House Made of Dawn

by N. Scott Momaday

me a house made of dawn, pollen, rain, and wonder. Having the curiosity,

It is fair to say that Abel, the protagonist, is in some way validated by each of the minor characters. They perceive him, and he is the sum of their perceptions. For purposes of the literary experience he does not exist outside of this definition.

piñones

the crows were dressing in the kiva.

was as if, conscious of having come so close to extinction, they had got a keener sense of humility than their benefactors, and paradoxically a greater sense of pride.

They were medicine men; they were rainmakers and eagle hunters.

Suddenly her wings and tail fanned, catching full on the wind, and for an instant she was still, widespread and spectral in the blue,

This—everything in advance of his going—he could remember whole and in detail. It was the recent past, the intervention of days and years without meaning, of awful calm and collision,

But then that was the trick, wasn’t it? To see nothing at all, nothing in the absolute. To see beyond the landscape, beyond every shape and shadow and color, that was to see nothing. That was to be free and finished, complete, spiritual. To see nothing slowly and by degrees, at last; to see first the pure, bright colors of near things, then all pollutions of color, all things blended and vague and dim in the distance, to see finally beyond the clouds

Somewhere, if only she could see it, there was neither nothing nor anything.

Tanoan

but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.

Abel walked into the canyon.

a failure, for all hi...

He had tried in the days that followed to speak to his grandfather, but he could not say the things he wanted; he had tried to pray, to sing, to enter into

Nice shift from beautiful description of the place to Abel, just a man, entering, and not only that but being not of the place anymore. inarticulate to it

Had he been able to say it, anything of his own language—even the commonplace formula of greeting “Where are you going”—which had no being beyond sound, no visible substance, would once again have shown him whole to himself; but he was dumb. Not

inarticulate.

He began almost to be at peace, as if he had drunk a little of warm,

sweet wine, for a time no longer centered upon himself.

a ghost, too,

Benevides house. He

The enormous dark that filled the canyon was strangely

gently taking hold of her distress, passing it off. She was grateful—and chagrined. She had not foreseen this turn of tables and events, had not imagined that he could turn her scheme around.

some sense or other

of dominion and desire. She hovered about the hard flame of it. When she polished

way

old and sacred alliance, come to prolong for another year the agony of recognition and retreat.