Prose selection number 4 was taken from "American Horse" by Louise Eridich. This selection focuses on cultural objective 1A which compares and contrasts the immigrant narrative with the minority narrative. In this particular quote, Buddy has a feeling that something was coming, and it was going to be bad. This could symbolize the Indians being taken over by the immigrants. The Indians were pulled from their homes and scraped of their identity, as in the image of a giant potato peeler peeling away everything about their culture that was important to them. [anonymous violet 2001]

Prose Selection 4

This quote comes from Louise Erdrich’s "American Horse."

This quote also belongs with the Cultural Objective 1a. "To compare and contrast the immigrant narrative with the minority narrative." This time we are again dealing with the American Indians dealing with the American Dream, which is for them the American Nightmare. While Buddy is not directly experiencing what his ancestors did—when the European immigrants came over in unstopping wave after wave and completely demolished the American Indian way of life—his dream about the "large thing made of metal with many barbed hooks" is reminiscent of that chapter in history. This large thing is doing exactly what the Europeans did to the Indians: "crushing everything that lay in its path on the ground." [DT 2001]

Louise Erdrich, "American Horse," IA196-206

In this story there was definitely the attitude toward the law that was negative. They are minorities so the law seems to be on the side of the dominant culture. The extended family where the immigrants tend to escape the extended family into the dominant culture of the nuclear family. They are still connected to the extended family. Even though they are hiding from the law, the whole family still sticks together. This shows us the Native American Indian alternative narrative of loss and survival. Because the Indians once owned America they have lost it. [Anonymous Orange 2001]

            We can plainly see the defiance in this minority group (Native-American), towards the infiltrating dominant majority group (White).  We see the struggles among/within the Native-Americans, as they try to pull out of an oppressive social, political, and economical status. This group is also both anxious and ashamed to climb to a higher status in American society, because that would mean becoming or accepting that which they both need and loathe, the white dominant authority with its white points of view.

            Harmony is torn between two worlds, but he also plays the connecting force between these two worlds. He is the minority with authority, but the authority is given to him with permission by the white dominant authority. Somehow, Harmony is neither there nor here, but stuck between the two cultural worlds. [anonymous green 2001]