N Scott Momaday’s from The Way to Rainy Mountain, B (2023)

Introduction

McGee of 303 and Learnstrong.net lectures on N. Scott Momaday’s from The Way to Rainy Mountain, B

Video

I remember her most often in prayer.

She made long rambling, prayers of suffering and hope.

Having seen many things, I was never sure that I had the right to hear so exclusive were they of all near custom and company.

The last time I saw her.

She prayed standing by the side of her bed at night naked to the waist the light of a kerosene lamp moving upon her dark skin, a long black hair, always drawn and braided in the day, lay upon her shoulders and against her presence like a shawl I, do not speak Kyla and I never understood her prayers, but there was something inherently sad in the sound some nearest hesitation upon the syllables of sorrow.

She began at a high and descending bench, exhausting her breath to silence 6:01 and again and again, and always the same intensity of effort of something that is and is not by purchasing of the human voice transported.

So with the dancing light among the shadows of her own, she seemed beyond the reach of time, but that was an illusion.

I think I knew then that I should not see her again all right.

Let's pause for a moment and write that one down he talks about his grandmother in the last memories of his grandmother and how he sees her, especially playing without any clothes on the top of her body.

Her hair, always braided, now open and the language that comes out of her mouth notice.

Mama, they says, I didn't know, I didn't know what she was saying and yet read the line again.

There was something inherently sad in the sound some nearest hasn't upon the syllables of sorrow, beautiful repetition of the S sounds to give us a sense of this in your mind's eye.

You can see this profound image right.

We can say this at 3/8.

Another major message here, obviously, is that notion of courage what it takes to be able to survive the loss of the thing you love the most and somehow to keep going notice.

He says about her.

She seemed beyond the reach of time all right.

Let's finish the essay now and his tribute poem here, houses are like sentinels in the plain old capers of the Weather Watch there in a very little while what takes on the appearance of great age, all colors, where sooth away in the wind and rain and fen the wood is burned to gray, and the gray appears and the nails turn red with rust.

The window panes are black and opaque.

You imagined there is nothing within, and indeed there are many ghosts bones given up to the land.

I stand here and there against the sky, and you approach them for a longer time than you expect.

They belong in the distance.

It is their domain.

Once there was a lot of sound in my grandmother's house a lot of coming and going feasting and talk the summers there were full of excitement and reunion.

The kaya's are a summer people.

They abide the cold and keep to themselves, but when the season terms and the land becomes warm and vital, they cannot hold still and all love of going returns upon them.

The age of visitors who came to my grandmother's house when I was a child of and leather and they bore themselves up right.

They wore great black hats and bright Apple shirts that shook in the wind.

They wrote fat upon their hair and wild their braids with spokes of colored cloth, some of them painted their faces and carried the scars of old and cherished enmities.

They were an old council of warlords, come to remind and be reminded of who they were.

Their wives and daughters served them well, but women might indulge themselves.

Gossip was at once the mark and compensation of their servitude.

They made loud and a leopard talk among themselves for jest and gesture fright and false alarm.

They went abroad infringed and flowered shawls by beadwork and German silver.

They were at home in the kitchen and they prepared meals that were banquets.

There were frequent prior meetings and great nocturnal feasts when I was a child.

I played with my cousin's outside where the lamplight fell upon the ground, and the singing of the old people rose up around us and carried away into the darkness.

There were a lot of good things to eat a lot of laughter and surprise and afterwards, when the quiet returned, I laid down with my grandmother and could hear the frogs away by the river and feel the motion of the air.

Okay, let's pause for just a moment and two observations quickly at level.

One one noticed his comment about the houses.

This is a brilliant passage for us on page 601 because he describes the dilapidating house so that ultimately, it becomes really really old and worn out.

But of course, let's put it it's for ED to be this discussion of houses is also, of course, a conversation about symbolism.

What does it mean to say that a house deteriorates that you begin to lose the thing that matters most to you? It starts to wear out.

