SOURCE: Stott, Jon C. “Joseph Campbell on the Second Mesa: Structure and Meaning in Arrow to the Sun.” Children's Literature Association Quarterly 11, no. 3 (fall 1986): 132-34.

[In the following essay, Stott determines the influence of The Hero with a Thousand Faces on Gerald McDermott's Arrow to the Sun.]

Although it may be linked to a tale type widely distributed in North America, every native tale has its own integrity. As a product of the culture in which it is told, it is part of that culture's holistic view of reality; and that view of reality is rooted in the geographical location of the specific people. As Vine Deloria, Jr. has suggested in God is Red, his study of native religions, the beliefs of native peoples were closely tied to the places in which they lived: “Holy Places were well-known in what have been classified as primitive religions. The vast majority of Indian tribal religions have a centre at a particular place, be it river, mountain, plateau, valley, or other natural feature” (81). This is particularly true of the Pueblo peoples; their religious beliefs and the myths that embody them relate closely to the specific features of the Southwest in which they have lived for centuries.

The non-native writer who wishes to adapt native legends for children is faced with a difficult problem. He must maintain the delicate balance between making his version faithful to the religious basis of the culture, with its close relationship to the place in which it evolved, and at the same time making it accessible to readers for whom this culture is in all likelihood totally foreign. Gerald McDermott's Arrow to the Sun, one of the best and best-known modern adaptations of a native legend, represents an interesting solution to this problem. Although McDermott is scrupulously accurate in his presentation of details of Pueblo culture, the overall structure and meaning of his tale have been influenced by the studies of Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

In Arrow to the Sun, McDermott adapts Pueblo iconography to invest his story with implicit meanings which specifically link it to the cultural and religious beliefs of these people. Pueblo religion reflects the basic relationship between the people and their environment. An agricultural people whose primary crop was corn, they depended on the correct mixtures of sun and rain to grow crops in the arid landscape. However, like most primal peoples, the Pueblo did not approach the physical environment in a solely empirical, scientific manner. Living in a cosmos in which the human, non-human, and supernatural were closely interrelated, they believed that a successful harvest depended to a great extent on their achievement of a right relationship with those powers who controlled the rains and the growth of the corn. The Kachina dances, which extend from winter to the time of harvest, were major ritual observances designed to assist in the development of the corn.¹

Arrow to the Sun reflects this spiritual orientation in many ways. Generally, the boy, whose logo is a stylized cross-section of an ear of corn, lives in an arid land to which he brings life by supplying the rainbow, symbol of sun and rain. On nearly every page, the visual elements reflect the cultural processes by which he succeeds. The designs on the end-papers approximate the stylized rain clouds found throughout Pueblo design; the orange colors parallel the dry land; and not only the logo, but also the boy's hair style (which develops in the story) emphasize the centrality of corn; and finally the rainbow on which he dances signals the arrival of rain and therefore life for the people.

Moreover, the manner in which the boy proves himself worthy of bringing the power of the sun to the people is deeply rooted in elements of Pueblo belief. McDermott has done his research thoroughly and has implicitly embedded it within his presentation of the tests the hero undergoes on the sun. It is appropriate that the boy enter four kivas, for the kivas, chambers entered through a hole in the roof, were sacred places where, among other things, Pueblo youths were initiated into the mysteries of the spiritual lives of the people. What happens in the story's kivas is at once important to the specific quest of the boy and generally to the religious life of the people. The boy must successively enter kivas containing lions (cougars), serpents (rattlesnakes), bees, and lightning. In terms of the culture, his four tests involve steps necessary to help the corn grow. Mountain lions symbolize war societies and, in taming the lions of the first kiva, the boy is establishing the peace necessary for agriculture. Rattlesnakes were not only valuable pest controllers, attacking the rats who ate stored corn, they were also important in rainmaking ceremonies. After being used in ritual dances, they were released at the edges of the villages so that they could return to the hills, there to report to the rain spirits the reverences accorded them by the people. In turning the snakes into a circle, symbol of unity and harmony, the boy is extending to them the necessary reverence. By forcing the bees to order themselves into a functioning hive, he is establishing the organization that is necessary if the processes of pollination is to occur. Finally, by submitting himself to the power of lightning, so frequently seen above the hills beyond the villages, he is able to achieve new power and bring sun and rain to the people.

