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lecture notes |
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Round House
Assignments
Zelia 242
Convert the Indians 242
x-tipis, skin lighter than hers 242
192 what Indians? 243
Mormons and Witnesses 243
Pagans here 243
Mexican, close family 243
You’re Indian too, noble Mayan / Aztec (Mex Am) 243
Kealey
review presentation assignment
ch. 9 mixed blood as survival
142 writing this story at a removal of time 178
246 Joe later public prosecutor 309
1. Evidence of minority identity, culture, or voice (or . . . immigrant or dominant / "settler" culture).
1a. How does the novel represent the Indian minority culture and the dominant / "settler" culture differently? How do the Indian characters see the dominant / "settler" culture, or how much do they see or interact with it at all? (Assimilation or resistance, or some hybrid or mixed identity?)
Minority
Spoken / oral culture
21 [Cappy tells origins of thunderbird egg] 26
33 Mooshun: Hear me . . . She gotta come out. 42
65 Old Man Niswi (oral culture) 81
dominant culture
9 Cher a surprised plastic doll . . . ratty
yellow hair 11
What had Cher done to me? 11
10 windowless, metal cabinets 13
13 Dr. Egge, cf. egg 16
14 picture of pioneer woman and baby 18
Not the picture’s fault 18
20 Liked Data b/c mocked white people 25
Wesley bumbling white town-baby 25
Picard a French old man, so liked 25
24 [grotesque] abnormally short bureaucrat 30
Smell of
disinfectant, white despair 146 dominant
culture
126 teeth so straight 158
White, white room 159
dominant culture
161 dead voice, cheerful, dead 202
What you’ve done to my emotions 203
No standing under law for good reason 203
Diminish the white man & take his honor 203
Could be rich > show you what you are 203
Boning up on law 203
Strong should rule weak 203
Where the money is? 203
162 baby – money in the bank 204
Not really a bad person 204
166 university student > Grandma Thunder 209
Write down a teaching (oral / literate) 209
Whitey: Curtis Yeltow 209 prairie nigger word for Indians
Gun lover / freak 210
Sun Dance = devil worship 210
170 this person, features neat and regular 214
But not good-looking 214
Teeth white and even 215
1b. Syncretism is a merging of relgious beliefs and symbols—not conversion but compromise, or acculturation rather than assimilation. What examples of syncretism in religion or acculturation in Indian lifestyles, clothing, occupations?
syncretism
59 Pre 1978, Indians can’t practice religion 74
Ceremonies, social dance hall, + Bibles (60) 74-5
60 Ecclesiastes, earth abideth 75
60 Father Damien + medicine people and songs 75
72 Indian tacos 91
130 rabbit-fur-trimmed moccasins + insulated
socks [syncretism, acculturation] 162
Mishikenh, snapping turtles + science: 150
million years 194
Priests and nuns since reservation beginning 314
Traditional Indians, ceremonies kept alive in secret but
Catholicism beaten into them 314 [syncretism]
250 boarding school 314
Saints and sacred pipe [syncretism] 314
276 Veterans, American flag, POW-MIA flag, flag
of Tribal Nation 348
Traditional Eagle Staff 348
307
Meditations etc . .
. Vine Deloria Jr. 387
2. Identification & analysis of literary purposes, devices, or genres.
2a. Continue: What possible distinct genres or types of story (e.g., detective, YA or coming-of-age, revenge, "dramady," others) do you recognize in the opening chapters? What do we learn about genres from the co-existence of so many genres?
137 implication: doing Mom things [ruse,
distraction; detective story] 171
267-8 blunder question, quick thinking
[plotting] 337
288-9 [code talk] 364
Students offer examples of
comedy /
humor and analyze in terms of
pages on
comic theory and
wit and humor? Relative to literature's purposes of
education
and entertainment, how does serious literary fiction benefit from
including
comedy &
humor?
Comedy / humor
18 Right the first time they divorced 23
19 Satellite reception, dented hubcap 24
25 Proximity to Sonja’s breasts 32
31 Indian suitcase = garbage bag 39
35 Start cooking again (dark humor) 45
36 roadkill? 46
38 explosion, mosquitoes 46
Eight naked Indians, frybread 49
41 Reagan and “preserves” 52
92 unblinking, all-seeing gaze 116
Hot dog thieves (anticlimax) 116
X-proud > getting a lecture (anticlimax) 116
Juvenile sarcasm 117
[physical comic scene]
164
195 quick-acting poison 247
[incongruity, humor]
Rez
Erection 242
For years our people have struggled to resist an
unstoppable array of greedy and unstable beings. 140
Taste nearness of defeat, but 140
112 [survival . . . Bionic
Commando] [humor]
140
[deflation] + anticlimax
140
253 soul > shoot gophers (humor) 318 [anticlimax,
deflation]
255 Nobody worth this vision [humor, wit, irony] 320
2b. The doppelganger is a familiar archetype of gothic and detective fiction and origin stories, in which good and bad twins, siblings, or strangers fight for control of identity and destiny. What serious literary or moral purposes can the doppelganger device serve. (Round House features Linda and Linden Lark, maybe Joe and Cappy; others?)