Of course, he then starts to talk about all the wonderful sounds back that he can remember from his grandmother's house.

He can remember all the people who showed up and then he describes the women and he talks about the different roles that they play and then he talks about the prayer meetings and the feasts, and especially the singing and the laughing.

In other words, what is the author's purpose here to be to show that these aren't people who remained capable of still singing and laughing? Of course, in the end, now, as the essay finishes, we have the funeral silence in the rooms.

Let's finish that.

Well, there is a funeral silence in the rooms an endless wake of some final word.

The walls have closed in upon my grandmother's house 602.

When I returned to it in morning, I saw for the first time in my life how small it was.

It was late.

At night there was a white moon nearly forward.

I sat for a long time on the stone steps by the kitchen door from there I could see out across the land.

I could see the long row of trees by the creek at the low light upon the rolling plains and the stars of a Big Dipper.

Once I looked at the moon and caught sight of a strange thing, a cricket and perched upon the hand room only a few inches away from me.

My line of vision was such that the creature filled, the moon like a fossil.

It had gone there, I thought to live and die, for there of all places was its small definition made home and eternal.

A warm wind rose up and pearled like the longing would mean the next morning, I awoke at dawn, but out on the dirt road to rainy mountain.

It was already hot and the grasshoppers began to fill the air still it was early in the morning and the birds sang out of the shadows.

The long yellow grass on the mountain shone in the bright light and a scissor to hide above the land there were.

It ought to be at the end of a long and legendary way.

Was my grandmother's grave here and there on the dark stones or ancestral names.

Looking back once, I saw the mountain and came away all right, so we finished now.

He goes back all the way to find his grandmother's grave and there notice he returns to morning notice the power of that word morning at 6:08 602, because there's morning, as in the beginning of the day, but this morning as it's spelled here, that is to say what is lost.

He comes back to his grandmother's house and it looks different.

We can probably ask you a three day of time that this happened for you when you went back to a place that you knew as a child and it somehow seems so different, so so so much smaller notice.

He has a strange sight.

It becomes a central symbol in this essay.

The cricket who noticed has been like a fossil, that is to say, assembly comparison using like her as like a fossil right and it displays in some ways belonging.

Finally, at the end of the long and legendary way that has been his journey, his pilgrimage as he calls it, there is his grandmother's grave.

Alright, that's level one.

Let's do level two, a really quickly themes, messages.

We've listed several already the need to remember the past and to respect the ways of the old, very important, obviously, in this discussion as well, the importance of the older people in our lives that we don't often understand until after the fact, when it's already gone at, to be, of course, the author's purpose here, and what is the purpose here for this author? Obviously, to celebrate his grandmother to talk about the passing of a culture, the tragic passing of the country for 3/8? What is it for you? That is the comparison of text that you want to work with since we're going to write on this topic.

Maybe let's go ahead and think about the ways in which this text relates to the text that we looked at before the the internment in the Japanese camp.

How did the two of them go together? They're both obviously reflective looking back.

They both obviously have to do with the situation of dealing with a really tough situation in one's life.

What are some other titles for you that come to mind? One are your native titles of that that talk about native cultures, native peoples and the struggles for those native peoples like dis, title down a really famous one, bury my heart at Wounded Knee, one of the classic treatments of this situation, of the loss of so much of the native peoples lands of their in their life in their culture.

Finally, at 3 B, how do you deal with this part of American history? This notion that the displacement of so many natives made of peoples, the loss of millions of head of Buffalo, for example, and other tragedies that occurred in the very land in which you live you.

So how do you feel about that? How do you respond to that? How does that somehow help you or not help you come to terms with what it means to be an American? And finally, who are the old people in your life that someday, you probably will write about in the same way that he writes about his grandma? Who are those people in your life? Who are the ones that, for you, you'll, probably remember, you're, older and you'll, try to remember and reclaim some memory of who they were, what they represented? Who are those people in your life that somehow, for you have the most special of meanings? Well, there you go I hope that maybe this essay has challenged you as well.

Thank you.