When the Legends Die | When the Legends Die: A Point beyond Culture
In the following essay, Holifield interprets Tom’s
maturation in Borland’s When the Legends Die.
Hal Borland’s novel When the Legends Die vividly portrays the evolution and resolution of an identity crisis. The protagonist Tom Black Bull, a Ute Indian, finds himself caught between the old Ute culture and that of white America seeking the assimilation of Indians. Tom undergoes a somewhat circular metamorphosis by moving from a child’s notion of his identity as a Ute, to a repression of that identity as a survival response, and ultimately to a reaffirmation of his Indian heritage.
Although Edward T. Hall’s Beyond Culture is not a literary explication...
[The entire page is 2877 words long]
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