House Made of Dawn

“He was drunk, and he fell against his grandfather and did not know him.”

Abel’s return to his hometown shows how much changed since while he was away. While the physical landscape of the village and the surrounding area is almost identical, Abel himself isn’t the same person who departed years earlier. The war and exposure to wider society have changed him. Francisco hardly knows this new, broken version of his grandson, and Abel hardly knows himself. They hardly recognize each other because of the trauma that Abel experienced.

“They were struck down by so deadly a disease that when the epidemic abated, there were fewer than twenty survivors in all.”

Abel’s understanding of Indigenous culture frames his existence in a post-apocalyptic fashion. He grows up in ruins of his people’s world, knowing that the Indigenous community to which he belongs has been shattered by disease and colonialism. Almost spitefully, he’s left to exist in the world built by the people who brought about this destruction. History, culture, and society itself constantly, traumatically remind Abel that he and his people don’t fit into a world that’s no longer their own.

“He thought about it, but it was clear that he did not care one way or another.”

Abel rejects social conventions such as money or haggling for a price. He accepts the wage that Angela proposes, and his apathy annoys her. She recognizes that this apathy distinguishes him from her, and it reminds her that she and Abel are from different worlds. Her world is materialistic and profit driven. Her attempts to seduce Abel are her way of bridging these worlds and addressing the slight that she imagines against her.

“Angela thought of Abel, of the way he had looked at her—like a wooden Indian—his face cold and expressionless.”

Angela can’t help but objectify Abel and his ethnicity. When she sees him, she views him as a model or an ornament, a “wooden Indian” rather than a person. Angela believes she’s a good person who doesn’t judge people by their ethnicity—but her inner thoughts reveal how she subconsciously fetishizes Abel’s ethnicity without attempting to understand why he might be cold or emotionless. She doesn’t care about his pain, only what she can take from him for her own enjoyment.

“The albino was directly above her for one instant, huge and hideous at the extremity of the terrified bird.”

Reyes the albino reveals the difference between whiteness as an abstract idea and whiteness as a skin color. Reyes is an Indigenous American man who, due to albinism, was born with white skin. Even though his skin is white, a white person like Angela still regards him as a “huge and hideous” other. She doesn’t believe that he belongs to the world; to her, the social idea of whiteness doesn’t extend to Reyes. In literal terms, Reyes is the whitest person in the novel. Ironically, however, this whiteness alienates him from white and Indigenous societies alike, placing him outside the boundaries of perceived ethnicity and marginalizing him.

“Father Olguin was consoled now that he had seen to the saint’s heart.”

Olguin dislikes Indigenous American ceremonies. To him, they’re a repudiation of his Christian faith, and he compares them to the work of the devil. When he delves into the journal left by his predecessor, he takes comfort in reading the same sentiments from nearly a century before. These old journals allow Olguin to imagine himself as a participant in a centuries-long battle against evil, in which his side is winning and Indigenous culture is pushed further toward the social periphery.

“The other, latecoming things—the beasts of burden and of trade, the horse and the sheep, the dog and the cat—these have an alien and inferior aspect, a poverty of vision and instinct, by which they are estranged from the wild land, and made tentative.”

Abel instinctively distinguishes between the animals that evolved in North America and those that European colonizers brought across the Atlantic. His view of these alien animals is an analogy for his view of the colonizers themselves: While they may seem at home, they aren’t truly bonded to the world around them. They don’t understand the intricacies or nuances of the land and, as a result, can never have the same relationship with it as Indigenous people and species do.

“Abel studied her, but she did not cringe.”

To Angela, Abel’s status is the same as that of the mineral water that she hopes will make her feel healthier. After fetishizing Abel’s ethnicity and successfully seducing him, Angela strips bare and subjects her naked body to him for approval. She hopes that their relationship can provide her with the approval she seeks. This exogenous validation is a matter of self-interest; Angela doesn’t care whether Abel is attracted to her but only that she can vicariously appreciate her body through his approval.

“He could do so now without the small excitement that she had so easily provoked within him at first.”

Olguin enjoys subjecting himself to the temptation of an attractive woman like Angela. In refusing his temptation, he reaffirms his faith. Just as Angela uses Abel’s sexual interest to counteract her self-loathing, Olguin uses the slightest potential of sexual interest to reassure himself that he’s a devout and dedicated priest. Olguin and Angela use other people as pawns in their own emotional travails, disregarding any potential responsibility to the other person.

“They hurl themselves upon the land and writhe in the light of the moon, the moon, the moon; they write in the light of the moon. They are among the most helpless creatures on the face of the earth.”

As Abel stares out at the ocean, the narrative explores the lives of small fish that find themselves helpless against the ocean’s strength to portray how Abel feels—not suited to the world around him and writhing in the moonlight of attention. The repetition of the word “moon” reiterates this helplessness, illustrating why Abel and the fish are caught in a repeating cycle from which they can’t escape.

“He had loved his body. It had been hard and quick and beautiful.”

When Abel thinks positively about himself, he can think only in the past tense. The phrase “had loved his body” implies that the past is a remote place that he now struggles to recognize. Abel consigns his self-worth to the past, no longer able to recognize the qualities he admired about himself. His physicality, much like his belief in himself, has degraded and atrophied.

“Suddenly she realized how lonely they both were, how unspeakably lonely.”

