A Comparative Study Of Winter In The Blood And The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-time Indian

This thesis is a comparative study of Winter in the Blood and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which are novels written by two eminent American Indian writers, James Welch and Sherman Alexie. “Intertextuality”, “identity”, and “hybridity”theory are combined to set up the theoretical framework of this thesis. Based on those theories, this thesis analyzes the characterization, the presentations of cultural and spiritual traditions, as well as the identity formations, aiming at finding Alexie’s inheritance and transcendence of Welch, thus to enable us to understand the overall evolvement and orientation of American Indian literature.First, this thesis investigates the two authors’ characterization of trickster figures and elders. Trickster is the most common figure in American Indian oral stories which appears frequently in their written literature. Elders play a pivotal role in instructing young generations, mainly by telling them their tribal and personal stories. Welch’s depiction of trickster figures and elders presents his focus on American Indian traditions;Alexie highlights the teaching function of the negative aspects of tricksters and depicts the trickster’s adaptation to the white culture. He also expresses his idea of absorbing the positive aspects of white culture by his characterization of elders.Next, this thesis explores the cultural and spiritual traditions which are embodied in the American Indian views of death and Indian ceremony. Welch and Alexie hold the traditional American Indian views of death that death is a pivotal part of the cycle of life and it can breed a renewal. Alexie also highlights that the alcohol-related death has influenced the views of death in contemporary American Indian communities. Welch’s depiction of ceremony shows his advocacy of returning to Indian traditions. Alexie takes ceremony as a way to present Indian traditions to the white and he indicates that the contemporary American Indian ceremony absorbs the positive aspects from white culture.Finally, this thesis analyzes the two authors’ ways of identity formation. Faced with identity crisis, the protagonists of the two novels try to construct their identity. Welch pursues an ideal homecoming pattern to construct his protagonist’s identity; Alexie holds a hybridized view to construct his protagonist’s identity and makes it a hybrid identity.To sum up, James Welch, with a high sense of tribal consciousness, highlights the importance of American Indian traditions. Alexie, in contrast, holds that American Indians should absorb the positive aspect of the white, and he advocates that they need to seek for a hybrid Indian identity so as to establish a survival mode in this multicultural mainstream America. Moreover, the different focus of the two authors reveals the overall evolvement and orientation of American Indian literature in the past decades.