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| Rainy Mountain in Kiowa County Oklahoma. Momaday makes his pilgrimage to this place in order to better connect with his cultural roots. Photo Credits |
In The Way to Rainy Mountain, N. Scott Momaday discusses his cultural
background by talking about his grandmother, Aho, who was part of the Native
American tribe called the Kiowas.
Momaday explores the story of the Kiowas, as well as how the Kiowa
culture has been present in his life and his grandmother’s life. Navarre Scott Momaday is an established
author, with much of his work garnering inspiration from his Native American
roots. Momaday received the Pulitzer
Prize in 1969 for House Made of Dawn. This essay was originally published in 197 in
The Reporter, and then later used as Momaday’s
introduction for the novel The Way to
Rainy Mountain. This essay is a
recollection of his grandmother’s life and Kiowas culture, but also it is a
personal reflection on a personal journey that Momaday experienced. Momaday employs the rhetorical modes of
description and narration in order to prove his point. He describes the setting of the essay in
great detail. For instance he writes, “In
July the inland slope of the Rockies is luxuriant with flax and buckwheat,
stonecrop and larkspur. The earth
unfolds and the limit of the land recedes.
Clusters of trees, and animals grazing far in the distance, cause the
vision to reach away and wonder to build upon the mind. The sun follows a longer course in the day,
and the sky is immense beyond all comparison” (Momaday 3). Momaday’s use of descriptive language truly
engage the reader. Momaday does a fantastic
job of showing rather than telling, and this descriptive nature of the essay
causes the reader to feel attached.
Momaday also narrates the life of his grandmother, including information
from when she was a child to the last time he saw her before death. These two modes coupled together form an engaging
essay in which Momaday can effectively translate his purpose to the reader.
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