Across A Hundred Mountains Analysis

The narrator fears the white man's ways because their world view is warped, the white men believe that they are supreme and that all other humans are made to be like them. In the narrator's eyes the white men need control and to be the master of the world around them. They force outsiders, like himself, to assimilate to their culture and to their definition of “normal.” He is uncomfortable in their brittle mold of society, he is also scared by the way that the white men treat others frightens him, and most of all he is scared that their culture has changed him.
The brittle mold of society that the white men live in frightens the narrator. He was not raised the same way that they were, it is all so foreign to him. The white men live in a society
that is far too superficial by the narrator's standards, They are taught to always want something better and to not to be content or complacent, even if they are blessed tremendously. Everyone has that same mentality and that is why “progress will stop if he did not want these things” (12). Since everyone is striving to be successful and wealthy they do not take time to enjoy the day, they are stuck in the same monotonous routine of rushing through their day with their eyes set on the future, the next thing they can buy. The narrator wished to be back in his own home where the Blue Winds Dance and there is “No anxiety about one’s place in the thing they call Society” (5). Because in the white man’s “society” they are taught to treat other humans differently based on their pigment. “It’s terrible to have to feel inferior… and learn that one’s race is behind” (9) they believe that all other races should be like them, but not equal to them.\
The white men believe that all outsiders should change to fit their definition of the word normal.
Because they are always dissatisfied and hungry for more they believe that others should be like that as well, “These civilized white men want us to be like them--always dissatisfied--getting a hill and wanting a mountain” (6). This mindset terrifies the narrator because it is that mentality that caused many men to become corrupt and jaded. Another thing that scares the author about the white man’s society is the way they treat their own men that simply do not fit in. They call them bums and refuse to help them get back on their feet, the narrator feels compassion and mercy towards them. The narrator knows exactly how they feel because he, too, was a cast away in the eyes of the white men. “These men… living on the outskirts of civilization are free, but pay the price of being free in civilization”
(12).
The narrator is terrified that the white man’s culture has changed him for the worse.
Although he sees all of the flaws in the white man’s society he still fears that they changed his worldview and he is scared to be reunited with his family. The white men caused him to doubt his own intelligence by getting the thought, “Maybe I'm not smart enough to grasp these things that go to makeup civilization”(7), stuck in his head on replay. He does not like the doubt that has recently entered his life but he can not do anything about it because it is all he has known while he was living in the white man’s world. The biggest doubt that he has is when he questions himself on a deeper level, asking himself “‘Am I Indian, or am I White?’” (30). This question is his biggest fear of all because he knows that they changed him but he will not know how much they changed him until he goes back home and is reunited with his family, but more importantly what his father will think. “Afraid of what my father will say, afraid of being looked at as a stranger by my own people”
(20).
The narrator is terrified of the white men and how they treat outsiders and the stiff society that they live in. But most of all he is scared of how much they changed him without him realizing. He went to the white man’s world to get an education but he came back with much more than an education, he came back with an entirely different worldview.