To situate "Storyteller" and the groundbreaking work of the same title that launched Leslie Marmon Silko as a major US writer, you might want to know a little about the emergent acknowledgment of native-American literature in the native-American Renaissance (a controversial though widespread term) here: https://nativeamericanlit.com/.
As you read "Storyteller", please take your time to comment on one or more of these topics:
- intertwined narratives
- Focalization
- Description of natural elements
- Dramatization of cultural mediation and conflict
The narrative by Leslie Marmon Silko called "Storyteller" uses nature to represent the absence of boundaries, for the main character these boundaries are crucial to guide the mind towards a goal, at a certain point in the narrative, the absence of these boundaries allows sanity to drift off into a state of delusion. Nature is represented as homogenous, the sky and the land being of the same color, the lake water blending into the horizon, the whole ideal of nature is to wipe the possibility of a threshhold, of a checkpoint that allows for reality to engulf the mind and create, in the case of this shortstory, a visual, distinguishable non-natural item. It is curious to note that in this short story, the boundaries of the world are artificial, the item that triggers this reality check is handmade by the main character. Therefore, it could be argued that it is not the world that needs barriers, nature is perfect as is, it is the humans who need them to guide their mind throughout their life. Nature is represented as pure, untouched, whereas the human mind of the main character is perceived as foul and corrupted.
ReplyDeleteIntertwined narratives: Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko uses a radical, hybrid literary form to actively resist colonial displacement and reclaim a fractured cultual geography. Is literally a mixture of traditional Laguna pueblo's oral myths, personal poetry, historical anecdotes and black and white family photos. She blends mythic time with contemporary realities which create a cyclical structure. She does not only do this; she also blurs herself and her own ego, creating a collective identity through the stories of her aunt, her grandmother, and her father. The writer's memories dissolve into the myths and stories told by her family, transforming her work into a communal autobiography.
ReplyDeleteThrough the title, we become aware of this, and we also see how she links different indigenous experiences in order to map a shared, continental web of survival against colonialism. Everything is shaped by her ability to blur the line between ancient myth and the present, showing that the division between past and present is simply an illusion.