![]() ![]() In the case of Black Elk Speaks, the quest ends tragically. In this way, the hero of quest literature frequently coalesces the identity of the community and his or her character serves as a model. Most quest literature ends happily, with the hero having attained the desired goal, which is often something brought back to share with the community: In The Odyssey, for example, Odysseus brings the rule of law to the Greeks after surviving many dangers to travel home after the Trojan Wars. ![]() The obstacles and the support that he or she encounters on the way form episodes of the plot. The central character of such literature is a hero whose search to fulfill his or her unique destiny forms the trajectory of the plot. In addition, Black Elk Speaks follows the plot line of traditional quest literature, exemplified in many epics and fairy tales. As the life story of someone whose culture was marginalized and, at times, pushed to near extinction, within the United States, Black Elk's narrative also has affinities with the American slave narrative and Holocaust survival narratives. Because the vision was a mystical vision and the task was to be fulfilled in his role as holy man, Black Elk's story in this respect is a spiritual autobiography: It is based on the premise of a divine power's existence, as that power is defined in Sioux belief, and it is the story of how Black Elk developed in his relationship to the divine. His story is an attempt to explain his successes and failures in enacting the promise of that vision: To what extent he did or did not fulfill the task the vision had delineated for him, the cultural factors that supported his efforts, and the political factors that worked against them. In the case of Black Elk's life, that point of interest is the mystical vision he was granted. But simply to record a life story, even one's own, does not necessarily create a work of literature a biography or autobiography, just like a novel or a play, usually has a point of thematic or dramatic interest around which the narrative can shape itself. These life stories were narrated because most of their Indian subjects did not have the fluency in English to write for the American reading public. Narrated Indian autobiographies had been an established literary form in the United States at least since the 1833 publication of Black Hawk: An Autobiography. More precisely, Black Elk Speaks is a narrated autobiography and a spiritual autobiography. Memoir, autobiography, and published diaries - like Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, for example, or The Diary of Anne Frank - are traditional versions of the personal narrative. You were sent to save it, and you must come back so that I can teach you." Neihardt did come back with his daughters in May 1931 to continue the conversation, which forms the book Black Elk Speaks.Black Elk's son Ben acted as interpreter for the two men, and Neihardt's daughter Enid recorded their conversation in writing.īlack Elk Speaks is an example of personal narrative, which is, most simply, the story of someone's experiences narrated by that person. Soon I shall be under the grass and it will be lost. Black Elk said to Neihardt, "What I know was given to me for men and it is true and it is beautiful. ![]() (Black Elk, 68 years old at the time, would die in 1950 at the age of 87 Neihardt, 43, would live to be 92.) Black Elk had not told many people about this vision as the story progresses, the reader learns that Black Elk has not told even his best friend, Standing Bear. He wanted to tell Neihardt his life story, especially the story of his vision, because he felt he would soon die. When the two men met, Black Elk recognized that Neihardt was a sympathetic listener, someone interested in the spiritual world and in Indian history. Neihardt had earlier become acquainted with Indian culture when he lived near the Omaha reservation at Bancroft, Nebraska, and he knew Black Elk's reputation as a holy man and the second cousin to the great Sioux Chief Crazy Horse. He had published the fourth section, The Song of the Indian Wars, and was looking for material for the final section, The Song of the Messiah. Neihardt was in the process of completing A Cycle of the West, an epic poem concerning the history of the American West. In August 1930, the Midwestern writer John Neihardt went with his son Sigurd to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to speak with Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux. ![]()
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