Admirable Protagonist

The Heartsong of Charging Elk was a novel that, for me, did a great deal of things. First of all, as a Native American myself, the subject matter of the novel hit rather close to home. When I picked up the novel and just read the back of the book to get a sense of what I was getting myself into, I was immediately intrigued. Wild Bill’s Wild West show has always been something that has interested me and Welch’s take on the sorts of things that could happen has only piqued my interest even more.

The course of events that affect Charging Elk are, by themselves, enough to break any person. First he gets left in a foreign nation that is even more alienating than his home. I mean, after being thrust into the white man’s world, which had to be foreign enough, then he gets abandoned in France, which is twofold more foreign. It would have been so, so easy for Charging Elk to fold up right here and call it quits. Instead he presses on, trying to find his way back to Wild Bill’s show.

The second thing that happens to Charging Elk was the most difficult one for me to read. When he is drugged and raped, I had to actually put the book down and take a bit of a study break before being able to pick the book back up. The fact that he kills the man who was raping him, to me, is a completely understandable, though certainly not commendable, response. The way that Charging Elk could continue living as normal of a life as possible after this event is still more amazing to me.

Third, when Charging Elk finds out that, according to the American Government, he is dead and his last realistic hope of returning to the United States has been snuffed out, he still continues on. The way that Charging Elk makes the most of this bad situation is, at the very least, impressive. The fact that, on his deathbed, one can say that he’s accepted the hand that life dealt him, makes Charging Elk an extremely powerful character in my eyes.

Real Poverty

Lois Ann Yamanaka’s novel Blu’s Hanging left me with a general feeling of unease. Perhaps it was just that I am bothered by the fact that there are people in the world that live in such conditions. It also didn’t help my motivation to sit down and read the novel that I had read the essay by Jamie James prior to the novel itself. So not only was I put off within the first few pages, but I was prepared to be made to feel uncomfortable. In all honesty, maybe I was set up to not enjoy this piece by the James essay.

I guess, due to my suspicion, I should start by exploring my experience with the James essay “This Hawaii Is Not For Tourists”. Well, the one thing that stood out to me about this essay was that it was much more informative than most essays that I have recently read. That is to say, it seemed to me that James set out to tell readers the history of the controversy surrounding Yamanaka’s works, especially Blu’s Hanging. I found this approach to be a refreshing change of pace, though I left the reading of the essay feeling slightly unsatisfied, like I had not been appropriately guided down a line of thinking.

After reading through Blu’s Hanging, however, I realize that James did guide me to a line of thought, which centered around a comment my girlfriend made while reading over my shoulder, “Eww, that doesn’t sound like much fun at all”. Now, admittedly, this could have been directed at the essay in general, but I, being a good boyfriend, asked for clarification and she pointed out some the descriptions from Blu’s Hanging that are intertwined with the history lesson.

These descriptions, which formed the basis of Yamanaka’s critics’ arguments also shaped my reading of the text. They made all of the negative aspects of the novel really stand out to me. Upon reflection, I find this to be quite unfortunate because Blu’s Hanging is certainly a well written piece and one that I could have found a lot more pleasurable had I not been preexposed to the negative aspects of it. I loved the realness of the characters, and definitely sympathized with them in many of their problematic situations.

A scenario that really stood out to me came early on in the novel, when the narrator makes Blu’s lunch for a field trip and the other kids in his class mock him horribly for the sad state of his sandwiches and his reused grocery bag that serves as his lunch bag. This, to me, summarized the horrible poverty that the family was living in. Additionally, I felt that this scene connected me with the characters in a way that simple whining about how horrible it was would not have accomplished.