Analyzing the story in the light of Pueblo culture, we see that the boy is much more than a rejected child who achieves peer group recognition. In his quest, he establishes his identity as the Son of God, and to do that, he has had to undergo tests that fulfill the prime responsibility of a God, social responsibility and leadership. In the case of Pueblo culture, this involved engaging in those spiritual activities necessary for the creation of a bountiful harvest. The story is thus an accurate reflection of Pueblo culture, visually, physically, and spiritually. And it is accurate not just in its presentation of these different aspects, but in its presentation of these as integrally linked.

Although based on Pueblo culture, Arrow to the Sun cannot be traced to a specific source. In examining several collections of Pueblo mythology, I have found several tales which contain incidents and motifs which reappear in McDermott's story. Four Zuni stories collected by Ruth Benedict and one collected by Franz Boas contain similar incidents. However, just as McDermott has drawn from various elements of the culture, he has drawn what he has needed from each of these stories to create his own unique work.

Reading Arrow to the Sun against this brief survey of Pueblo culture and mythology, it becomes apparent that the picture book is an eclectic mixture. But it is far more than a pastiche or kaleidoscope of fragments gleaned from his studies; Arrow to the Sun is, in both words and pictures, a tightly unified narrative. Yet if a specific source cannot be found in the ethnological background, what is the underlying structural principle informing it? An answer is to be found in McDermott's 1975 essay “On the Rainbow Trail”:

Soon after finishing my first film [The Stonecutter], I had the immense good fortune to meet Joseph Campbell. Dr. Campbell has written extensively and eloquently on the relationships between mythology and modern psychology. … These ideas, illuminated in Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces, became the basis for all my subsequent work. During the production of Flight of Icarus, Anansi the Spider, and The Magic Tree, I consulted with Campbell on the meanings of the tales I had chosen to illuminate.

(127)

These three films, later made into books, immediately preceded the creation of Arrow to the Sun as both book and film. In the film credits for Arrow, Campbell is listed as a consultant. Indeed, Campbell's ideas can be seen as the unifying force giving shape to and even dictating the ultimate meanings of the elements of Pueblo mythology found in Arrow. The central thesis of The Hero With a Thousand Faces is quoted by McDermott in “On the Rainbow Trail”:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

(127)

Reading Campbell's study explains why McDermott, in both his visual and verbal presentation, chose specific elements from Pueblo culture for inclusion in the book.

At the beginning of his life, the Campbell hero lives in obscurity, without a known father and often despised by the people around him. “He and/or the world in which he finds himself suffers from a symbolic deficiency” (37). However, “the godly powers … are revealed [finally] to have been within the heart of the hero all the time” (39). In Arrow to the Sun, neither the boy, his mother, nor his peers recognize his paternity, the source of the latent powers within him. Not only the action of the other children and the unhappiness of mother and son, but also the dominant orange colors of the first half of the book reflect the deficiency. There is no rain, the corn has not yet ripened; and the aridity of the land parallels the state of the people who jeer and reject. All fail to see the potential of the boy, symbolized by the corn-sun logo which he has worn since his conception. But, the visual depiction of the logo travelling from the sun to the maiden's home symbolizes, in Campbell's words, “the communication of divine energy into the womb of the world” (42).

The boy's search for his father is an integral part of the quest as it is defined by Campbell: “The child of destiny has to face a long period of obscurity. … He is thrown inward to his own depths or outward to the unknown; either way, what he touches is a darkness unexplored. And this is a zone of unsuspected presences, benign as well as malignant. … Alone in some little room … the young world-apprentice learns the lesson of the seed powers” (326-7). The boy's journey is a lonely one, foiled twice by individuals who cannot give answers. Even Arrow Maker does not give him an answer, but, pointing him in the right direction, sends him outward into the darkness of space, again alone. Even when he meets the Lord of the Sun, his father, he must continue his solitary tests, entering the kivas to face animals which could kill, but which, when properly controlled, help him in bringing the boon back to the earth. Campbell has noted that “the realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know” (217). We have seen that the animals of the kivas represent those that are found in the Southwest landscape and that are related to the physical growth of the corn crops. What the boy does is rediscover their spiritual potentials; in controlling them, he makes it possible for these energies to revitalize the world to which he will return.