119 doppelganger 150
Visitations of my presence 150
133 not a ghost 166 (doppelganger)
I was part of monster too 378
No matter how much it ate, couldn’t get right thing 378
Always something it needed 378
What it was: me. my powerful spirit 378
Nanapush 228
183 Nanapush? Old man prone to madness 231
Self-discipline + greed 231
Miracles < gross,
disgusting behavior 231
trickster
2c. Erdrich's Round House was generally well-received but received some criticism for too many digressions, and my limited criticism is that the concluding chapter feels hurried (perhaps necessarily), with a number of possible resolutions in play. Do you agree with these criticisms or see other imperfections in an otherwise impressive novel?
146 Bugger Poirier 184
Like Vatican 2 never happened 315
Bugger Poirier 315
252 Bugger’s mother died 317
265 Linda: cigarette to Bugger 333-4
268 Bugger riding bike 338
Bugger Poirier, what seen? 388-9
Construction, Mayla’s body 391
Linden to jail if followed Bugger’s dream 391
3. Identification & analysis of universal human attributes?
Human
65 Grandma Ignatia Thunder; Church hardened; priests
hardened 82
93 Should have said proud (human) 118
223 like my son > another piece a shit guy 281
Tassel > just another guy 281
Wanted to be something better 281
Decided you’re too young (tolerance of ambiguity, limits)
376
LITR 4338 American Minority Literature Detailed
Objective 3b.Native American Indian alternative
narrative: "Loss and Survival"
Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to
get America, the Indians once had America but lost most of the land along with many of their
people.
Yet they defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," instead choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.
American Indians as minority (causes of loss)
188 go back to Before 237
193 someone different from before—mother 244
131 Mooshun stayed alive [survival]
163
155 great influenza [Indian pandemics] 195
228 1843 entire country based on grabbing Indian land,
land speculation 287
Betting on smallpox 287
179 Akikwe, Earth Woman + Mirage 226
Good at surviving 226
179 They forced us into our boundary. The reservation
year 227
Broken soil like white man 227
First reservation years, starved x cows of settlers 233
Buffalo’s glory; where gone? 233
Hole in earth 233
185
white men shoot thousands 233
Survivors
234
1b.
How does the rape of Joe's mother Geraldine duplicate in gendered terms the
racial / ethnic
minority experience?
("Afterword"). Is it appropriate to regard Geraldine's rape as a
symbol
or
metaphor
for American Indian experience of loss and survival?
90 all a violation 103
Clans gave laws, many rules 270
Round house my body, of your mother 270
59 Low moan, grieving sound [loss] 74
60 Ecclesiastes, earth abideth 75
73 Cappy’s aunts tanned hides 91
survived many deaths and losses, no sentiment left 91
100 [loss] white man appeared 126
Gut kick of our history 126
The sentence was to endure 400
x-childhood 400
just kept going 400
alcoholism
208 party on and on 262 (alcoholism)
rationalize literary devices as not just ideas about society, which can change
trope
Child’s face, doll 168
[horror movie motif] [convention,
trope]
135 doll full of money 169
mimesis and identify
comedy
archetypes: tricksters and doppelgangers
Symbol
77 round house symbol of old pagan ways 97
78 heart-shaped pincushion 99
trope: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/206679?rskey=YaTG4k&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid
genres
human divisions frustrating but not senseless
frustrating that humans can get along with each other in some ways but not others
or get along with some people but not others
100 [loss] white man appeared 126
94 [us-them] Angus’s hair 118
118 why she’d blamed me 149
You’re white 149
179 They forced us into our boundary. The reservation
year 227
Whitey thinks he owns me (ethnic > gender) 177
mimesis
27 a police TV question 34 [mimesis]
97 father’s phrasing: May I ask you a question [mimesis] 122
103 VHS player, Alien [symbol?] 130
[mimesis as
realism]
23 [Mom mimesis] Food you like. Treats. 29
Listen to me, Joe [mimesis] 113
Human
65 Grandma Ignatia Thunder; Church hardened; priests
hardened 82
93 Should have said proud (human) 118