Alienation and loneliness are endemic to the society that white colonizers built in America. Whether white or Indigenous, everyone is “unspeakably lonely.” The characters struggle to put these emotions into words, so they can find comfort only through physical actions like sex. However, temporary titillation can’t replace the deep, spiritual connection to the world that—according to the stories Abel has heard—his ancestors felt.

“No longer were they slaves to the simple necessity of survival: they were a lordly and dangerous society of fighters and thieves, hunters and priests of the sun.”

The novel doesn’t present the history of the Indigenous peoples of North America as pure egalitarian peace. The historians who share the stories of their people take care to mention that there were “fighters and thieves” and that wars were fought and won long before the arrival of European colonizers. These weren’t necessarily peaceful or perfect societies, but the continuous message is that they were more in touch and more attuned to the world around them than the alien colonizers could ever be.

“Now there is a funeral silence in the rooms, the endless wake of some final world.”

The white society that the Indigenous American characters now inhabit feels, to them, like a constant funeral for a world they’ve lost. The phrase “endless wake of some final world” casts the colonization of North America as an apocalyptic event, eradicating the worlds of people Indigenous to the continent and forcing them to live among the ashes and rubble of everything they once knew. Rather than the vibrant, sonorous societies of their legends and stories, they now experience only a “funeral silence,” an eerie and unavoidable reminder of everything lost.

“He was too damn dumb to be civilized.”

Tosamah thinks that Abel lacks the intelligence to integrate into modern society. Although Tosamah is an Indigenous American man (and a spiritual leader), he can’t empathize with people who grew up on a reservation. However, Benally, who did grow up on a reservation, disagrees with him. This disagreement creates a division in Indigenous American characters based on their proximity to non- Indigenous cultures. Men like Tosamah, who grew up in a city and have internalized society's racist attitudes toward Indigenous people, will always be apart from those like Abel, who grew up on a reservation in a community of Indigenous American people.

“It was getting harder and harder to talk to him.”

Ben notices Abel retreating into himself, growing further away emotionally even as he remains physically present. The novel frames the hardening of Abel’s personality as an inevitable downfall; no matter what Ben or Milly or anyone else tries, Abel drifts further inwards, abandoning the world and embracing his traumatized inner self. Ben’s narration expresses the fatalistic frustration of trying to reach out to someone who is determined to withdraw.

“I used to listen to Tosamah. He’s a clown, and you have to laugh at some of the things he says.”

Benally’s view of Tosamah illustrates that Indigenous American people aren’t a single-minded community. US bureaucracies do their best to categorize and Indigenous American people but can’t capture the nuance or character of individual human beings. Ben’s attitude toward Tosamah indicates that such administrative attempts are inherently dehumanizing and doomed to fail.

“She used to tell him a story about a young Indian brave.”

Ben is surprised to hear Angela tell a story that so closely resembles a Navajo legend. In the context of the novel, Angela’s story illustrates the transcendental nature of stories. Across cultures, countries, and continents, stories unify people. While the novel explores the alienation of Indigenous life in modern America, Angela’s story hints at how empathy can extend across ethnic and cultural divides. Ben enjoys hearing Angela tell the story to Abel, appreciating her desire to communicate.

“We were going to be all alone.”

Ben’s promise to Abel is a contradiction in itself. The men feel alone and alienated in a society built on the ruins of their own culture. They feel atomized and isolated, but their shared feelings mean that they can experience this loneliness together. They aren’t alone and can delve into their empathy, allowing them to examine their loneliness in a communal setting. Loneliness becomes a community.

“The once-hectic fire of his spirit had burned low, and with it the waste of motion and despair.”

Olguin’s presence in the Indigenous American community always made him feel uneasy. His Christian faith struggled to accept Indigenous American rituals and beliefs that he viewed as Satanic. By the novel’s end, however, the burning fire of his faith has dimmed. He has come to accept the rituals and beliefs as part of an ongoing war that he already won. With each generation, the practitioners of these rituals understand a little less, and Olguin is confident that the fire will extinguish itself over time and that his faith will triumph.

“He did not want to break the silence of the stillness of the night, for it was holy and profound.”

The Indigenous American beliefs contrast with the Christian beliefs of men like Father Olguin. While Olguin’s rituals are limited to the physical space of the church, men like Abel and Francisco can find deep spiritual meaning anywhere. Their connection with the natural world turns the entire environment into a spiritual space, illustrating the breadth and depth of their spirituality compared to the small, isolated church. Even silence is holy and profound, indicating that Indigenous American beliefs can find sanctity and spirituality in absence as well as presence.

“Their feet fell upon the earth and his hand struck thunder to the drum, and it was the same thing, one motion made of sound.”

The ceremonies and rituals of the Jemez people bring the community together. By creating music, they march to the sound of the same drum. They become “one motion made of sound” that defiantly unites them. Although centuries of colonialism tried to eradicate their culture, they take strength in preserving and passing on these rituals to help unite their community.

“And he held on to the shadow and ran beyond his pain.”

Francisco’s dying mind recalls a race. In it, he defied the pain in his body and ran despite himself. His actions foreshadow how Abel mourns his grandfather. The repetition of the race symbolizes how knowledge is passed on from one generation to the next, as Abel replicates one of his grandfather’s most treasured memories. However, Abel doesn’t understand the spiritual meaning of the race like his grandfather did. His physical action lacks the spiritual significance, showing how knowledge and understanding can erode over time.