Dec 21, 2009

The Ancient Child | Social Concerns

Momaday's novels explore issues of identity: the search for an identity between cultures, the reclamation of a lost identity in the face of disruption, or the creation of a new identity that incorporates cultures, heals the disruptions, and transverses the barriers to the spiritual and mythical. In House Made of Dawn (1966), the protagonist is a Native American who is estranged from his ethnic roots and not accepted in White society. He has survived the Korean War and struggles with horrific memories that leave him alienated and fragmented. The novel ends with a sense that his...