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.