ipl-logo

Analysis Of Dear John Wayne By Louise Erdrich

470 Words2 Pages

Dear John Wayne" by Louise Erdrich is a powerful poem that reflects on the history of colonization and the treatment of Native Americans by settlers. The experience of going to a drive-in movie theater and watching John Wayne films, which frequently portrayed Native Americans in negative roles, serves as the inspiration for this poem. The poem is narrated from the point of view of a person who is thinking back on the influence that these films have had on them and the way in which they have been influenced by their understanding of history and the world. The speaker and their friends are sitting on the hood of a Pontiac while they watch a drive-in movie. They are surrounded by smoke from the spirals that they are using to ward off mosquitoes. The poem starts with a description of the drive-in movie. However, in spite of their best efforts, the mosquitoes still find a way to get through the …show more content…

The drum brakes, which served as a warning that there would be no peace between the two groups (Line,12). The arrows are depicted as a cloud of death that descends upon the settlers, who die in a tragically beautiful way, as if they are slipping back into the pages of history. The white clouds begin to turn blue, and the crowd begins to cheer as the image of John Wayne's face moves over them to represent the success of the settlers (Line,18). The speaker contemplates the scarred land that was once flesh, thinking about how each wound is a guarantee that the conflict will continue so long as people continue to put up a fight against it. The speaker also makes a comment about the blindness of the heart, pointing out that while the eye can see a lot, the heart cannot see nearly as much, and that death renders people owners of

Show More
Related
947 Words | 4 Pages

How does the social position affect the person and their surroundings? As M.R.C. Kasasian said “The poor, are kind to each other, but that is because they have nothing to lose, ' he said. 'The rich cannot afford to be”. Strictly based on external influences are people’s decisions, one of those influences being their placement within society. People in different social classes within a community, causing them to behave differently than their peers.

Read More
2445 Words | 10 Pages

Trudell asks the audience to recount an ugly period in U.S history in order to gain a better understanding of the devastation that took place. For centuries, the Government has built an image of the Native people as one of uncivilized savages and though the years has portrayed them as the cause of the average American’s suffering in order to bring genocide against them with minimal resistance for the public. When a culture or race is villainized based solely on that criteria it create a climate of hate that entrenches itself in the minds of the people and is passed down through the generations. People are no longer driven by facts, but instead feed into the racial rhetoric of which they have become accustomed. The film highlights the need for change to the way the people are treated by their Government.

Read More
776 Words | 4 Pages

In the documentary, Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian, directed by Neil Diamond, he investigates the progression of how cinema has portrayed the Native American. They begin with the early classic films that first were made up until recent times. The image of the Indian has been portrayed in several ways and films had typically created misleading depictions of the Indians. What was created in these films are often stereotypical and what many people today believe to be true. Throughout the documentary, we see many themes being presented and these are themes of how the image of Native Americans were viewed as the “bad guys” during some early films and how they evolved to show how they were really just human beings.

Read More
1136 Words | 5 Pages

Primarily, copious instances of symbolism are apparent across the passage. Capote manipulates these metaphoric emblems to represent the perpetual tragedy and how it still evokes significant somber today surrounding the subject of death. A notable symbol in the book is the ambulance’s reckless blemishing of the dead family’s front lawn following the slaughter and the tire tracks still subsisting long after, “When the Sheriff summoned ambulances… the ambulances had driven across the grass straight to the front door, and the tire tracks were still visible” (Capote 206). The unheeding destruction of the grass by the ambulance symbolizes the initial collapse of the Clutter family, and the late existence of the lingering tracks is an endless reminder of the sorrow that the town of Holcomb experienced after losing one of their own. The intuitive rhetorical decision to allow the tire tracks to persist thereafter amplifies the negative connotation on death; implying that further death, in the proposed form of the

Read More
1007 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.

Read More
1384 Words | 6 Pages

Every individual forms a part of a social environment in which they come across many different circumstances, that  affect the way they behave and respond to different scenarios. Starting in the childhood, when they become part of the school community and within this community, they are exposed to different ideas and behaviors. Furthermore, the environment in which people grow up,and how they develop themselves in it plays an role in how they are affected and respond to extreme situations within society as well as the way other people interact with them. For instance, Louise Erdrich in her story “The red Convertible” presents to us the story of Henry and Lyman Lamartine two brothers, who spend all summer of driving around the US in a red convertible.

