Kamryn Kobel, “’An Eternal Moment’ of Practice: Engaging in the Act of Oral Storytelling in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn,” 2nd Place.
N. Scott Momaday’s novel House Made of Dawn follows the main character, Abel, as he engages in a series of returns home: from war, from prison, and from hospitalization. Throughout the events of the novel, Abel faces a disconnection from his culture, which manifests in his loss of articulation and ability to effectively communicate in his native tongue. However, despite this loss of articulation, Abel continues to engage in the practice of storytelling by actively seeking out and listening to cultural stories from his and other tribal locations. The other characters in the novel—Abel’s grandfather Fransisco, his friend Benally, and Tosamah, The Priest of the Sun—offer insight into the importance of oral storytelling and provide Abel the opportunity to engage with story as a practice of cultural belonging. As Abel continually engages in the practice of storytelling, he is able to partake in the act of returning, both to his home and to an eternal moment of cultural existence— which is represented at the end of the novel by the race of the dead, which Abel goes forward to join. Within this novel, storytelling becomes a practice that creates a timeless culture which can be returned to and reconnected with in an act of Native American survivance. Throughout House Made of Dawn, Momaday demonstrates how oral storytelling creates an eternal moment in which culture and tradition can reside, as portrayed by Abel’s return to his culture through an engagement with oral storytelling despite his own inarticulateness.
To begin, we can turn to Momaday’s understanding of language and the reverence he holds for oral tradition. In his essay “A Divine Blindness,” Momaday discusses the importance of language, particularly the spoken word, within Native American culture. He expresses how crucial oral storytelling is, not only for Indigenous culture, but for the entire human race. About the spoken word, he writes:
We are talking about the life and the life span of words. We are talking about the deepest sustenance of the human race. We are talking; we are talking . . . we exist in the element of language. Language is the context of our experience. We know who we have been, who we are, and who we can be in the dimension of words, of language. (“A Divine Blindness” 309)
Momaday’s belief in the importance of the spoken word, of the act of talking, emerges. For Momaday, “language is the context of our experience”—it forms our identity, our worldview, how we interact with everything around us. Language, as the “deepest sustenance of the human race,” creates a foundational place for human beings to exist and reside. There is an element of continuity and endlessness within this conception of oral tradition as well—he writes, “We know who we have been, who we are, and who we can be” through engaging in language. For Momaday, language and spoken word exists in an eternal moment as it allows us to conceptualize the past, present, and future possibilities of ourselves and of the world around us. Oral tradition, including storytelling, creates an eternal moment of human connection and understanding—it is our human experience.
This sentiment of Momaday’s also appears in his novel, House Made of Dawn. Within the novel, Tosamah, The Priest of the Sun, a leader of the Native American Church in Los Angeles and a Kiowa, offers a sermon—which is orally spoken—recounting memories of his grandmother and her love for storytelling. He tells the congregation, “She learned that in words and in language, and there only, she could have whole and consummate being” (House Made of Dawn 83). As expressed in “A Divine Blindness,” Tosamah’s grandmother finds wholeness and personal fulfillment within language, using words to connect with her own identity. She also uses words to connect with Tosamah, demonstrating language and storytelling’s ability to bring people together in a shared understanding. He says, “She told me stories, and she taught me how to listen . . . she could neither read nor write, you see, but she taught me how to live among her words, how to listen and delight” (House Made of Dawn 83). Tosamah learns to “live among her words” through listening to his grandmother’s storytelling—specifically her oral storytelling, as she “could neither read nor write.” Therefore, through their shared engagement in story as Tosamah listens and his grandmother tells, story becomes a place to live within, to delight and connect grandmother and grandson.
Thus, through these acts of telling and listening to stories—engaging with them—does meaning and culture emerge. Tosamah and his grandmother’s engagement in this practice of storytelling demonstrates this eternal moment that storytelling creates; Tosamah notes, “It was a timeless, timeless thing; nothing of her old age or of my childhood came between us” (House Made of Dawn 84). The oral stories, having been both told and listened to, connect The Priest of the Sun to his grandmother, spanning across generations and creating a “timeless” understanding between them. Tosamah tells the church that oral storytelling “represents the oldest and best idea that man has of himself. It represents a very rich literature, which, because it was never written down, was always but one generation away from extinction” (House Made of Dawn 86). He identifies that, because these stories, which “represent the oldest and best idea that man has of himself” due to their orality, cannot be written down, and instead they must be actively engaged with. They must be timeless, because they must always be actively told and listened to, or else they will be lost. Just as Momaday writes in “A Divine Blindness,” oral storytelling creates tradition and connection: “the spoken word is the first part of this ancient design, this construction that makes of us a family, a tribe, a civilization” (309). Not only does the tradition of oral storytelling exist timelessly within its very practice, it is what creates the foundation of community and culture, constructing families and tribes.
