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jillian_mon's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
1.5
Not bad, good prose not engaging pacing for my preference but I can how others might like it. Read for a class
christytidwell's review
3.0
As John Joseph Mathews tells the story of his mixed-blood protagonist, Challenge Windzer (known as Chal), who fits in neither with the Osage Indians he was raised among nor with the white society he tries to join while attending university, flying for the U. S. military, and boozing his way through his post-military life, he also tells the story of how Progress came to Indian Territory, bringing money and technological improvements, before leaving it behind when the oil ran out.
Progress came: "Slowly from the east the black oil derricks crept toward the west, rising above the blackjacks, like some unnatural growth from the diseased tissues of the earth" (62); Progress took over: "The black derricks had now passed on to the west; out beyond the blackjack fringes onto the high prairie, where they stood like sterile forests against the sky" (239); Progress destroyed: "Several black wells stood about on the prairie above the trees and from each a path of sterile brown earth led down to the creek, where oil and salt water had killed every blade of grass and exposed the glaring limestone. Some of the elms had been cut down, and the surface of the water had an iridescent scum on it" (250); and Progress tossed aside what it had used up: "The all-powerful life that had come with the creeping black derricks began to recede to the east. . . . The derricks stood black against the prairie horizon in rows, and became the husks of a life force that had retreated back along its own trail. The houses in the town of the little valley stopped their encroachments on the blackjacks, and they gradually became husks too; like the shells of the cicadas clinging to the hillsides" (303-4).
This is a sort of Great Gatsby for American Indians, as it illustrates the emptiness of liquor, partying, and money. It is also a Native version of The Grapes of Wrath, focusing instead on those who stay behind, as it reveals the corruption behind the white man's version of Progress and the myriad ways in which Native Americans are taken advantage of and even destroyed in the name of technological advancement and of capitalism.
Sundown makes a strong argument for the inevitability of the end of traditional Indian cultures. The title itself indicates that this time period is the end of something, and the book ends with stories of suicides, bankruptcy, and wholesale abandonment of the towns that have been developed where Native Americans once lived on the land. During a sweat lodge ceremony, White Deer says,
"Long time ago there was one road and People could follow that road. They said, 'There is only one road. We follow that road. There are no other roads.' Now it seems that road is gone, and white man has brought many roads. But that road is still there. That road is still there, but there are many other roads too. There is white man's road, and there is road which comes off from forks. The bad road which no white man follows--the road which many of the People follow, thinking it is the white man's road. People who follow this road say they are as the white man, but that is not white man's road. People who follow this road say that road of Indian is bad now. But they are not Indians any more, these People who follow that road.
"The road of our People is dim now like buffalo trail across prairie. We cannot follow this road with our feet now, but we can see this road with our eyes, and our hearts will go along this road forever. Even if our bodies are carried by our feet on this road that is not Indian road. There are few of us whose eyes can see old road of our People, I believe." (271)
Even in this injunction to find the one road, to follow it, there is an acknowledgment that only a very few can see this road and that many Indians are no longer Indians because they follow the wrong road in an attempt to be white, to fit in with "civilized" culture. Even this defender of native traditions reveals the greater loss that Native Americans have suffered in their contact with white America.
However, there is some small indication that there may be hope for Chal individually when he determines to go to Harvard Law School and make something of his life. He has hit rock bottom and, in his determination to make something better of life from this point on, Chal could represent the possibility of a new direction for Native Americans. Chal could represent the hope of a new half-breed culture, born from the ashes of the old culture.
White Deer says, later in the sweat lodge ceremony, "We cannot fight white man, but we are Indian; we cannot be white men. We must use our time to fight our troubles. To fight that evil which comes on inside of us" (276). He does not endorse the kind of half-breed culture that Chal is searching for with this speech (in fact, he says of half-breed children that "they are not your children. . . . They have no people," and exhorts the true Indians to abandon them), but this idea of turning inward and fighting personal troubles first resonates with Chal's struggle to find a place. His decision to go to Harvard Law is yet another attempt to find his place in the world. Whether or not it will succeed is a question Sundown does not try to answer, but perhaps the attempt--not to be white but to be a warrior in his own way, to "be a great orator" (311)--is itself honorable.
