DECOLONIZING NARRATIVE STRATEGIES
ENG 354 Midterm
By Rachael C. Hodder
PROMPT: Compare and contrast the structure of The Way Rainy Mountain and the structure of
Tracks. What does the structure of each work reveal about the work? How does the structure of
each work reinforce major themes of American Indian literature as well as conflicts and themes
inherent in each text?
The texts we have read this semester have exhibited themes of memory and The Way to
Rainy Mountain and Tracks are no exception. Rather than relying on a conversational writing
style (for example) to translate Indian oral tradition into writing, Momaday and Erdrich
challenge Western literary conventions and expectations about the structure of narrative. They
juxtapose multiple narratives thereby creating tensions in the narrative in which the narrators
seem to challenge one another within the story or engage in conversation with each other. In this
way, the novels explore the process of remembering and the construction of history. Ultimately,
Tracks and TWTRM show how the oral tradition of native peoples can be transformed into a
decolonized written tradition.
TWTRM has a tripartite structure in which three voices are arranged on two pages to tell
stories which are related in a topical or thematic nature. The first voice is largely imaginative and
tells stories in a conversational voice. Referring to selection XXII, where Mammedehty
accidentally shoots a horse, we see interjections which are typical of orated storytelling: “But,
you know, he lost his temper… this is how it was” (Momaday 76). The second voice, which
appears at the top of the second of two pages, is the ethnographic voice; it offers supplemental
historical or anthropological information related to the imaginative story on the adjacent page.
This voice in selection XXII describes the situation under which Mammedehty lost his temper
and his horse (Momaday 77). Both voices are oriented beside each other on two adjacent pages;
together, they express “the traditions of man‟s reality”—the first tells events through the eyes of
the Kiowa people, the second delivers information through a Western historical lens (Momaday
4). In this sense, they offer a multi-faceted view of the Kiowa people and their history. These
voices appear in a serif typeface which gives the text a more distinguished, reverent look. The
second voice is in the same serif typeface, this time italicized; this tells us that it is a different
version of the first as it looks similar, but not the same.
The third voice is “the revelation of one way in which these traditions are conceived,
developed, and interfused in the human mind” (Momaday 4). This tertiary voice, as a revelation,
is a new conception—not quite an amalgamation of the other two voices, but the result of a
reflection upon them; that is, the stories in this voice relate to the others in a more abstract,
thematic way. Referring again to selection XXII, this voice describes a box of bones of his
strongest horse that Mammedehty kept in his barn; seemingly as a result of hearing the stories
from the other voices, the narrator says “I have often thought about that red horse. There have
been times when I thought I understood how it was that a man might be moved to preserve the
bones of a horse—and another to steal them away” (77). Although the voice considers the stories
directly, it is not concerned with the loss of the horse, but rather the impulse to preserve and steal
the bones of a horse. This voice visually moves itself away from the other two situated on the
bottom half of the second page and appearing in a sans serif italicized typeface. Sans serif types
are typically perceived as more modern, so in this way, the voice is seated in a different time
than the other two.
In the structure of TWTRM, Momaday is pushing at the limits of narrative as we know it
in the Western literary tradition. His tripartite structure allows for an exploration of memory
processes which echo the tendencies of oral tradition. We are able to see, in the juxtaposition of
the first two voices, how myth becomes history and how history is portrayed in myth; in the third
voice, we see how myth and history have been processed and how they might exist in the
memory for someone removed from them, who does not actually have any material claim to the
events depicted, only the stories. Momaday writes, “The culture [of the Kiowas…] would be
gone and there would be very little material evidence that it had ever been. Yet it is within the
reach of memory still, though tenuously now, and moreover it is defined in a remarkably rich and
living verbal tradition which demands to be preserved for its own sake” (86). Thus, for
Momaday, it is imperative that he not only try to preserve the stories of the Kiowas, but to do it
in a way that works to replicate the effect of oral history. If he could not represent the history in a
way that does well towards the Kiowa oral tradition, then this book would not stand as an
exemplar of postcolonial American Indian literature.
Unlike TWTRM, Erdrich‟s Tracks takes on many of the trappings of a traditional
novel: it has nine chapters, each which deal anecdotally with sequential time periods. The literal
structure of Tracks is not always as puzzling, in some ways, as that in TWTRM because it looks
fairly conventional. Similar to TWTRM, however, Erdrich‟s novel employs a multi-voiced
narrative to relate stories of Fleur Pillager; in this case, the voices are two actors in the stories,
Nanapush and Pauline. Both narrators track Fleur through stories that they heard from others
and, primarily, their own memories of her. The multi-voiced, dualistic nature of the narrative,
like that in TWTRM, seems to be pushing back at the conventional limits of narrative in the way
that it juxtaposes narratives from separate stories. Like TWTRM, Tracks explores the processes
related to remembering and preserving memory, in this case, by relating oral tradition to the way
people create and retell stories about themselves and the people around them. That said, both
Nanapush‟s and Pauline‟s narratives are, at times, quite tenuous—within themselves and
between each other—employing rhetorical tools which lead readers to question the authority of
the narrators and the entire story itself.