The test of the fourth kiva is the most important; in the other three the boy is an actor, but here he is acted upon. The potentially dangerous lightning does not destroy him; rather it transforms him, bringing him to his full potential. Trailing a rainbow, wearing the multicolored vestments of his new status, he is prepared to return to his home. Campbell writes:

The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world. The miracle of this flow may be represented in physical terms as the circulation of food substance, dynamically as a streaming of energy, or spiritually as a manifestation of grace. … Abundant harvest is a sign of God's grace; God's grace is the food of the soul; the lightning bolt is the harbinger of the fertilizing rain, and at the same time the manifestation of the released energy of God.

(40)

The illustrations of the concluding pages of Arrow to the Sun make it abundantly clear that McDermott is depicting this process. After being struck by the lightning, the boy trails the rainbow behind him, an emanation of his new power. On the final double spread, he dances on a rainbow, surrounded by the figures representing the kiva powers on one side and figures representing the growing corn on the other. In the background, the sun and his mother, the sky-father and earth-mother, look on. The circular designs and the abundance of color indicate the unity and the new vitality he has given to a world which had once rejected him.

One final observation will reinforce the point that McDermott's visuals, while reflecting the Pueblo culture, are most influenced by Campbell's ideas. Discussing the boy's logo, McDermott stated that it was his own invention:

In searching for a graphic motif that would unite the two concepts [of sun and corn], I slowly turned an ear of corn in my hands, studying the color, texture, and form. Then I broke the ear in half. At that moment, the symbol hidden beneath the surface was revealed.

(127)

What we have here is a movement from a Hopi symbol to a universal one. Although McDermott does not state it explicitly, it seems clear that the logo that emerged from the cross-section of corn is what Campbell has called “the World Navel.” Campbell explains the significance of this mandala image in terms that cast light on Arrow to the Sun:

The hero as the incarnation of God is himself the navel of the world, the umbilical point through which the energies of eternity break into time. Thus the World Navel is the symbol of the continuous creation.

(4)

On the boy's torso, the navel appearing logo reveals the spiritual power of the sun which, through the boy's agency, has become manifest on Earth in the growing corn.

Considered in the light of Joseph Campbell's ideas, Arrow to the Sun is seen not so much as a specific treatment of a Native American culture—although it is this in part, and a very good treatment—but more as a variant of a theme McDermott explored in all of his works of the 1970s. In an interview I held with him in Toronto in March 1979, shortly after the publication of The Knight of the Lion, McDermott remarked:

With the perspective of time, I realize that in that very first tale about the stonecutter, I was drawn to what was to be in microcosm all the themes I was to return to later on, and all of the rest of the books, whether taken from a myth of the Pueblo or from Africa or, most recently from Arthurian legend, centered on the idea of the individual who goes out on a quest of self-fulfillment, the hero quest, in a phrase. There was a real unconscious need to tell that story in many different ways. I was drawn again and again to the same story, even though I must have read a thousand tales to choose just the ones that I was to use.

One will notice the echo of Campbell in this last sentence. The boy, it becomes apparent, shares greater kinship with Tasaku, Mavungo, Icarus, Osiris, and Yvain, heroes of McDermott's other books, than with figures from Pueblo mythology specifically or North American Native mythology generally. The setting is less a Pueblo Village and the mythic landscapes of Pueblo culture than a general landscape of world mythology. The strength that bent the bow in Arrow to the Sun was derived not from the forces of Pueblo spirit beings but from the mind of Joseph Campbell.

Note

1. The term primal is taken from Jamake Highwater's book The Primal Mind (New York: Harper and Row, 1981). Highwater rightly claims that the term “primitive” is an expression of Europeans who look upon their culture as superior to Native cultures. Primal, Highwater states, suggests alternate rather than inferior ways of perceiving reality.

Works Cited

Benedict, Ruth. Zuni Mythology. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1985.

Boaz, Franz. “Tales of Spanish Provenience from Zuni.” Journal of American Folklore 35 (1922): 62-66.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1949.

Deloria, Vine, Jr. God is Red. New York: Dell, 1983.

McDermott, Gerald. Arrow to the Sun. New York.

———. “On the Rainbow Trail.” Horn Book 51 (April 1975): 127.