Progress came: "Slowly from the east the black oil derricks crept toward the west, rising above the blackjacks, like some unnatural growth from the diseased tissues of the earth" (62); Progress took over: "The black derricks had now passed on to the west; out beyond the blackjack fringes onto the high prairie, where they stood like sterile forests against the sky" (239); Progress destroyed: "Several black wells stood about on the prairie above the trees and from each a path of sterile brown earth led down to the creek, where oil and salt water had killed every blade of grass and exposed the glaring limestone. Some of the elms had been cut down, and the surface of the water had an iridescent scum on it" (250); and Progress tossed aside what it had used up: "The all-powerful life that had come with the creeping black derricks began to recede to the east. . . . The derricks stood black against the prairie horizon in rows, and became the husks of a life force that had retreated back along its own trail. The houses in the town of the little valley stopped their encroachments on the blackjacks, and they gradually became husks too; like the shells of the cicadas clinging to the hillsides" (303-4).
This is a sort of Great Gatsby for American Indians, as it illustrates the emptiness of liquor, partying, and money. It is also a Native version of The Grapes of Wrath, focusing instead on those who stay behind, as it reveals the corruption behind the white man's version of Progress and the myriad ways in which Native Americans are taken advantage of and even destroyed in the name of technological advancement and of capitalism.
Sundown makes a strong argument for the inevitability of the end of traditional Indian cultures. The title itself indicates that this time period is the end of something, and the book ends with stories of suicides, bankruptcy, and wholesale abandonment of the towns that have been developed where Native Americans once lived on the land. During a sweat lodge ceremony, White Deer says,
"Long time ago there was one road and People could follow that road. They said, 'There is only one road. We follow that road. There are no other roads.' Now it seems that road is gone, and white man has brought many roads. But that road is still there. That road is still there, but there are many other roads too. There is white man's road, and there is road which comes off from forks. The bad road which no white man follows--the road which many of the People follow, thinking it is the white man's road. People who follow this road say they are as the white man, but that is not white man's road. People who follow this road say that road of Indian is bad now. But they are not Indians any more, these People who follow that road.
"The road of our People is dim now like buffalo trail across prairie. We cannot follow this road with our feet now, but we can see this road with our eyes, and our hearts will go along this road forever. Even if our bodies are carried by our feet on this road that is not Indian road. There are few of us whose eyes can see old road of our People, I believe." (271)
Even in this injunction to find the one road, to follow it, there is an acknowledgment that only a very few can see this road and that many Indians are no longer Indians because they follow the wrong road in an attempt to be white, to fit in with "civilized" culture. Even this defender of native traditions reveals the greater loss that Native Americans have suffered in their contact with white America.
However, there is some small indication that there may be hope for Chal individually when he determines to go to Harvard Law School and make something of his life. He has hit rock bottom and, in his determination to make something better of life from this point on, Chal could represent the possibility of a new direction for Native Americans. Chal could represent the hope of a new half-breed culture, born from the ashes of the old culture.
White Deer says, later in the sweat lodge ceremony, "We cannot fight white man, but we are Indian; we cannot be white men. We must use our time to fight our troubles. To fight that evil which comes on inside of us" (276). He does not endorse the kind of half-breed culture that Chal is searching for with this speech (in fact, he says of half-breed children that "they are not your children. . . . They have no people," and exhorts the true Indians to abandon them), but this idea of turning inward and fighting personal troubles first resonates with Chal's struggle to find a place. His decision to go to Harvard Law is yet another attempt to find his place in the world. Whether or not it will succeed is a question Sundown does not try to answer, but perhaps the attempt--not to be white but to be a warrior in his own way, to "be a great orator" (311)--is itself honorable.
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