The audience for this piece is people who are interested in Native American culture and history. Momaday's describes the ways in which they hunt and how they learned to use the environment to their advantage without greatly disrupting the natural world as a whole. Therein lies the purpose of this piece. He is making the point that natives were capable of sustaining themselves while living in harmony with the environment and it should be possible to do that with the modern generation as well. He does not come out and say the second part, but it is evident in his writing that this is what he is hinting at.
The major, and evident, theme in this piece is how in tune the Native American were with the environment. A minor theme he presents is the difficulty in which the natives have had in understanding what the concept of "land ownership" means. I believe the subtext of the essay was mentioned above, that modern Americans have not been able to live in harmony with the environment when it is quite capable to do so.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I completely agree, I think its cool how he never says that the modern generation should beable to live in harmoney with the environment but that it is easy to get that he is trying to make that point. He hints toward it multiple times in the reading.
ReplyDelete