Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in House Made of Dawn, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Home, Belonging, and Identity
Nature
Religion, Ceremony, and Tradition
Storytelling
Connection vs. Isolation
Summary
Analysis
This chapter moves to Los Angeles in 1952. It begins by describing the spawning process of fish off the coast of southern California that throw themselves out of the water and onto land. On land, they are helpless.
The fish jumping out of their natural habitat mirrors Abel’s previous hardships outside Walatowa and foreshadows the further difficulty he will have adjusting to life in Los Angeles.
Themes
Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah, also known as the Priest of the Sun, lives with his disciple Cruz above a church called the Holiness Pan-Indian Rescue Mission. The chapel is run-down, and Tosamah leads it with “both arrogance and agony.” He begins to preach about the beginning of the Gospel of John, peppering his sermon with slang and casual exclamations. Tosamah emphasizes the first line, “In the beginning was the Word.” He believes that this line epitomizes the holiness of Truth, and that convoluting Truth with overly complex sentences weakens it.
Tosamah’s church follows the tradition of the Peyote Religion (also called the Native American Church), a multifaceted religion that adapts Christian theology to coexist with the religions of many Native American nations and tribes. Though Tosamah displays a dislike of Christianity, he finds value in the first line of the Gospel of John. Tosamah’s devotion to the power of Truth also adds a new lens to how the novel portrays storytelling, as storytelling becomes a means to preserve truth.
Themes
Tosamah blames John and his followers for overcomplicating God’s Truth with their wordy gospel. Tosamah tells his congregation this is the way of white men. They do not grant stories the reverence that Native Americans do, and they “dilute” language’s power by overusing it and taking it for granted.
Tosamah explicitly articulates that Christianity is the religion of white colonizers, a notion that characters in the novel’s first section alluded to but never said outright. He builds an anti-colonialist argument by asserting that Native American modes of storytelling honor the truth more than white Christian texts.
Themes
Tosamah tells the congregation an ancient story that his grandmother taught him, emphasizing the durability of the oral tradition. In the story, which takes place during a famine among the Kiowa people, one man hears a voice of thunder and lightning while searching for food. The voice belongs to Tai-me, a supernatural being with the feet of a deer and a feathered body. Tai-me promises to give the Kiowa whatever they want if they bring him with them. After concluding the story of Tai-me, Tosamah turns his attention back to John. Tosamah asserts that John failed to comprehend that the Word is older than silence, and silence is made of the Word. With this, the tired priest dismisses his congregation.
Tosamah’s story highlights the lasting power of the oral tradition, as he knows well a story passed down verbally through generations. The story itself uses words sparingly, never overexplaining ideas or plot points, which speaks to Tosamah’s belief that Native American cultures and stories don’t overuse language.
Themes
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The scene transitions suddenly to Abel, who thinks about fish and the sea even though they are not of his world. He thinks of what his friend Benally told him about Navajo religious ceremonies that connect people to the earth, but the vast sea and spawning fish seem removed from that earth.
Fish continue to represent Abel’s alienation from the world around him. Los Angeles is a coastal city, while Abel spent his youth building a connection to the desert plains of Walatowa. The sea and fish are so far removed from what Abel is familiar with, they might as well be from another world.
Themes
The scene shifts again as Abel, cold and in pain, wakes up hungover in an industrial area by the sea. He once loved his body, but as a young man he fell off a horse and injured his back. Though Fat Josie, a woman in Walatowa, healed the injury, Abel still remembers feeling like his hurting body betrayed him. He thinks of Angela, and of the trial he faced for killing the albino man. He’d had little interest in the trial, which he found “ceremonial, orderly, civilized.”
Abel’s dislike of his body mirrors Angela’s disgust of her own body, further highlighting that their relationship was one between two deeply troubled people. His sense that his body betrayed him also reveals how much Abel values loyalty. He does not care about the values espoused by the criminal justice system. His description of the trial as “civilized” echoes the common racist notion that Native Americans are uncivilized or primitive in contrast to white people. Abel’s disdain for the “civilized” trial suggests that he doesn’t see the merit in what white American society considers civilized.
Themes
At the trial, Father Olguin argues that Abel was not in his right mind when he committed the murder. Father Olguin has little notion of how to describe Abel’s actions, since he can’t understand Abel’s motivation. Abel admitted to killing the albino man and has not spoken since. He is disdainful of the discussions around him in court, but he feels no need to participate since he is disconnected from “their language.” To Abel, the murder was simple and justified: the albino man was his enemy.
Abel remains fundamentally misunderstood by those around him, and he makes no effort to help others understand him or to try to understand others. He has no connection to the language or proceedings of the white American court system. Abel has a strong, clear moral code, but no one besides him knows what that code is.
