Landscape and mythology in M. Scott Momady´s 'House Made of Dawn‪'‬

Momadays novel is of complex structure. The plot slowly develops through flashbacks and future episodes. A variety of narrative techniques and perspectives characterizes the novel. As stated above, House Made of Dawn consists of four main parts headed by a prologue. Every part includes dates, several settings, even one or more different perspectives as well as headlines, which have a symbolic meaning.3 The outer chronological frame of the four parts ranges from July, 20th 1945 on to February, 28th 1952. These two dates have a symbolic character, as on July, 20th 1890 the Kiowa surrendered to the army; and February, 28th is the traditional beginning of spring within the Pueblo cultures of the Southwest. This day is celebrated with a long-distance run; and one can say that these dates resemble “Ende und Neubeginn” 4.

The first and last parts of the novel take place at Walatowa, while the second and third parts are settled in Los Angeles.

But the place Walatowa is not the only framing element. The first and last words of the novel, dypaloh and qtsedaba, frame traditionally a Native American chant; as the opening and final lines recite the Navajo ‘Night Chant’. This Chant is sung in its entire length in the middle of the novel by Ben Benally. The motif of Abel finally becoming ‘The Dawn Runner’ is connected with those two framing elements as it is one itself. Based on these statements the structure of House Made of Dawn can be seen as a circle; the novel ends where it begins:

Structurally, then, the prologue, with its wintertime setting and the Winter Race being run, functions chronologically and spatially both to fix a point that the novel will cycle around to meet again at the very end and also to fix, at the centre of this structural circumference, the image of Abel in motion, his vision clearing and finally becoming acute with this ageless dawn. […]5

Numbers are an important structural device in House Made of Dawn. The division into four main parts is no coincidence; four is a magical number to most Native Americans, as it resembles the four seasons and the four corners of the earth.6