However, despite the importance that spoken words and oral language harbor for Momaday as demonstrated by both “A Divine Blessing” and Tosamah’s memories of his grandmother, the main character in House Made of Dawn is characterized as being exceptionally quiet. Throughout the novel, Abel rarely speaks, and is often portrayed as a silent man. The white woman, Angela, describes Abel as “dumb and immutable,” because he speaks very little and refuses to be provoked into answering her numerous questions (House Made of Dawn 30). From Angela’s white, western perspective, Abel’s silence signifies a dumbness, an unwillingness to talk—but this description is not entirely accurate. Abel refutes this perception of his silence, as when he reflects on his own inability to speak, he thinks to himself: “he was dumb. Not dumb—silence was the older and better part of custom still—but inarticulate” (House Made of Dawn 53). Rather than dumbness, which is defined as the inability or unwillingness to speak, Abel is “inarticulate.” Inarticulateness is more complex than dumbness or silence; to be inarticulate is to be unable to express oneself clearly and convey meaning accurately. Abel “had tried in the days that followed to speak to his grandfather, but he could not say the things he wanted; he had tried to pray, to sing, to enter into the old rhythm of the tongue, but he was no longer attuned to it” (House Made of Dawn 53). He attempts to communicate with Fransisco, to connect with his culture through song and prayer, but “he could not say the things he wanted” because he is “no longer attuned to it.” He has not lost his culture entirely—the inarticulateness is not an irrevocable loss of these traditions—rather, Abel has lost his attunement to it. He has become misaligned from his culture, as demonstrated by this inarticulateness and inability to perform the oral traditions that he encounters. He is not unable to speak, as he attempts to do so, but his troubles with engaging in the spoken word stem from his struggle with articulating “the old rhythm,” the intricacies of the culture that he cannot fully embody.
Abel’s misalignment does not portray a complete severance from his culture, however. Although he may not be “attuned” to his native language, when he returns to his grandfather’s home, Abel notes that “it was still there, like memory, in the reach of his hearing . . . as if the words had taken hold of the moment and made it eternal” (House Made of Dawn 53). Again, like Tosamah’s grandmother believed, the language exists within an eternal moment that Abel can identify but not entirely grasp. Because it had once been spoken, and because Abel had listened and engaged with it, the words and the meanings of the words had become timeless. They are still within “the reach of his hearing,” meaning that they are not completely and irrevocably lost to Abel, just that he must now find his way back to them and back to a connection with them. He believes that “Had he been able to say it, anything of his own language—even the commonplace formula of greeting ‘Where are you going’—which had no being beyond sound, no visible substance, would once again have shown him whole to himself” (House Made of Dawn 53). Abel recognizes that language and spoken word have the ability to “[show] him whole to himself,” just as Tosamah’s grandmother finds wholeness and consummation within the spoken word. Abel has not completely lost his culture or his identity, because it resides in an eternal moment of native oral tradition that is still within his reach despite his inarticulateness. His purpose, therefore, as the novel continues and as Abel returns home after war, prison, and hospitalization, is to find the way back to reconnecting with his story and culture.