Our first and most apparent indication of the rhetorical issues present in Tracks is the
realization that Nanapush is actually telling his stories to a listener in the book. “My girl, listen
well,” he interjects early on (Erdrich 32). Other hints are where he uses the pronoun „you‟ in his
story, as if he is telling his listener about herself. As it turns out, he is speaking to Fleur‟s
daughter and his adoptive granddaughter, Lulu. Rhetoric, defined by the Oxford English
Dictionary as the art of using language to influence or persuade others, becomes relevant because
Nanapush is speaking to an audience and therefore can be assumed to have purpose, or an intent
to influence Lulu one way or the other. As a show of authority to his listener, Nanapush lists his
credentials right from the start:
My girl, I saw the passing of times you will never know. … I saw the last bear shot. I
trapped the last beaver…. I spoke aloud the words of the government treaty, and refused
to sign the settlement papers that would take our woods and lake. I axed the last birch that
was older than I, and I saved the last Pillager (2).
Qualifiers such as this are rhetorical mechanisms which Nanapush, who claims to be the last of
his clan, uses to validate his influence as a storyteller and thereby reinforce his story. Nanapush
obviously takes some pride tradition and heritage, having refused to sign the treaties which
would cause he and his people to lose their land, but with some consideration, readers begin to
notice some points of contention: as someone who has some understanding of being the last of
anything, why did Nanapush trap the last beaver? Or axe the last birch? These admissions seem
contradictory to his character—he should not be proud, but rather ashamed to be responsible for
doing away with the last of anything. On the same hand, if Nanapush is the traditionalist that he
claims to be, how could he read the treaties, which were undoubtedly in English? We can
assume, then, that Nanapush has received some Western education. In this light, Nanapush is not
completely the person which he claimed to be; this unraveling diminishes his power as a reliable
narrator and destabilizes the entire story.
Nanapush also strikes out against his fellow narrator, Pauline (though it is unclear
whether or not he—and Pauline for that matter—are aware of each other‟s narrative
juxtaposition), and discredits any stories she might tell. Of the unnoticeable, if not homely
Pauline, Nanapush says, “we tried to ignore her… but she was different once her mouth opened
and she started to wag her tongue. … She was given to improving the truth. … Pauline schemed
to gain attention by telling tales that created damage” (Erdrich 39). Apparently believing he had
not done enough damage, Nanapush continues to slam Pauline: “There was some question if she
wasn‟t afflicted, touched in the mind… she got peculiar, blacked out and couldn‟t sleep, saw
things that weren‟t in the room” (Erdrich 39). Nanapush tells us, then, that Pauline tells stories
meant to devastate and that she is possibly very crazy. He later says that “the practice of
deception was so constant with her that it got to be a kind of truth” (Erdrich 53). Though it
remains unclear whether or not the narrators are aware of each other‟s narrative juxtaposition,
Nanapush‟s vindictiveness insinuates that he is at least on the offensive from Pauline and her
stories, as if he wanted Lulu, his audience, to take on the same view towards Pauline.
Nanapush is most likely striking out against the dark topical matter of Pauline‟s stories:
Pauline‟s depictions of Fleur are more often than not derived from fear of witchery and unknown
forces at work, whereas Nanapush‟s tales take on a more find and reverent tone. Pauline
insinuates that Fleur summons storms with her anger and that she is bewitched to survive
drowning. These tales portray Fleur in a frightening way; Pauline says of Fleur,
We knew that we were dealing with something much more serious. … She went haywire,
out of control. She messed with evil, laughed at the old women’s advice and dressed like a
man. She got herself into some half-forgotten medicine, studied ways we shouldn’t choose
to talk about (Erdrich 12).
She goes on to explain rumors that Fleur turns into a bear to hunt. We can see then how
Nanapush would feel the need to verbally strike out against Pauline. Later, Pauline takes her jabs
at Nanapush as he torments her for what appears to be his own enjoyment. Pauline calls him a
“toothless ruin” with little regard for personal space and a mocking tone towards her worship
tendencies (Erdrich 143). Although this is not a blatant character attack, it goes to show that
Nanapush is disliked by Pauline as much as he dislikes her himself.
Erdrich writes, “there is a story… the way there is a story to all, never visible while it is
happening” (34). This seems to get at the rhetorical tensions present in Tracks. While the stories
of Fleur Pillager are handled within the book, the rhetorical interplay between Nanapush‟s
narrative and Pauline‟s narrative constitute a layer of the story which becomes visible secondary
to the actual events of the written stories. By constructing a contentious interplay between the
two narrators in Tracks, Erdrich simulates a discourse of oral history. Multiple voices create a
dynamic narrative where the story remains unrooted and continually fluid; in this way, the novel
resists being bound in Western literary tradition.
Using unconventional tactics in a literary tradition which finds value in convention,
Erdrich and Momaday have constructed novels which can do justice to the oral tradition from
which they were derived. As published works, these novels are indeed part of conventional
literature, in some way, but with the use of multi-voice narratives, jarring visual structures, and
contradictory rhetorical practices, Tracks and The Way to Rainy Mountain transgress the
boundaries of Western literature and trailblaze towards a written tradition which decolonizes and
empowers subjugated peoples.