Momaday: A Literary Analysis

Momaday uses this memoir to document, not only the end of his grandmother’s life, but also the “end” of several ways of life for the Kiowa people by constructing this world for the reader as if the reader had been there himself. Momaday begins his memoir with strong and descriptive word choice illustrating Rainy Mountain. Each sentence acting as a brushstroke in the reader’s mind, the paragraph painting an elaborate picture, the reader feels as if he has been dropped into the setting. Momaday then constructs characters with very much detail in, not just their appearance, but their personality. Thus, one feels he knows them so well they seem to be archetypal characters. Thirdly, Momaday writes this story from a different perspective. Most
readers are used to reading Louis & Clark’s side, or how the British defeated the ‘savage’ natives in the French and Indian War. However Momaday presents to us a side we have often never seen before, the perspective of the natives themselves. He reveals to us the life of the Kiowa in a whole new way, promoting the tribe. His diction and connotation allures the reader to interpret the Kiowa people as a primitive nation, with wisdom far more advanced than their destroyers could ever see. A nation with simple values, oppressed by greedy colonists. Lastly, in describing his grandmother, Momaday uses great detail. He paints a picture of her, but uses connotation once more to make the entire setting revolve around her, and his feelings toward her. “The wood is burned gray,” “the windowpanes are black and opaque;” just as his mother begins to fade, Momaday lets the whole setting fade around her. This amazing unification of many stylistic devices allows the reader to visualize the setting and characters as one picture. Everything changes in symphony, interacting in so many ways inside the reader’s head. Momaday has done a great job bringing this memoir to life.