Blooms Literary Themes - THE TRICKSTER.pdf - ymerleksi - home

House Made of Dawn 93
Even the performance of his sermon refl ects trickster paradox:
“Conviction, caricature, callousness: the remainder of his sermon
was a going back and forth among these” (92). However, particularly
signifi cant is the borderline he occupies between Anglo religion and
Native American spirituality. He may be clothed like a cleric, but his
sermon critiques and mocks Christian belief. Yet, although he reverently
tells the story of how the Kiowa tribe 2 emerged into the world,
he dismisses his congregation with the fl ippant “Good night . . . and
get yours” (98). Finally, tricksters tend to be in touch with the powers
of the universe—as is Tosamah: “In his mind the earth was spinning
and the stars rattled around in the heavens. Th e sun shone, and the
moon” (98).
Tosamah’s trickster role, however, is demonstrated most powerfully
through how he epitomizes the power of words, since words
carry such enormous power in American Indian culture, as Gary
Witherspoon found when he studied the Navajo: “By speaking properly
and appropriately one can control and compel the behavior and
power of the gods” (60). Momaday has written, “A word has power
in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it
gives origin to all things. By means of words can a man deal with the
world on equal terms. Th e word is sacred” (Th e Way . . . 42). Tosamah
not only conveys the signifi cance of words, but he also understands
how they function diff erently in Anglo and Native American cultures.
Here is his version of the Genesis creation story:
Th ere was nothing. But there was darkness all around, and in
the darkness something happened. Something happened! Th ere
was a single sound. . . . Nothing made it, but it was there; and
there was no one to hear it, but it was there. It was there, and
there was nothing else. It rose up in the darkness, little and still,
almost nothing in itself—like a single soft breath, like the wind
arising; yes, like the whisper of the wind rising slowly and going
out into the early morning. But there was no wind. Th ere was
only the sound, little and soft. . . . It scarcely was; but it was, and
everything began. (91)
Tosamah claims that Christians have diminished the power of the
word and diluted it by overuse, that they have made it “soft and big
with fat” (93). He contrasts how “the white man deals in words . . .