Analyzing Ned's 'Culture In Code Talker'

Code Talker Expository Essay Culture serves an important function in everyday life, it’s where ideas, inspirations and thoughts come from. Culture is very important in Code Talker because it leads its main characters through the story, almost completely. One of the times the characters were moved into action is when they went to war. In one of the chapters, Ned talks about the enemy way, a ritual that’s meant to heal the subject from mental harm. He goes on to explain it by saying “Navajos understood that when they must fight other humans, injure and kill them, they injure a part of themselves” (161). This quote shows a lot about what Ned feels at this point. He began by saying that the Navajos understood it, and that by itself implies that

This part of what he says it’s a mix of deep and shallow culture, because deep culture is what the ways of the mind think and feel in a complex way. Because he feels this is true he took it from his ancestors, the Navajos, which is more part of his shallow culture. This is an important concept to keep in mind because this is what keeps him through the war. The belief system can help to make the story more structured, making more sense, an example of this is when Ned says “What happened to those Chamorros and the people on the other islands made [Ned] think yet again of what had been done to our Navajo people during the time of the long walk. It made [Ned] weep” (154). This quote shows how structured culture and motivation can be. Which is important because during the time of the war people didn’t have much motivation, people like the Japanese were not very hesitant to perform bonsai attacks on the Americans. Earlier in the book, Ned is shown in the Navajo boarding school, and he’s not really doing very well. It is then, and there that his deep culture and a little bit of surface culture as well, protect him from all the trauma of getting stripped of his culture.