To do so, Abel must actively engage in the practice of oral storytelling, even as he faces this inarticulateness and cultural misalignment. The importance of engaging in oral storytelling—not only as the one who tells story, but as the one who listens—is exhibited during Abel’s time spent living with his Diné friend Benally. After being released from prison, Abel is relocated to Los Angeles through the Indian Relocation Act, which is far from his Pueblo home in New Mexico. While in this urban environment, Abel is again characterized as being a quiet man, who listens more often than he speaks. Benally recalls Abel being plagued by silence—he says, “He wanted to tell me something . . . I guess we were thinking the same thing. I don’t know what he wanted to say. I guess he wanted me to say something first, so I started to talk about the way it was going to be” (House Made of Dawn 128). Again, Abel’s inarticulateness is underscored—he remains silent not because he doesn’t have anything to say, but because he doesn’t have the capability to fully convey his meaning. Instead, he wants Benally to speak, to “say something first,” because Benally has the words while Abel does not. In this instance, we see both Abel and Benally engaging in oral storytelling, as Benally speaks and Abel listens, and both actions are equally important. Benally says, “It was a plan we had. You know, I made all of that up when he was in the hospital, and it was just talk at first. But he believed in it, I guess, and the next day he asked me about it. I had to remember what it was, and then I guess I started to believe in it, too” (House Made of Dawn 129). Abel engages in oral storytelling through the act of listening—he asks Benally about the “plan,” the stories that Benally makes up, and wants to listen to his friend talk about them. Although in this moment of pain and misalignment Abel is inarticulate and struggles to communicate his own meaningful language, he continues to purposefully engage in the practice of storytelling as he urges Benally to verbalize their plans for the future. Benally calls it “just talk,” but then goes on to describe how, through Abel’s belief in the story (as exhibited through his desire to hear about it), Benally begins to believe in it, too. Purposefully practiced storytelling is proven as not “just talk,” and to connect back to “The Divine Blindness,” the act of speaking is powerful and purposeful: “we are talking; we are talking,” an act which is the backbone of humanity (309). Furthermore, Benally tells Able this story multiple times, and both the story and the act of telling/listening to the story becomes an eternal moment of connection between them. Through this careful practice of oral storytelling, Abel and Benally create a place of comfort where they can reside and return to.
These ideas of continual, active, and communal participation in the practice of storytelling are also discussed in Phyllis Toy’s article “Racing Homeward: Myth and Ritual in House Made of Dawn,” where Toy discusses the role of oral storytelling and community within Indigenous self-identification. She writes, “Indeed, Native American identity can never be isolate, independent, or merely individual; and any achievement of selfhood is bound up inextricably with the tribal heritage contained by and repeated in the oral history of the group” (29). Although Benally is not part of Abel’s tribe, he is a member of the Native American community, and Abel is indeed “bound up inextricably” with the oral stories—not only of a history, but of a future—that Benally tells him. Abel repeatedly asking for and listening to Benally’s words provide him with a connection to his identity as a Native man, despite his own physical distance from his tribe and family, and despite the misalignment from his culture that manifests in his inarticulateness. Neither Abel nor Benally’s identity can be “merely individual,” and neither can their engagement in oral storytelling. Every story requires a teller and a listener, and this mutual, communal engagement is present within the storytelling Benally and Abel engage in. To achieve selfhood, to realign himself within his culture, Abel needs Benally, because he needs a story to listen to while he himself cannot articulate his own.
Furthermore, their practice of storytelling demonstrates the importance of oral tradition as it relates to the concept of native survivance. Within the stories and plans for the future that Benally tells Abel, he repeatedly talks about Abel’s return home. He says, “He was going home, and he was going to be all right again” (House Made of Dawn 128). The inclusion of this refrain—“He was going home”—throughout his narration provides Abel with a purpose, with a destination to return to. As they continue to revisit this story, with Benally telling and Abel listening, Abel can begin to move towards a realignment with his culture because the story gives him a destination of “home,” urging him to move towards his culture and ensuring that, in doing so, he would “be all right again.” In his article “Making Do: Momaday’s Survivance Ceremonies,” Kenneth Roemer discusses the story and prayer that Benally offers Abel and argues that “The word is the beginning of creation, so at least there is some hope for a re-creation of Abel” (78). Like Roemer suggests, Abel is not so far gone that he cannot be re-created or realigned with his culture through an engagement with “the word.” Benally’s use of the word “again” insinuates that the connection Abel once had to his culture, his articulateness, has not been irrevocably lost to him—it can be regained within this “re-creation” that Roemer offers. In this way, Roemer asserts that these instances of storytelling are acts of survivance. This storytelling that Abel and Benally engage in demonstrates survivance in that it actively aids Abel in his survival, giving him hope and urging him forward towards home, where he can re-immerse himself in the practice of tradition as a part of his family and community. For Gerald Vizenor, who writes and theorizes on native survivance, “The practices of survivance create an active presence, more than the instincts of survival, function, or subsistence. Native stories are the sources of survivance” (11). Abel and Benally’s stories are indeed “more than instincts of survival”—they are purposeful, active practices that the two men engage with continually rather than intrinsic instinct. Abel requests that Benally tell him these stories, and “he would want [Benally] to sing like that,” demonstrating Abel’s desire to interact with and engage with these instances of oral cultural storytelling, which is an important element of Vizenor’s survivance (House Made of Dawn 129). In this way, we can see how “native stories are the sources of survivance” as Benally’s words urge Abel home towards family, tradition, and culture, where he can then enter into an eternal moment of meaning.
