Purpose: Momaday, a Kiowa Indian, is informing his audience of the life, culture and geography of Native Americans during the 1880s in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita range. Momaday is also commemorating and is in awe of his grandmother’s long life in the shadow of Rainy Mountain. Tone: The tone of this passage is not only to inform us about about the Kiowa Indians, but it is to help Momaday deal with his loss in a bittersweet fashion. Meaning that he is sad that his grandmother died, but is privileged to retell and to be a bearer of all cultures and traditions of the long lost Kiowa Indians. “And I was told that in death her face was that of a child” (677).
Momaday bears witness of the death of his grandmother who lived to a ripe old age through the eyes of his grandmother’s only daughter, who was with her when she died
“She …show more content…
Although she never lived outside Rainy Mountain, we get a vivid and precise description about these places
“I wanted to see in reality….and traveled fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage”(679)
Momaday’s grandmother bears witness to the Kiowa peoples land, and it is now Momaday’s desire to bare witness to his heritage by writing about it
“And tortoises crawl about on the red earth, and going no where in the plenty of time. Loneliness is an aspect of the land….where there is no confusion of objects in the eye” (677)
As a literary device Momaday uses animals as a metaphor for humans, especially when, he describes the good red earth and the tortoises crawling. There is a sense of peace and tranquility in the land and the people grasp a broad understanding of God's creation.
“But, beautiful as it is, one might have the sense of confinement there. The skyline in all directions is close at hand, the high wall of the woods….there is a perfect freedom in the mountains, but it belongs to the eagle.. And the