A Study Of Chronotope In Momaday's House Made Of Dawn And The Ancient Child

N.Scott Momaday,a leading writer in Native American literature,is known as one of the most influential writers in contemporary American literature.Momaday is a prolific writer whose works include novels,poems,dramas,memoirs and so on.He is renowned for his exquisite artistic style and profound connotations in his works.Momaday has won many awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Book Award.The publication of his masterpiece,House Made of Dawn,marks the beginning of the �American Indian Renaissance� and exerts a profound influence on the mainstream literature.Since then,the domestic and foreign research on Momaday has sprung up.This thesis studies House Made of Dawn and The Ancient Child,which both take the urban Native Americans as the core theme,probing into the unfair treatment that the urban Native Americans suffer from the oppression of the mainstream society,and exploring the main reason why they are indulged in alcohol and lose themselves.This thesis points out that returning to the reservation is an efficient way for them to seek for spiritual salvation,but the tragic experiences of the childhood,the experience of the war and the lack of Native American traditions are enormous obstacles to their homecoming.Under the guidance of the Native American medicine woman and tribal compatriots,the protagonists reconstruct their Native American identity and return to their tribal tradition through participating into the traditional rituals.This thesis is divided into three parts: Introduction,Body and Conclusion.The first chapter is the introduction part which includes Momaday's life,his literature achievements and a brief introduction to his two novels.The literature review and the theoretical framework � chronotope are next.The body part of this thesis is from chapter two to chapter four.Chapter two expounds the psychological loss and its reason in documentary chronotope,which reveals the fatal retaliation caused by the unjust religious treatment,the unemployment and the alcoholism caused by the racial discrimination,and the unimagination caused by the white man's manipulation.Chapter three mainly explores the homecoming plot in biographical chronotope.This thesis holds that the tragic experiences of childhood,the nightmarish wartime experience and the lack of Native American traditional knowledge are the obstacles to their returning to Native American tradition.Chapter four analyzes that,in adventure chronotope,with the help of the tribal compatriots,Abel reconstructs his Native American identity through his participation into the Corn Dance,Dawn Running and so on.With the help of a Native American medicine woman,Set transforms into a bear and returns to the native tradition,completing both spiritual and physical rebirth.The last chapter comes to the conclusion,reviewing the main arguments of each chapter and pointing out the significance of this thesis.Momaday depicts the protagonists' psychological loss in documentary chronotope,their struggle in biographical chronotope and their returning to the Native tradition in adventure chronotope,which enables the readers to have a deep understanding of the current situation of the ethnic minorities in the contemporary American society,expressing his authentic concern of political demands for the ethnic justice and the harmonious coexistence of human beings.