Storyteller Analysis

The story I chose to read in the novel Storyteller, is Tony’s Story. The story is about two indian men. One of the men, Leon has just returned from the war and the other Tony has stayed on the reservation his whole life. Tony meets up with Leon at a festival where a state cop beats Leon up for no apparent reason. That night, Tony has a dream that reveals to him the cop is actually a witch. A couple days later the two men go to a gas station where Tony sees the cop again. The cop follows them and pulls them over, for no reason. Some time later, Leon and Tony go to a sheep camp together and on the way there the cop pulls them over again. At this point Tony is so convinced the cop is a witch, he takes Leon’s gun and shoots him. Leon does
Coming back from the war changed Leon culturally and mentally as seen from the quote by Tony, “ I wondered why men who came back from the army were troublemakers on the reservation.(117)” Even Tony’s father believed that Leon had changed from the war. “Leon goes looking for trouble-I wish you wouldn’t hang around with him.(119)” I believe that the trouble Tony and his father mention is just a lack of culture for Leon. The war has shown Leon terrible things and has possibly given him some type of PTSD causing Leon to have trouble to believe in his traditional culture again. “I reached in my pocket for the arrowhead on the piece of string...Here, wear it around your neck-like mine. See? Just in case,” I said, “for protection.” “You don’t believe in that, do you?(119)” Tony is trying to give Leon an arrowhead for protection against the cop/witch, but Leon has a hard time believing in his culture so he turns it down. Hopefully, with time Leon will be able to put aside the terrible events of the war, and once again regain his
Culture is the rules by which a group of people live and how they are supposed to act. Creating a sense of self is heavily based on a person’s culture. When a person loses their culture or it is taken away from them, their identity is also. That person has gone their whole life believing a set of rules to have it suddenly ripped from them. This causes an identity crisis until the person is again able to find himself. Leon’s culture was ripped away from him because of the war. He also goes through an identity crisis and tries to find himself, which is why he is such a troublemaker now that he is back on the reservation. Hopefully the incident of the cop/witch is enough for Leon to once again regain his culture live his life like