House Made of Dawn

by N. Scott Momaday

House Made of Dawn: Genre 1 key example

Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

House Made of Dawn is a novel that helped start the literary movement now known as the Native American Renaissance. Momaday earned a PhD in English from Stanford, and the novel reflects his deep knowledge of European and European American literary traditions. It focuses on a character's social development into adulthood and therefore might be classified as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel. It draws on modernist and postmodernist techniques such as stream of consciousness, a nonlinear narrative, and "polyvocal" storytelling (storytelling through multiple narrators who each have their own perspective). It contains references to Christianity, such as Abel's name. It also engages with the trauma caused by World War II, which was a major subject of mainstream literature in the mid-20th century.