grandmothers life and the history and passing of the magnificent Kiowa culture.

The third section of the novel is dated February 20, 1952, and is narrated by Ben Benally, a Navajo relocated to urban Los Angeles. Benallys rambling narration includes references to more of Abels life in Los Angeleshis job at a box-stapling factory, his encounters with a sadistic policeman named Martinez, his participation in the peyote services, and socializing with Milly. Benally also recollects the recent encounter with Angela St. John, who visited Abel in the hospital when he was recovering from the brutal beating that left his hands broken. Angela, now the mother of a son, told Abel a story with a heroic theme, intimating that he reminded her of the hero. Benally also recollects going with Abel to a 49 party in the hills outside the city on the night before Abel was to leave; Benally recalls that at this time, as previously, Abel sang traditional songs from Navajo healing ceremonies, including the verses beginning House Made of Dawn from the Night Chant.

The fourth section of House Made of Dawn is very brief, containing only two chapters, dated February 27 and February 28, 1952. Abel returns to Walatowa in time to care for his dying grandfather and perform the appropriate burial rituals. Having seen to this duty, he begins a ceremonial run into the dawn. The novel has moved in a circle, returning to the event depicted in the prologue.

Relatively few characters are involved in the actual events that take place during the time period covered by the novel, between July 1945 and February 1952. Many other characters are mentioned or remembered, often only in a phrase or a single sentence. These secondary, or remembered, characters are noted in a separate list after the list of main characters.

AbelThe central character of the novel, born in 1920 of a Walatowa mother and an unknown father. Raised by his grandfather after the death of his mother, he leaves the pueblo of Walatowa to join the army during World War II. His return to the pueblo after getting out of the army begins the novel; his second return ends it.

FranciscoGrandfather of Abel and an elder in the village of Walatowa, Francisco is a mediating figure; he maintains the traditional Indian customs but is sacristan to the Catholic priest. He is a supremely religious, conservative man.

Father OlguinParish priest at Walatowa, he feels keenly his alienation as an outsider in the village, and he is fascinated by the diary of a predecessor at the church.

BonifacoA young boy who serves as an altar boy for Father Olguin.

Angela Grace (Mrs. Martin) St. JohnA woman from Los Angeles who visits Walatowa in the early stages of her pregnancy, on the advice of her physician husband, to seek treatment at the mineral baths for a nervous condition. She becomes Abels lover. Seven years later, she visits Abel in Los Angeles at the hospital where he is recovering from a beating, and she tells him a story about a bear.