Just as he did with Benally’s stories, Abel engages with the oral tradition despite his inarticulateness through the act of listening to his grandfather’s stories. When he returns home for the last time, as planned in Benally’s stories, his grandfather is dying, and Abel can do nothing but sit at his bedside. This time, rather than Abel being the only inarticulate one, Fransisco also struggles to communicate coherently; his words “had no meaning . . . and made no sense” (House Made of Dawn 171). In the face of Fransisco’s death, “Abel waited, listening. He tried to think of what to do. He wanted earlier, in the dawn, to speak to his grandfather, but he could think of nothing to say . . . his mind was borne upon the dying words, but they carried him nowhere” (171). Again, Abel’s misalignment with language and culture is portrayed through his inability to decipher his grandfather’s words, which are also removed from meaning. In this moment, neither Abel nor Fransisco have the capability to communicate nor engage in any meaningful use of language and the spoken word. Abel returns home as a result of Benally’s oral stories but finds himself at a roadblock once he gets there—his movement forward towards reconnection is momentarily stifled as he faces this mutual inarticulateness.
However, this does not mean that the stories—nor the meanings, tradition, and culture behind the stories—are lost. Rather, they have been immortalized within an eternal moment because they had previously been orally told and listened to. This is demonstrated as Fransisco and Abel’s memories are re-told through a story narrated in a unique fourth person narrative perspective. Fourth-person narration emerges from the oral passing-down of stories and memories as a method of historical remembrance, then transformed into writing. Vizenor writes that “fourth person [is created] by visual reminiscence . . . intuitive, visual memories, a native sense of presence, and sources of evidence and survivance” (3). As Abel and Fransisco sit in silence, unable to communicate, “Still [Abel] could hear the faintest edge of his grandfather’s voice on the deep and distant breathing . . . the voice of his memory was whole and clear and glowing like the dawn” (House Made of Dawn 172). From this moment of hearing, as Abel recognizes “the voice of his memory,” the novel shifts into a fourth person narration as it describes, as Vizenor calls it, “visual memories [and] a native sense of presence.” The narration details Fransisco and Abel’s memories, combining them and narrating them as a culmination of both men’s stories, told and heard by both through this fourth person voice. Within this narration, this “voice of his memory,” a story of Fransisco and Abel’s past is recalled and told. The narration describes a trip that Fransisco took with his grandsons, detailing the landscape in great visual detail—again tying back to Vizenor’s definition of fourth person and the importance of visual memory. It then describes memories of Fransisco teaching Abel and his brother about the land, the traditional importance of the movement of the sun, and that:
These things he told his grandsons carefully, solely and at length, because they were old and true, and they could be lost as easily as one generation is lost to the next, as easily as one old man might lose his voice . . . But his grandsons knew already; not the names or the strict position of the sun each day in relation to its house, but the larger motion and meaning of the great organic calendar itself . . . And he knew they knew. (House Made of Dawn 173)
This fourth person narration thus demonstrates how oral language and story creates an eternal moment for meaning and understanding to reside within. Despite both Fransisco and Abel being disconnected in the current moment through their individual inarticulateness, this memory, these stories, and the meaning behind these stories remain within both men and within this fourth person consciousness. Despite Fransisco being “one old man [who has lost] his voice,” Abel “knew already”—knew about the movement of the sun and the importance of the landscape, traditional knowledge that contributes to their native identity. Because Fransisco had passed the stories on to his grandsons, and they had listened, Fransisco “knew they knew,” and the meaning of the stories remains—in their memories and within the fourth person narration itself.
