Tradition In Lame Deer's Alone On A Hilltop

The historian of religion Mircea Eliade focuses on the hierophany as the manifestation of the sacred. The aspects of the sacred and profane are distributed through time, nature, space and the human existence. The combination of myth and a sacred reality is illustrated by Lame Deer’s “Alone on a Hilltop.” Lame Deer’s vision quest follows tradition along with the supernatural. The transition from boyhood to manhood is a form of Eliade’s notion of age initiation. Lame Deer shares Eliade’s ideals on religion. Sacred time is expressed in “Alone on a Hilltop” through ritual. Eliade describes sacred time as reversible and reversible. By the repetition of ritual of the vision quest, sacred time is getting reversed. Therefore, the action of going back to the gods is present when Lame Deer smokes the

Lame Deer says about the smoking that he “sensed that my forefathers who had once smoked this pipe were with me on the hill” (Deer 3). Eliade denotes that by “reversing the time of origin implies ritual repletion of the god’s creative act” the time world comes into being (Eliade 85). Lame Deer travels back. Lame Deer reunites with his past during the vision where his great grandfather Tahca Ushte appears (Deer 6). Lame Deer transforms as a result to the vision and according to Eliade approaches the gods. Eliade explains the reactualization of myths “religious man attempts to approach the gods and to participate in being” (Eliade 106). Lame Deer feels the “nagi” when the vision of his great-grandfather occurs; a connection is formed between the past and present (Deer 6). Both Eliade and Lame Deer discuss the loss of depth in religious experiences. Lame Deer talks about the difference in culture: “Indians are not like white folks – a man and a wife, two children, and one babysitter who