Fortified blood memory: The power of everyday places in N. Scott Momaday's 'House Made of Dawn'

This paper is an examination of M. Scott Momaday's novel, House Made of Dawn, through an ecocritical lens. The primary focus of an ecocritical study is to examine how the physical environment functions within a literary work, with special consideration of the relationship between humans and the environment. My study examines how this novel is, among other things, an illustration of the elemental impact of physical environment (both urban and rural) on the psyche, primarily by examining Momaday's development of central characters. Of special interest is the function of stories and storytelling in human capacity to reconnect with the environment thereby coming to regard the places we live as sacred.