Read More
1230 Words | 5 Pages

Means’ and ultimately, the AIM’s goal was to bring national attention to all the broken treaties and promises by the U.S. government. As said by himself in his autobiography written with Marvin J. Wolf. , “What Wounded Knee told the world was that John Wayne hadn’t killed us all... Suddenly billions of people knew we were still alive, still resisting” (Quoted by Langer from “Where White Men Fear to Tread”). Means’ reference to John Wayne, shines light on the accusations made by most Native Americans of him as being racist. This statement is powerful because it shows that the Native Americans were capable of protesting and resisting oppression.

Read More
571 Words | 3 Pages

Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale.

Read More
977 Words | 4 Pages

For instance,“[W]hen the Indian Bill was passed, provision was made that existing treaties should be held sacred” (lines 7-8). This reveals that Native Americans were not gaining the same rights because of a prevention of self-expression. Native Americans were unable to allocate their traditions with liberty. This portrays a pathos appeal because the Native Americans are sentimentally affected due to the fact that they are being alienated and treated inhumanely. Keeping treaties sacred is a sign of disrespect because it engulfs their identity.

Read More
823 Words | 4 Pages

The build up of these colonial stances and its subsequent mistreatments led to increased political, economic, and social challenges towards Indigenous communities, such as poverty and loss of land, that overall puts the Native Americans in a bad spot with less to no advantages at rebuilding these descriptions from European-centered writers. Unlike his derogatory language, James criticized “friend of the Indian” philanthropy for efforts attempting to “civilize” Native Americans and suggested listening and learning from the Indigenous communities instead. In the same line, Vizenor speaks on how the Federal Indian Policy should be created upon a foundation of respect to Native Americans’ histories and cultures molded by the insider experiences, eventually helping to provide an alternative approach that honors the Native American identity, unlike archival writings such as Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (Vizenor,

Read More
1659 Words | 7 Pages

The Red Scare in the United States instilled fear among many Americans in the 20th century. The first Red Scare started in 1917 when the communists took over Russia during the Russian Revolution. It died out in 1920 after no communist uprising began. The second communist uprising began in the late 1940s when Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy claimed to have a list of communists working in the American government. Joe McCarthy brought the fear of a communist uprising back into America.

Read More
1547 Words | 7 Pages

The novel explores themes of family, identity, and trauma. It revolves around a group of Native American characters fighting against the government’s plans to terminate the tribe and displace them from their land. The characters’ experiences

Read More
1302 Words | 6 Pages

As Smith uses his words to create a poetic trailer for this stereotype-free movie, he tells the story of a young African American boy. Rather than being focused on his color, he focuses on his

Read More
957 Words | 4 Pages

Captivity is defined as the state of being imprisoned or confined. A tragic experience is given a whole new perspective from Louise Erdrich 's poem, “Captivity”. Through descriptive imagery and a melancholic tone, we can see the poem and theme develop in her words. Erdrich takes a quote from Mary Rowlandson’s narrative about her imprisonment by the Native Americans and her response to this brings readers a different story based off of the epigraph. Louise Erdrich compiles various literary devices to convey her theme of sympathy, and her poem “Captivity” through specific and descriptive language brings a whole new meaning to Mary Rowlandson’s narrative.

Read More
796 Words | 4 Pages

“I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move” written by Louise Erdrich focuses on a child and a grandfather horrifically observing a flood consuming their entire village and the surrounding trees, obliterating the nests of the herons that had lived there. In the future they remember back to the day when they started cleaning up after the flood, when they notice the herons without their habitat “dancing” in the sky. According to the poet’s biographical context, many of the poems the poet had wrote themselves were a metaphor. There could be many viable explanations and themes to this fascinating poem, and the main literary devices that constitute this poem are imagery, personification, and a metaphor.

Read More

More about Analysis Of Dear John Wayne By Louise Erdrich

Related Topics

Open Document