American Indians’ Spiritual Crisis And Coping Strategies In House Made Of Dawn

N. Scott Momaday is the forerunner of Native American Renaissance and has made a great contribution to the development of native American literature. House Made of Dawn (1968) is his representative work which won him the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1969. In this novel, Momaday reveals the spiritual crisis that the Indians are confronted with, such as estrangement from native culture, alienation of the internal relationship among the Indians and social exclusion in the white world. With their spiritual pain, they indulge in alcohol to numb themselves and flinch from the reality. Alcohol has already become the only outlet for their pain, which discloses the severity of the crisis. As for their spiritual crisis, racial discrimination and lacking sense of community are considered to be the reasons.With the analysis of American Indians’ spiritual crisis and the reasons, this thesis intends to make an exploration of the strategies to cope with their spiritual crisis. Based on the close reading of this novel and the understanding of Momaday’s writing thoughts and the historical background, three strategies implicated in this novel have been dug out:searching for Indian traditions to inherit native culture, establishing national identity to cultivate sense of community, and employing the strategy of hybridity and harmony to disrupt binary opposition between American whites and American Indians. As for the Indians, sticking to native culture and establishing national identity is the basic principle that they should stick to if they intend to deal with their spiritual crisis. Although the breaking up of binary opposition can not be accomplished in a short time, it makes a direction for the Indians to shake off spiritual crisis. These strategies have profound meanings. On one hand, the Indians who are really confronted with spiritual predicament can apply with those strategies to deal with their problems. These strategies can help them shake off spiritual crisis and realize self-identification. In a larger sense these strategies can be used by the Indians as one kind of national survival strategy. Also these strategies provide a direction for America to study and solve the complicated ethnic problems. On the other hand, as the Indians belong to the minority group in America, what they are confronted with is also faced by other minority groups. So these strategies can be references for other ethnic groups.This thesis is divided into five chapters, including introduction, three chapters of body part and conclusion. In the introductory part, there comes first a brief introduction of Momaday and his work House Made of Dawn. Then the literary review is to be made, and based on that, it comes to the research task and thesis structure. The body part includes three chapters and concentrates on the analysis of the Indians’ spiritual crisis and its coping strategies. Chapter two analyzes American Indians’ spiritual crisis. Chapter three explores the reasons for their spiritual crisis. Chapter four makes a discussion of the strategies to cope with their spiritual crisis. The last chapter makes a conclusion on the whole and presents the profound meaning of the coping strategies.