The Wisdom Of Balance: Revealing Taoist Principles Through "House Made Of Dawn"

This thesis, from the frame work of Taoism, studies American Indian Writer N. Scott Momaday's ecological world views, ethics in the Indian Culture world, in House Made of Dawn. From this investigation, we find many overlapping ecological thoughts, especially the natural views and ethics towards the environment, in these two different ideological systems. The attitudes "that is with gratitude to treat everything" we drawn from the two cultures are worth promotion and applicable for today's society with rapid development to release the pressure people give the nature and form a kinship with nature.Taoism, which was locally born in China, is a kind of philosophy. Although Taoism is not as influential as Confucianism, it is considered to be another powerful religion to instruct people's behaviors and thoughts. In recent times Daoism has begun to play a more similar, if more modest, role in attempts to rationalize people's behaviors and make them accept fundamental changes in ways of thinking about nature, the cosmos and the place of human life within it. My thesis is intended to explore the similarities, from a famous novel House Made of Dawn written by Indian American writer N. Scott Momaday in 20^th 60s, between Indian American's worldview and attitudes towards nature and the Taoist ecology ethics.Not only are the works are very meaningful to the history, but also nurturing a generation of young writers to explore the path to literature. To appreciate the place of Momaday's works in history, one needs only look as far as the many scholarly references to House Made of Dawn as the novel that initiated the American Indian literary renaissance.N. Scott Momaday's novel House Made of Dawn opens with the protagonist Abel, a young Native American from Jemez Pueblo who has been exposed to white culture after serving in World Warâ…¡, running in a ritual race at the Pueblo. He participates in this ritual after years of estrangement from his native culture and several futile attempts to live in the white's culture. He serves eight years for killing an albino Indian when an albino Indian named Fragua humiliates him at a tribal ceremony. After Abel finishing his term, the government relocates him in Los Angeles, where he attacks a policeman while drunk and suffers a terrible beating.Having lost his job in Los Angeles, Abel returns home, His adherence to the Jemez pre-funerary rites and his running in the ritual race apparently signal Abel's reintegration into the Pueblo way of life. And the novel ends on a positive note with his reintegration into his mother's tribe. When his maternal grandfather dies, Abel buries him in the prescribed Walatowan fashion, then runs in the ritual race for good hunting and harvests that his grandfather had won decades before. He has discovered that his father was Navajo, and so as he runs he sings "House Made of Dawn," a Navajo prayer song, acknowledging the paternal side of his cultural identity.While narrating this story, this novel is filled with ecological elements. Among them, many thoughts are in accordance with Taoism coincidentally. I put the wisdom sparkling in this novel into the system of Taoist ecology ethics in order to elucidate my argument points fully. The thought of Taoist ecology ethics can be concluded into three categories. So my thesis consists of five parts: Introduction, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three and Conclusion. In introduction, besides a general summary of former researches, there is also a general introduction about N. Scott Momaday and some related Indian writers.The first chapter probes with the origin of Taoism and Indian Culture. Myth has made an important impact on both of them. Besides, they believe in "circle" thought. Everything in the nature has its circle and run circularly.The second chapter reviews the ecology natural view, which contains the thought of "heaven and man unite one" as the natural philosophy basis of Taoist Ecology; "Heaven is Father, Earth is Mother", and "Do according to Tao viz. natural philosophy", which is used to teach us how to deal with the relationship between human beings and the nature. In House Made of Dawn, we find American Indian understand how the natural world operates, and lead a life according to these conventional principles.Chapter Three discusses the ecology moral outlook, which contains the core concept, the value angle of view and the equal thought; the "life equal" mind of "charitable mind to creation" and "awe to life". Human beings and the nature are equal, which denies "anthropocentrism", but "biocentrism", "ecocentrism", and "deep ecology". Non-anthropocentrism emphasizes the same value the whole ecological system has and the same rights all the creatures possess in the nature. Human beings and the creature, including every element existing in the nature connect each other, depend each other, and even have effects on each other. No one species will survive if no other ones exist.My thesis explores the ecology ethics rule, which contains "life ethics" as a feature, and gets along with people the principle and the life boundary. Here, the life we talk about does not indicate people's life, but also the life of animals, plants, sky and land, including morality, worldly wisdom, and worldview. To be honest, in all human beings' cultures, it is impossible to achieve perfect and no paradoxes. Therefore, we should find a method to deal with the contradictories. Therefore, Taoism puts forwards "the equal objects", in the support of "worship to the life"(he argues not only that there was no such social entity or school of thought as "Taoism" or "classical Taoism" in pre-Qin China and that this taxonomy was the creation of Han dynasty thinkers, but also that there was no set of coherent ideas or values that was "daoist")Taoist Ecological ethics centers on general life, raises the moral knowledge of "giving mercy to objects", advocates moral feeling of "deiform Dao emphasizing life", establishes moral principles of "Dao according to Dao".Finally, based on the discussion in the above three chapters, the thesis may come to the following conclusions. In today's industry society, we need this way of viewing the world in which a caring and nurturing relationship between humans and non-humans is not only desirable but is straightforwardly natural.The innovative points of my thesis are to analyzing the ecological ethics in House made of Dawn, in the same time, running through with the frame of Taoism ecological ethics' system. From that it is interesting for us to clearly find the similarities between two different cultures. And it is really very significant for the building of sustainable development and harmonious society. Probing this novel with Taoism philosophical system, there are many overlapping elements of thought between these two different systems.