A Cultural Breakaway - Essay Example

A cultural breakaway Introduction In Scott Momaday’s “The Way to the Rainy Mountain”, the puts into focus a vivid descriptive analysis of a personal, family and clan stories interestingly about Kiowa history. The writer draws a closer relationship about his memories of Kiowa cultural values, and traditional narrative in putting into perspective a unique impression of Kiowa’s livelihood. Scott does not only present Kiowa traditional myths, but helps us to create and relate Kiowa culture. Through a well examined process of mentally forming a clear picture of traditional stories, Scott’s view on contemporary cultural life, the reader is placed at a point of being able to offer a personal appreciation of the fluctuating experience of Kiowa as a culture. Momaday fit into the historic times of the Indian society coming at a time of American imagination, not as the end of the long trail, but coming into full view as an Indian contemporary society. Momaday puts into context and relates to the audience his views. In his description he talks about how his ancestors are buried in that land so that he puts a claim on the land through his memory. The wild animals knew this very well, the weather was fast changing and winter was vividly fast approaching, it was during that time of the year that even the bravest of all animals had to seek warmth and comfort in order to shield itself from the adverse winter time. The cold is sharp and straight reaching even up to the bones chilling throughout the body. The branches of the tree turn bare and their beauty gone, as Scott puts it “that winter brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds.” (1) The surrounding chilly snow brings silence, one stands outside unsure of the next move, head lifted high above to the sky, and arms carefully folded trying by every natural means to embrace it. The family is seated together in our new home, admiring the sudden beauty this weather has brought. My six year old sister is sitting happily next to my parents as smooth conversation flows through the family exchanging sweet laughter as the conversation takes shape. Using a heavy jacket I have wrapped myself against the cold weather, am desperately engulfed into a world of my own, I am suffering a nostalgic situation with sadness and severe longing; a longing for my home. Best captured in Hoffman’s own ideas “It is indeed a feeling whose shades and degrees am destined to know quite intimately, but at this hovering moment, it comes upon me like a visitation from a whole new geography of emotions, an annunciation of how much an absence can hurt.” We had moved into this new area some six months ago, when my family had to flee due to the great tsunami that made everybody move out of my former city to this new environment. Reflecting back at my childhood, I come across darkened imagination of the place where we had come from. Deep within me there is a feeling that I don’t want to be separated from my childhood memories, the sweet moments and the little jokes and games that we used to play with my friends at our countryside home. Every situation around me seems bleak offering no meaning, losing my childhood memories, my thoughts are stuck in a moody situation refused to move and think on. This kind of winter weather is indeed pure beauty, it surrounds trees and bushes. It’s a whole new form of world; the getaway. Several years have passed, it is now indeed a new culture and life for me, things are different now, at a friend’s party I meet a lady in her early twenties; who had also been separated from her childhood. They must also have apparently left China during that time, we talk issues of how a part of her has since then been missing ever since that time. Her journey as she vividly describes that “It was a long journey toward the dawn, and it led to the golden age” (Momaday 2), and along the way they have interacted with a different type of people that have in a much deeper sense influenced their culture and religion. That aspect of cultural identity was missing in us; it is as though we were being alienated from our culture into a new cultural identity, one that we did not quite well understand its dynamics; this new lifestyle offered hope and a chance for a new beginning of freedom, but even with these it was as though I was being separated from my consciousness and my culture where we would enjoy the precious childhood memories; Momaday also affirms this by asserting that “When I was a child I played with my cousins….there were a lot of good things to eat, a lot of laughter and surprise.” (4) - And in the evening when the sun sets “I lay down with my grandmother and could hear the frogs away in the river and feel the notion in the air.” We both vividly agreed that “when it came time to leave, we felt as though we were being pushed out of happiness, safe enclosures of Eden” (Hoffman 177) As Scott describes, there are only memories of his grandmother’s experience, only able to capture the fond memories of the Christianity that her grandmother professed attaching a great reverence for the sun, a holy regard that was now all gone into the new mankind. He recalls weariness in her, and ancient awe. She was a string Christian in her late years; though she had come a long way to Kiowa she never forgot her birthright. He recalls that as a child his grandmother had been to the sun dances; she had participated in those in those annual rites, and by them she had learned the restoration of her people in presence of Tai-me. By then she was aged seven recalling that in 1887 was the last time on Washita River along the Rainy Mountain Creek. Scott further recalls how at times when the people could not find alive animal and had to hang an animal’s hide on a sacred tree, her grandmother had been present all this while without bitterness of this new culture as she bore a vision of deicide. (3) All these are memories in Momaday, he figures out seeing his grandmother in several postures that were peculiar to her; he recalls memories when seeing her grandmother standing at the wood stove on a winter morning and turning meat in great iron skillet; while at the same time sitting at the south window bent above her beadwork and doing what she knew best: praying. Momaday confesses not to understanding Kiowa and subsequently never understanding his grandmother’s prayers, but quite interestingly he could still figure out a sense of sorrow in the prayer. This important journey in “The way to the Rainy Mountain” serves as a great importance to Momaday as a true human being reflecting upon the lands that they stood on, and looking down upon the desert as he moves down into the rainy mountain. Subsequently, Momaday traces where he was born: he argues that he was not raised in Kiowa; he was instead raised in Jemez Pueblo a place where his parents worked, and therefore he is learning this new culture. This relationship draws a closer relationship to the many of my type of immigrants including me who also found their way into this country. For many different life situations, the very first generation struggles very hard to make it, the subsequent generation finds it a little easier existing into the kind of life. Contrastingly enough the third generation always finds a string desire to live the life of our grandparents, to initiate an adventure lifestyle to try and go back and see for themselves where they originally came from; this unique adventure tries to justify the lost connection between the new culture that we find ourselves into after so many generations so that they could learn the older ways of life of their ancestors; a unique cultural feeling that seeks to draw this new generation back to the older cultural life, to feel what it was like during that older life back then; how it felt like when they were in the Old World. As it turns out between generations, family history, and important cultural identity serve great importance to generations. In this new cultural setting, it therefore becomes quite necessary that we especially reflect upon these critical issues through the passage of time. Perhaps we might be well having our grandfathers still living, and at times this might not be the case and as such valuably old kept photographs and word of mouth stories is an important element for our spiritual growth as this seeks to propel us forward through cultural turbulence. Unfortunately most at times we are alienated from these cultural ties and not thinking about these cultural things and not thinking about our own cultural mortality. Perhaps one main reason for this could be because we humans have denied ourselves true necessity that Momaday seeks to unravel still remembering his ancestral names by his grandmother’s graveside (4), it is the same argument that Hoffman admits openly that he is still “conscious for a fact that the world exists” (2) in adopting to the new cultures we have eliminated to a larger extent all the ties to our ancestry by doing away with all the variables and so doing limited our cultural abilities and given rise to cultural prejudice to the immigrant minority cultures neglecting the critical roles that a people’s culture plays in unraveling mysteries that occur over time in the universe and our every day surrounding; and then perhaps our human cultural unconscious degrades our human spirit separating us from our vital cultural records yet these records will be important at some day if most importantly we relate with the “The Way to The Rainy Mountain” and work to getting back some of these cultural things. But again, on a different scale I’m putting into context that Momaday’s journey is that of imagination that categorically separates the literary informative journey. Works Cited Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation. New York: Random House, 2011.Print Momaday, Scott by N. The Way to Rainy Mountain . New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1979.Print Read More