Wednesday, October 24, 2007

The emptiness in "Winter In The Blood"

Bernadette Miner
Mr. Doug Joyce
20TH Century Fiction
October 20, 2007

The Emptiness in Winter In The Blood.

The main character in Winter In The Blood is a young Native American man who lives with his mother, grandmother and a Cree woman, everyone thought to be his wife. The main character is going through an identity crisis, mainly emptiness. He feels cooped up in his native land that the white man took. The white man also brought vicious destruction and introduced alcohol to his people. James Welch purposely meant to keep the name of the main character from us, the reader, so we could get the feeling that the main character is absent in his own self destructive behavior, because without a defined identity, it shows an emptiness within his soul.

He sometimes lives in the past due to the memories of his father, First Raise and his brother, Mose who are both dead. For instance, “He was around enough- he was on his way home when they found him, too” (19). Another instance was when Teresa was enraged and said,

“ Do you suppose he was happy lying in that ditch with his eyes frozen shut, stinking of beer…” while the main character saw something other than Teresa, “ But that was a different figure in the ditch, not First Raise, not the man who fixed machinery, who planned his hunt with such care that he never made it. Unlike Teresa, I didn’t know the man who froze in the borrow pit. Maybe that’s why I felt nothing until the funeral” 20).

As time passed the main character felt that no consequences had come to him, after ten years when his fathers wandering ended in that ditch. When his father died, the main character always wondered why his father disappeared most of the time. After a conversation with his mother, he realized that she never understood his father either. That’s why his father went to town and made the white men laugh like he did. For instance, “ Despite their mocking way, they respected his ability to fix things. They gave him more that his wife” (21).The only reason the main character’s father stayed as long as he did was “because of my brother, Mose and me”(21). Going against his grandmother’s feelings about his “ wife”, the young Native American man went after her, to bring her back. As he was walking down a street he had a flashback 20 years before while a young boy when his father, brother, and him had done many things together. Those days were the happy times. His brother, and him felt loved and protected by his father while he was alive.

The main character’s so called wife had left him and that incident helped create the emptiness he felt throughout this “heroes journey” to the new world. Some instances was when he had went to town, and a few days later the Cree woman (his “wife”)had left him. “ She left three days ago, just after you went to town”. “It doesn’t matter,” I said (3). He had pulled an invisible shield over his family because he really did care and it did matter that she left him. He decided to go after her even though his grandmother’s feelings toward the Cree woman. For instance, “ The old lady imagined that the girl was Cree and enemy and plotted ways to slit her throat” (5). Another instance is,

“ She was Cree and not worth a damn. Not worth going after. My grandmother, before she quit talking, had told me how Crees never cared for anybody but themselves. Crees drank too much and fought with other Indians in bars, though they had never fought on the battlefield. She told me how frees were good only for the white men who came to slaughter Indians. Crees had served as scouts for the mounted soldiers and had learned to live like them, drink like them, and the girls had opened their thighs to the Long Knives. The children of these unions were doubly cursed in the eyes of the old woman. So she sat in the rocker and plotted ways to kill the girl who was thought to be my wife” (33).

With that judgment she put on the Crees and his “ wife” he decided to locate and bring her back home with him thinking, that make things all better for him and his life as It is in the present.

Finally, there were instances that helped him fulfill his emptiness, become solid and whole again, and find his identity as he desperately needed to move on from his old world and create and live in his new world. For example, he returned home to find out that his grandmother had died, “ The old lady must have died. That’s why the house was so quiet” (131). Another example was when he discovered blood on his shirt, “ I hadn’t noticed the bloodstains on my shirt before-there were five of them, one after another, down the front. I opened a burner plate on the wood stove and stuffed it in” (132). With the digging of his grandmothers grave( on the homeland) and burial of his grandmother, it brought back the memory of how his brother, Mose died. For instance,

“ Dust from the road drifted toward the graveyard. There was a grave I hadn’t looked at yet. It was marked with a wooden cross just tall enough to stand above the weeds which grew up around it. Although I couldn't see it, there would be an unpainted wooden border around the grave. A circle of Styrofoam hung from the top point of the cross. From the bottom of the circle, pointing down, a piece of wire wrapped in green, and , below that, a faded paper flower barely visible in the weeds. There was no headstone, no name, no dates. My brother”(143).

“ It was this necessity, this knowledge of death”(145) helped the main character forgive himself for his brothers death, and realize that his brother Mose, sacrificed himself out of love and protection so that his younger brother could live, “ the smaller figure flying slowly over the top of the car to land with the hush of a stuffed doll”(142). He realized that he needed to change for the better when he finally decided that “This greedy stupid country” (169) was what made him as he is and what he wants to change about himself, “ I crouched and spent the next few minutes planning my new life”(169). when he was wondering whether his brother and father was comfortable where they were now, “I wondered if Mose and First Raise were comfortable . They were the only ones I really loved, I thought the only ones who were good to be with” (172). Finally, the last passage that allowed him to get his reward, actually move on in the new world was, “ I threw the pouch into the grave”(176).

In conclusion, the main character had to understand not only why his brother died for him, but also see his father the way he really was. Also experience the death of his grandmother needed to fulfill his emptiness and become “whole” again. This caused him to want to make a change within himself and move on into the new world. James Welch meant to have the main character nameless to show that he has emptiness within his soul. Also when the white men brought the alcohol, vicious destruction to his native land and took his native land from his people, he feels cooped up.

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