The Pursuit Of Cultural Identity In House Made Of Dawn From The Perspective Of “The Other”

N· Scott Momaday has made great contributions to Native American literature. He is one of the most preeminent novelists in a contemporary “Renaissance” of Native American Literature. His novel House Made of Dawn won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969, which made the American Indian literature acknowledged by the dominant culture and the American Indian literature gained great reputation among American literature field. Momaday describes the protagonist’s living experiences vividly. This thesis analyzes how Abel loses his Native American identity under the influence of different kinds of culture and how he recovers his identity by his own efforts and with other people’s help. Furthermore, Momaday points out that Native Americans should preserve their own culture and cultural identity.This thesis applies the concept of “the Other” in Edward Said’s Orientalism and Homi Bhabha’ s interpretation of the “Other” to analyze how the protagonist becomes the victim of the “Other” under the influence of dominant white people’s culture. And this thesis develops the concept to the “Other” of the Whites and that of American Indians. Edward Said criticizes the idea that the westerners think the easterners are savage, backward and silly and he criticizes the westerners’ behavior of treating the easterners as the “Other”. Based on the concept of Said’s the “Other”, Homi Bhabha uses the “Other” to analyze the mutual “Others” between the minorities and the colonists. This thesis centers on the content how Abel is classified into the “Other”; how he makes a choice between the image of American Indian “Other” and the image of the white “Other” and how he reconstructs his identity by relying on his land and his traditional culture in his reservation through his own efforts and with others’ help. The author points out that Native American culture is an important symbol of American Indians’ identity, so they should keep their identity by integrating into their culture.