After taking another look at The Birchbark House and the
Elizabeth Gargano article about the cyclical nature of the book I began to
think about how most oks that we read are n of this nature. The traditional
form of the novel, as we know, it tends to have a linear timeline. It has a
beginning middle and an end. This form
is very tidy and what we have come to expect as readers. Erdrich’s novel has
some of the same elements as the traditional novel but she interjects some Native
American formatting to it. It is basically the story of a young girls
experience over a one-year period. I see this book as a Bildungsroman. Omakayas is the girl who the novel revolves around.
Erdrich uses the four seasons to create four parts to the book and each part
contains traditional chapters. The four seasons approach, although I see it as
somewhat cliché, is leaning toward the Ojibwa culture. The chapters are a more
traditional western written style. The traditional chapters probably make the
book more navigable for the audience who Erdrich is trying to reach. I have not
seen or read any of her adult material but I think she would able to
incorporate a more true representation of Ojibwa culture and their story
telling techniques. I thought how she worked all of the cycles into The
Birchbark Tree was a good introduction to how Native Americans told stories. If
I hadn’t read the article by Gargano I don’t think that I would have picked up
on the importance of all the different story circles that take place in the
novel. There are circles within circles within
circles. I am not an author myself but I
wonder how much of a struggle it is for a writer like Erdrich to try to write a
novel that keeps the integrity of the culture she is trying to represent using
a form that was/is foreign to that culture.
A couple points you bring up here got me thinking. First, I agree that "Birchbark" serves as a Bildungsroman. The novel as a whole explores many writing conventions, all of which serve to progress the main character (and subsequently the reader). It seems that the Bildungsroman is a very useful genre that writers can use to tell an entertaining, yet didactic, story. In this instance, this tool is used as a way to introduce a foreign culture to a society that may have little to no knowledge of its existence (current or former). I think by maintaining a sense of the oral tradition, Erdrich is able to keep that integrity of the culture, as you mention, while writing in this foreign form. I think this can probably be said for many cultures as they shifted from oral to written forms - how ever long the gap between this happening.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of questions of language. I know many authors of postcolonial works are criticized for writing in the colonial language - I specifically remember talking about this last year in regards to "Things Fall Apart," by Chinua Achebe. Some critics said he should have written in the language of the colonized, rather than the language of the colonizer. I wonder if Erdrich was the target of similar criticism?
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't until I read you say how the chapters are written in a more western style that I begin to think about language in a book, or better yet the title. Simple maybe, but both books have the word House in the title. This is a good indication of family values and I believe shows a sign of the times. The home was a central piece in both books, although at times unstable and mobile. I think like you said it also was a good introduction to these stories, which leads to the thought that both these works were spoken orally before written manually. Written around the same time I guess it is not unusual for them to share the same "western" style or features in the plot. Nice Job, this piece although maybe not related to what I said entirely, got me to think outside the triangle (read my other blog post, its a joke).. or the book at least.
ReplyDelete