Little Big Man (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Thomas Berger
- First Published: 1964
- Type of Plot: Picaresque
- Time of Work: 1852-1876 and 1952-1953
- Setting: The western United States
- Principal Characters: Jack Crabb, Old Lodge Skins, General George Armstrong Custer, Wild Bill Hickock, Mrs. Pendrake, Olga, Sunshine, Caroline Crabb, Amelia, Ralph Fielding Snell
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman, Historical fiction, Picaresque fiction, Adventure, Western fiction
- Subjects: Culture, Values, Family or family life, Memory, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Social issues, Individuality, West, U.S., Native Americans or American Indians, Ethnic relations, Adventure, Intermarriage, Soldiers, Westerns, Satire, Battles
- Locales: United States
The Novel
In Little Big Man, a white man becomes an Indian but eventually fits into neither white nor Indian societies. The novel is 111-year-old Jack Crabb’s episodic account of his life from 1852, when he is ten and most of his family is killed by drunken Indians, to 1876, when he becomes the only white survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
In between, he lives for five years with Indians as the adopted son of Old Lodge Skins, chief of a small band of Northern Cheyenne (earning the name Little Big Man because of the proportion of his courage to his...
[The entire page is 2293 words long]
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