Landscape and mythology in M. Scott Momady´s 'House Made of Dawn'

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Siegen, 3 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In 1969 the rather unknown Native American author N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Price for fiction with his first novel House Made of Dawn. Until that time Native American fiction was quite unpopular; but Momaday’s’ novel certainly evoked the interest of the western audience. He was able to explore many important issues and conflicts the Native American community had to face in the twentieth century and – what was even more important – developed a narrative strategy to convey these issues to a bigger and, above all, multicultural audience.
As Momaday covers so many themes in his novel, I decided to focus on the role of the landscape with its mythology and its powers. As it shows, the landscape plays an important role in this novel as well as in Native American beliefs.