Themes
The narration moves back to Abel waking up, and it follows his confused, disjointed thoughts as he takes in his surroundings. He thinks of old men running in white leggings, then of his disconnect from the world around him, then of fish. He recalls filling out a form with basic information about himself. As he recalls his prison cell and the bus that took him to war, the questions become more personal. He wishes to be drunk.
Abel’s thought of old men running refers to the dawn runners, a tradition that is explained later in the novel. His continued reflections on fish and his place in the world makes clear that Abel is aware of his own isolation, but he doesn’t know how to remedy it. He has been dehumanized as both a soldier and a prisoner, and now that he is once again an individual, he doesn’t know how to handle himself.
Themes
Abel’s fragmented psyche continues to recall his past, revealing that the questions were posed by Milly, his social worker. He remembers in detail the night he had sex with her. She believes in Industry, Brotherhood, the American Dream, and––most surprising to Abel––in Abel himself. He listens to the powerful, overwhelming crashing of the sea.
Milly, as a social worker, is an agent of the government, and is thus entirely removed from Abel’s frame of reference. She believes in an idealized version of America, seeing it as a land of possibility rather than a nation that colonized the land of Abel’s people. Despite this, the two form a relationship.
Themes
Back at the chapel, Tosamah prepares his congregation for a peyote ceremony by explaining the botanical properties of the peyote plant. He has painted his skin for the ceremony. The ceremony begins, and Tosamah presides over it with care for each detail, including the arrangement of the altar, the rolling of cigarettes, and the blessing of incense. After this, the congregation eats peyote buttons. They drum and dance around a fire, sharing a rush of intense and varied emotions that seems to mirror the liveliness of the flames. The congregation forms a circle, and people voice their thoughts, feelings, and drug-fueled impressions. One man, Ben Benally, sees a “house made of dawn.” As the ceremony concludes, Tosamah steps outside and blows an eagle-bone whistle in four directions.
Tosamah pays careful attention to the traditions of the peyote ceremony, and the narration itself does the same, narrating each element of the ceremony in detail. This attention to detail challenges a prevailing racist assumption that Native Americans are savage or uncivilized, as the characters conduct the ceremony with respect and care for their ancestors’ traditions. Additionally, this introduction of Ben Benally, who becomes a significant character later in the story, establishes him as a religious man with a spiritual connection to Indigenous religions.
Themes
Abel lies helpless and in agony on the ground. He remembers how the childless Fat Josie cheered him up after his mother died. The memory is interrupted by a single thought––“Milly?” Abel is afraid. He is always afraid, since he knows something he can’t imagine lingers at the edges of his consciousness.
Like the spawning fish, Abel lies helpless on the ground of an unfamiliar terrain. He yearns for Milly, someone with whom he formed the beginnings of a connection, but he remains fundamentally alone. He is alienated even from his own mind, which he doesn’t fully understand.
Themes
Abel’s thoughts become fractured again. He remembers a white soldier describing Abel whooping and dancing around bullets. He thinks of Milly, and briefly his awareness returns to his injured body, but then he slips back into his memories. He hunts waterfowl at night with Vidal. He lifts a dead bird and the narration’s structure takes on a stream-of-conscious form as Abel imagines telling Milly about the dead bird and his pain.
As Abel loses control of his consciousness, he thinks of people who have shaped his life. Vidal shaped his childhood, while Milly is a figure from his adulthood, and recalling her briefly forces him back to reality. He also thinks of his time in the war; his fellow soldier’s description suggests that Abel was more at home in combat than he is during times of peace.
Themes
Abel remembers that his relationship with Milly became meaningful when they realized how lonely they both were, and the narration slips into Milly’s first-person perspective. She describes her impoverished rural childhood. The land is unfruitful, so her father starts to think of it as his personal enemy. Milly marries a man who soon abandons her, leaving her to raise their daughter Carrie on her own. Carrie dies of illness when she is 4 years old.
Abel’s relationship with Milly is one of the few meaningful interpersonal connections he forms in the story, and that relationship comes from their mutual feelings of isolation. Like Abel, Milly comes from a rural background, but her father hates the land while Abel’s family reveres and respects it. The brief shift into Milly’s first-person perspective is another instance of the novel playing with different modes of storytelling.
Themes
Abel recognizes that he will die of exposure if he remains on the ground, so he forces himself to get up. He travels through back alleys, trying to avoid being seen. He stows away in the back of a pickup truck, which he rides for a while. When it stops, he gets out and continues traveling in the shadows. His pain eventually overcomes him, and he sees Milly and Ben running on a moonlit beach.
The story does not explain Abel’s reluctance to be seen; it may be a leftover instinct from his time as a soldier that leads him to avoid being observed while injured, or it might be a matter of pride that prevents him from seeking help. Despite his loneliness, he continues to avoid people, but his image of Milly and Ben highlights how he longs for connection.
Themes
