What happens in Chapter 2 of House Made of Dawn?
Set in the Jemez Pueblo community of Walatowa during the summer of 1945, this chapter follows Abel's return from World War II—a homecoming that feels strangely empty. He arrives on the bus, drunk and hardly recognizable to his grandfather, Francisco, who waits for him in a wagon. The landscape of the Cañon de San Diego makes its presence felt right away: the red earth, the cornfields, and the ancient rhythms of the pueblo. Francisco, who is aging and deeply connected to the ceremonial life of the land, tries to pull Abel back into that world by taking him to work in the fields and preparing him for the upcoming feast-day celebrations. Yet, Abel feels distant—disconnected from the land, the rituals, and Francisco's quiet hopes. He meets Angela St. John, a white woman from Los Angeles staying at a nearby ranch, who is intrigued by him with a blend of longing and detachment. Their relationship begins to develop through a series of intense, unclear interactions. Abel also observes the rooster-pull ceremony, a traditional contest where a rider must grab a buried rooster from the ground while galloping—this ritual will soon escalate into violence. The chapter concludes with Abel caught between worlds, the pueblo's ceremonial calendar continuing to advance without him.
Analysis
N. Scott Momaday builds this chapter around the contrast between cyclical and linear time. Francisco embodies the former, his awareness shifting with the seasons, the corn, and the feast days. In contrast, Abel is trapped in linear time, burdened by the war's timeline like an unspoken wound. Momaday reflects this division in his writing style: flowing, almost chant-like descriptions of the canyon and fields shift to short, disjointed sentences when Abel takes center stage, as if language itself falters in his presence.
The rooster-pull ceremony is introduced with careful detail but never simplifies into mere anthropology. Momaday presents it as a test of belonging—physically, spiritually, and communally—that Abel observes from the sidelines, already an outsider in his own culture. This outsider perspective serves as the chapter's main theme: Abel witnesses but cannot engage, longs but cannot attain.
Angela St. John acts as a structural balance. Her view of Abel is both possessive and aesthetic, reducing him to a part of the landscape, mirroring how colonial thought has historically rendered Indigenous bodies as mere scenery. However, Momaday complicates this dynamic: Abel's gaze is also detached, and their shared objectification creates an unsettling moral symmetry.
The albino Juan Reyes Fragua makes a brief but impactful appearance. His whiteness in the context of the pueblo carries an unsettling weight that the narrative leaves unexplained, trusting the reader to sense the disruption before fully grasping it. Momaday's restraint in this moment—showing rather than explaining—stands out as the chapter's most skillful move.
Key quotes from Chapter 2
“He was drunk, and he fell against the guardrail of the steps. The driver and the man in the aisle looked away.”
Abel's arrival at Walatowa by bus — his first appearance in the novel — establishes his alienation through the averted eyes of bystanders rather than through any interior declaration.
“The canyon was a place of peace and quiet, and the town lay still in the early morning light, and the fields were green and the ditches full of water.”
Francisco surveys the valley at dawn, and Momaday's accumulative syntax mirrors the grandfather's deep, unhurried attunement to the land Abel can no longer access.
“He was alone, and he wanted to make a song out of the colored canyon, the way the women of Torreón made songs upon their looms out of colored yarn, but he had not got the right words together.”
Abel's failed attempt at interior expression captures the chapter's core tragedy: the ceremonial and artistic languages of his culture are present to him as memory but not as living practice.