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Religion, Ceremony, and Tradition
Themes and Colors
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.
House Made of Dawn portrays many different modes of storytelling, switching between perspectives and narrative voices, as well as featuring lengthy segments in which characters tell stories to each other. The narrator acknowledges that the book itself is telling a story by opening and closing the novel with traditional Jemez words that mark the beginning and end of stories. This establishes the value of stories in House Made of Dawn and the Native American cultures it describes: the novel’s events are not less important because they are fiction, and the stories that characters tell within this story are equally important. One chapter consists entirely of a sermon delivered by the priest Tosamah; in the sermon, he tells several stories, and he also explicitly emphasizes the importance of language and storytelling. Through this, he honors the oral storytelling tradition and describes his Kiowa grandmother’s reverence for words, contrasting it with the fact that, in his view, white people take words for granted. The book’s narrator adheres to this refusal to overuse words. The novel grants vivid descriptions to natural landscapes, but its descriptions of people and their motivations are left ambiguous. This ambiguity encourages readers to take responsibility for interpreting the story themselves, which in turn mirrors how characters within the novel must constantly work to interpret the various stories they hear and tell. The novel’s unorthodox narrative structure highlights that words and stories are complex, and that working to find meaning in them is a sacred act.
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Storytelling ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Storytelling appears in each chapter of House Made of Dawn. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Storytelling Quotes in House Made of Dawn
Below you will find the important quotes in House Made of Dawn related to the theme of Storytelling.
Prologue Quotes
Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored clays and sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed in the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around.
Abel was running.
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The novel opens with the word “dypaloh,” the Jemez equivalent to the English phrase “once upon a time”––in other words, a word that introduces a story. The story acknowledges that it is a story, but that does not mean it does not contain truth, or that it is unimportant. This opening also pays close attention to the landscape, and in fact introduces the features of the natural world before introducing the protagonist. Abel, the main character, is introduced in the context of the Southwestern landscape, establishing the importance of nature and of Abel’s personal relationship to the natural world. The Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debit
8. The Priest of the Sun, January 26 Quotes
“And in his hurry he said too much. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ It was the Truth, all right, but it was more than the Truth. The Truth was overgrown with fat, and the fat was God. The fat was John’s God, and God stood between John and the Truth. […] He had said all there was to say, everything, but he went on. ‘In the beginning was the word….’ Brothers and sisters, that was the Truth […]
[O]ld John was a white man, and the white man has his ways. […] He talks about the Word. He talks through it and around it. […] And in all of this he subtracts the Truth.’”
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In his sermon to the congregants of the Holiness Pan-Indian Rescue, Tosamah discusses the spiritual significance of Truth. He believes that language is the key to expressing Truth, but overusing language cheapens it and dilutes its connection to Truth. Tosamah insists that the Biblical John struck at the heart of Truth when he wrote “In the beginning was the word,” but then John continued to write after that, weakening his message. This, Tosamah argues, is the flaw of white culture and religion. White people talk “through” and “around” the Word that leads to Truth, unlike Native Americans, who honor the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. M
When he had told his story once, simply, Abel refused to speak. […] That was good, for he should not have known what more to say. Word by word by word these men were disposing of him in language, their language, and they were making a bad job of it.
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When Abel is put on trial for killing the albino man, he finds himself unable and unwilling to navigate the court system. He views the murder he committed as a reasonable, justified act, but he can’t express that to the court. The values that prompted him to violence are Jemez values, while the court operates in English as an agent of colonialist bureaucracy. Abel’s belief that he only needs to tell his story once, “simply”, also echoes Tosamah’s sermon on the differing approaches to storytelling and language taken by white and Native American people. Abel uses words “simply” and straightforwardly Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum volu
She had been in Los Angeles four years, and in all that time she had not talked to anyone. There were people all around; she knew them, worked with them––sometimes they would not leave her alone––but she did not talk to them, tell them anything that mattered in the least. […]
And then one day he was there by her door, waiting for her. It was a hot, humid afternoon and the streets were full of people when she walked home. And he was waiting for her. […] He was saying something, trying to tell her why he had come, and suddenly she realized how lonely they both were, how unspeakably lonely.
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The novel plays with various ways of storytelling throughout the narrative, and after Milly’s introduction the story briefly switches into her perspective. Like Abel, Milly struggles with loneliness and with feeling alienated from her peers. Though she is surrounded by people in Los Angeles, she does not feel a meaningful connection with any of them. This sense of disconnect mirrors Abel’s feelings about the city, but unlike Abel, Milly has no community she can return to if she leaves Los Angeles, suggesting that colonialist America’s lack of tradition and community leaves white people without reprieve from the systems of isolation Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum vo
10. The Night Chanter, February 20 Quotes
We went up there on the hill, him and me, with Tosamah and Cruz. There were a lot of Indians up there, and we really got going after a while. […] Somebody built a fire, and we heated the drums until they were good and you could really hear them. Mercedes Tenorio had some turtle shells and she started doing a stomp dance.
You can forget about everything up there. […] We could see one whole side of the city, all the way to the water, but we couldn’t hear anything down there. All we could hear was the drums and the singing.
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To celebrate Abel’s last night in Los Angeles, Ben, Tosamah, and Cruz bring him to a party outside the city. As the novel continues to explore different modes of storytelling, this chapter is told entirely from Ben Benally’s first-person perspective. This shows the reader an insider’s perspective on Native American urban life, which contrasts with Abel’s perspective as an outsider to that world. This party represents an escape from that urban life, which the book establishes as stifling and lonely. The Native American partygoers physically distance themselves from Los Angeles, and though the city remains visible, the festivities drown it Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi nec
11. The Dawn Runner, February 27 Quotes
He had begun at the wrong pace, another and better man’s pace, had seen the man come almost at once to the top of his strength, hitting his stride without effort […]. And like a fool he had taken up the bait, whole and at once, had allowed himself to be run into the ground. In the next instant his lungs should burst, for now they were burning with pain and the pain had crowded out the last and least element of his breath, and he should stumble and fall. But the moment passed […] and the next and the next, and he was running still, and still he could see the dark shape of the man running away […] like a motionless shadow. And he held onto the shadow and ran beyond his pain.
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Francisco’s last memory before he dies is of a race he ran as a young man. The language of physical exertion and pain as he runs parallels the pain of dying. This is particularly pronounced as Francisco struggles to breathe, feeling as if “his lungs should burst.” Despite this pain, Francisco continues to run. As Francisco’s difficulty breathing makes clear that he is dying as he remembers this race, the description of his opponent as a “motionless shadow” calls to mind an embodiment of death itself. Francisco “held onto the shadow,” as if he is aware of his coming death Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debit
