Abstract
N. Scott Momaday’s novel The Ancient Child (published in 1985) is modeled on the nineteenth-century American Dime Novel genre. The Dime Novel was usually about American Indian and white relations. This article examines how The Ancient Child both employs and deviates from the conventions of the Dime Novel, replacing the genre’s heroic protagonist with Set, an antihero who is physically and mentally sick, and substituting the conventional happy ending with a syncretic narrative that incorporates distinctly Native American features such as clustering, the Bear-Boy myth, and the central importance of storytelling and identity.
Keywords: N. Scott Momaday, The Ancient Child, Dime Novel, Native American literature, identity, Bear-Boy myth, clustering
Introduction
N. Scott Momaday’s novel The Ancient Child (published in 1985) is modeled on the nineteenth-century American Dime Novel genre. The Dime Novel was usually about American Indian and white relations. The first recognizable example of this genre is Ann S. Stephen’s Molaeska; The Indian Wife of the White Hunter, published in 1860. In the Dime Novel genre there is usually a prelude which clues the reader in to the “loss” the protagonist has suffered. As a result of this loss the protagonist is isolated from society. Before long, however, he or she encounters an “insider” who “has traits similar to his [or her] own,” but is a member of a community. This “insider” usually has some “possession” that has been inherited, which is threatened by one or more “villains.” The protagonist is then reintegrated into the community by protecting or recovering the insider’s possession.
Prologue and the Story of Tsoai
While The Ancient Child does not have a prelude, it does have a prologue which is an abbreviated version of the “Story of Tsoai.” It is a story the Kiowas created to explain a mysterious rock formation they encountered. Momaday asserts that they “incorporated it into their experience by telling a story about it” (Woodard, Center 15). As Momaday explains, all things can be accepted, if not understood, if you put them into a story (15). The “Story of Tsoai” also helps to explain the astronomical phenomenon of the Big Dipper. Additionally, however, it is about the disappearance and loss of children.
The center of The Ancient Child is Set’s search for his self, for his name. Set remembers being called Loki and having a dog called Lukie. He has vivid dreams about his mother, whom he cannot possibly remember, but strangely enough he has no recollection of his father until he is notified by telegram of grandmother Kopemah’s death, a telegram with his father’s name on it sent by Grey.
Set and Grey as Deviations from the Dime Novel
The Ancient Child deviates from the Dime Novel genre because Set is unable to significantly aid Grey. Unlike the protagonists of the Dime Novel, who are strong, confident types, Set is physically and mentally sick. The Dime Novels have heroes, but Set is not a hero. In fact, Set is in several ways an antihero, inasmuch as he is ineffectual, passive, and has been “stripped of certainties, values, or even meaning” (Abrams “Antihero”). Through protecting Grey, which Set’s brief recovery and marriage seem to indicate he will be able to do, he would be reintegrated into the community. However, Set wanders off into the woods after he learns of Grey’s pregnancy, and is not heard from again, thus, finally, circumventing the reader’s expectations of the conventional Dime Novel and replacing it with a syncretic genre that tropes the Dime Novel with distinct Native American narrative features.
One unique Native American narrative device is “clustering.” Michelle Trusty-Murphy suggests that Momaday characteristically uses a uniquely Kiowa form of clustering. Clustering and reverse-clustering involve locating the center of a story and moving out from there. This is radically different from traditional western narratives that have a beginning, middle, and end, but no center. The center is not the same as the middle; the center is what holds the story together.
Grey and the Insider Figure
Obviously, Grey is the “insider,” although she is viewed as peculiar or eccentric by the standards of her community, and the possession that she has is herself. It is her mind and her body that are repeatedly threatened by villains such as Dwight Dicks and the racist ideology that casts Indians, like herself, as otherworldly. She is struggling, like Set, to find her own sense of self. On occasion she, like Set, has been sexually abused.
From the reader’s first introduction to Grey, it is obvious that she has a problem recognizing and living in reality. In addition to her imaginary conversations with Billy the Kid, she also has visions, and is able to “burst into tears” at will. Grey is obviously afflicted with some type of schizophrenia and Set appears to be suffering from severe depression, or more probably, bipolar disorder. However, this is masked because they are Indians in an Indian novel: not representations of the real-life experiences of real-life people.
Conclusion
Momaday’s novels, like the storyteller’s Bear-Boy story in The Ancient Child, certainly may “soothe and comfort,” but that is only a superficial interpretation of them. The real story, the Truth as Tosamah would say, is underneath, hidden below the fat, but not readily discoverable. The Ancient Child is a sophisticated syncretic novel that reveals startling truths about the Native American experience and about literature by and about Native Americans.
Works Cited
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