This fourth person narration, the voice of Abel and Fransisco’s memory, goes on to relay the story of the dawn runners. Within the memory, which occurred when Abel was a child, Fransisco tells him: “‘Listen’ . . . and they heard the footsteps running. It was faint at first and far away, but it rose and drew near, steadily, a hundred men running . . . one sound of a hundred men running. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘It is the race of the dead, and it happens here’” (House Made of Dawn 180). Fransisco urges Abel to “listen”—something that, throughout the novel, Abel has been doing as an element of his engagement with oral storytelling. And, because he once listened to his grandfather and to the runners, he can once again recall this story and this ceremonial act of prayer as an adult. These ideas are further identified in Gordon Henry’s article “Cultural Relationships in American Indian Literature: The Power of Word in the Works of Four American Indian Novelists,” where he discusses Abel and Fransisco’s relationship with language, culture, and each other. He writes, “In terms of the oral tradition this means Native writers carry a unique responsibility to deal with tribal stories and their attendant ceremonial and historical elements with respect and reverence. This also means native writers understand the importance of the ‘power of the word’ and passing on stories in the proper ways” (111). Fransisco not only passes on these stories to Abel, but he also passes on the ability to listen—again, instructing Abel to “listen” twice—and, through this teaching of how to actively engage in oral storytelling, Fransisco simultaneously teaches him how to practice tradition and culture. The race that Fransisco shows Abel how to listen to is, like Henry notes, a “tribal [story] and [its] attendant ceremonial and historical elements,” and Fransisco upholds this responsibility that Henry identifies as he teaches Abel the importance of the word. Much like Tosamah preaches, “the act of listening is crucial to the concept of language . . . and language in turn is crucial to human society” (House Made of Dawn 84). For Henry, Tosamah, and Fransisco, listening is an element of the practice of oral storytelling and culture, one that must be passed down along with the tradition itself.
Therefore, because of this active practice of storytelling, Abel can hear the fourth person narration, which aids him in remembering the story of the race of the dead, and he can go forth to join them. Abel joining the race indicates an eternal practice of storytelling because it allows the very story within the novel to exist. Abel runs due to the stories that he listened to his grandfather tell him, stories whose meanings and understanding persisted despite a loss of articulation, and the novel exists eternally within his race. The prologue of the novel opens with Abel “alone and running,” and part of a Navajo Night Chant prayer: “There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen . . . ” (House Made of Dawn 1). The novel ends in the same manner, with Abel “running on” and again quoting the prayer: “House made of pollen, house made of dawn” (185). The story of the novel exists in this circularity, beginning as it ends, as Abel runs in the race of the dead. He can join these runners because Francisco tells him the story as a child, and because Benally’s stories urge him homeward at the end of his grandfather’s life, which reintroduces him to the fourth person memory of the prayer.
Throughout these instances of oral storytelling within the novel, the stories, memories, and traditions are re-accessible to Abel because he had been engaging with them the entire time, even as he faces inarticulateness and a misalignment with the specificities of his culture. As he did when he actively sought out Benally’s oral tales, songs, and prayers, Abel actively engages with Fransisco’s oral utterances even when they are both incapable of communicating with each other. Abel immediately knows the moment that Fransisco passes away, as he is awoken from his sleep: “Abel was suddenly awake, wide awake and listening . . . There was no sound in the room . . . he could see no movement, and he knew that the old man was dead” (House Made of Dawn 182). Even as he sleeps, Abel practices what Fransisco has taught him—to listen. Despite any inarticulateness, misalignment, or distance from his culture and his grandfather that Abel feels in this moment, he is still engaging in the practice of oral storytelling, which includes listening. This returns us to Tosamah and his grandmother, as Tosamah tells the congregation: “When that old Kiowa woman told me stories, I listened with only one ear . . . I did not know what all of them meant, but somehow I held on to them; I remembered them, and I remember them now… They meant a great deal to my grandmother. It was not until she died that I knew how much they meant” (House Made of Dawn 84). Just as Tosamah’s grandmother’s stories are made more meaningful to him after her death, Fransisco’s stories truly become meaningful to Abel once he has passed. Just like Tosamah, Abel “held on to” the stories, having “remembered them” throughout his life because he had engaged with them. And, at the close of his grandfather’s life, his life, and the close of the novel, Abel can engage with them completely as he joins the race from the stories in this eternal moment that he practices and exists within. He carries these stories, and the stories carry him, existing forever in this eternal moment of purposeful being and practice.
Works Cited
Henry, Gordon. “Cultural Relationships in American Indian Literature: The Power of the Word in the Works of Four American Indian Novelists.” I Jornadas de Estudios Ingleses, edited by Carmelo Medina Casado et al., Universidad de Jáen, 1995, pp. 111–29.
Momaday, N. Scott. House Made of Dawn. Harper Perennial, 2018.
_____. “A Divine Blindness.” The Georgia Review, vol. 50, no. 2, 1996, pp. 301–10.
Toy, Phyllis. “Racing Homeward: Myth and Ritual in House Made of Dawn,” Études Anglaises, vol. 51, no. 1, 1998, pp. 27–38.
Roemer, Kenneth M. “Making Do: Momaday’s Survivance Ceremonies.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 24 no. 4, 2012, p. 77–98.
Vizenor, Gerald. “Aesthetics of Survivance.” Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence. University of Nebraska Press, 2008, pp. 1–23.