Monday, August 25, 2014

In The Way to Rainy Mountain, what are your impressions of Mamaday's grandmother, Aho?

She strikes me above all as a remnant of another age. The
way that the narrator presents his grandmother as the last remaining member of a tribe
and culture that is now sadly all but extinct on this planet seems to associate her with
a sense of timeless history that stretches back into a time before history itself began
to be recorded. The narrator's grandmother herself witnessed the destruction of her
tribe and its practices, and yet we are told that she did so "without bitterness." Even
though she spent the majority of her days in one geographical location, still what the
narrator remembers about her, and what the reader understands about her character, is
how intrinsic the former practices of her tribe are to her person. Consider the
following quote:


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Although my grandmother lived out her long life
in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, the immense landscape of the continental interior lay
like memory in her blood. She could tell of the Crows, whom she had never seen, and of
the Black Hills, where she had never
been.



This, then, is the
overwhelming impression that we gain of Aho. Even though she is the last remaining
remnant of a tribe whose cultural practises and customs were eradicated, she still bears
the identity of that tribe in her blood.

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