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Characters · 9
Abel
Abel is the fractured protagonist of N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a young man from the Jemez Pueblo whose life revolves around displacement, trauma, and a desperate quest for wholeness.
character
Angela St. John
Angela Grace St. John is a white woman from Los Angeles who comes to Walatowa (Jémez Pueblo) under the pretense of seeking the healing waters, but her true journey is one of self-discovery.
character
Ben Benally
Ben Benally is a Navajo man living in Los Angeles and serves as Abel's closest friend, roommate, and narrator of the novel's third section.
character
Father Olguin
Father Olguin is the Catholic priest at the Walatowa pueblo in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968).
character
Francisco
Francisco is Abel's maternal grandfather and serves as the moral and cultural anchor of House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday.
character
John Big Bluff Tosamah
John Big Bluff Tosamah — who calls himself the "Priest of the Sun" and a peyote roadman — stands out as one of the most intellectually compelling and morally complex characters in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn.
character
Martinez
Martinez is a corrupt motorcycle cop in Los Angeles, serving as a predatory antagonist in the novel's urban setting.
character
Milly
Milly is a social worker in Los Angeles and Abel's girlfriend during the novel's urban segment, representing the well-meaning yet ultimately limited impact of assimilationist institutions.
character
The Albino (Juan Reyes)
The Albino, known as Juan Reyes, stands out as one of the most intriguing and symbolically loaded characters in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn.
character
Key quotes · 12
“There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting.”
This lyrical passage opens N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968) and serves as both a prologue and a thematic anchor for the entire work.
Narrator (ceremonial/prologue voice, drawn from the Navajo Night Chant) · Prologue
“He was running, and under his breath he began to sing. There was no sound, and he had no voice; he had only the words of a song.”
This closing passage from N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968) depicts Abel, the Pueblo protagonist, participating in a dawn race following the death of his grandfather Francisco.
Abel (narrative voice / third-person narrator) · The Dawn Runner (Epilogue / final section)
“A man who is drunk and alone in the night is a man who has lost his way.”
This line is from N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968), reflecting on Abel's struggle with spiritual and cultural dislocation.
Narrative voice / elder figure
“He had lost his place. He had been long ago at the center, had known where he was, had lost his way, had wandered to the end of the earth, was even now reeling on the edge of the void.”
This passage is from N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968) and is told through close third-person narration that centers on Abel, the Pueblo protagonist.
Narrator (focalized through Abel) · The Longhair / Part One: Walatowa, Cañon de San Diego, 1945
“The sun rose up on the river and the land. Abel watched it, and he felt the strength of it on his face and hands.”
This passage is from N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968), told in close third person as Abel watches the sunrise.
Narrator (focalized through Abel) · The Dawn Runner / Part Four
“He was alone, and he wanted to make a song out of the colored canyon, the way the women of Torreon made songs upon their looms out of colored yarn, but he had not got the right words together.”
This passage is taken from N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968), told through close third-person narration centered on Abel, the Kiowa-Jemez Pueblo protagonist.
Narrative voice (focalized through Abel) · The Longhair (Part 1)
“The runners after evil ran as water runs, deep in the channel, in the way of least resistance, no resistance at all.”
This lyrical passage comes from N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968).
Narrative voice (close third-person) · The Longhair (Part One)
“In the beginning was the Word. I have taken as my text this evening the opening verse of the Gospel according to Saint John.”
This quote opens the sermon delivered by the Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah, known as the "Priest of the Sun," in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1969).
Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah · The Night Chanter (Part Two)
“They must know the earth and the sky and the seasons, the way of the land and the way of the rain.”
This line comes from N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968), which is often seen as a cornerstone of the Native American Renaissance.
Francisco (narrative voice associated with elder Francisco) · The Longhair / Dawn Runner sections (Part IV)
“The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around.”
This lyrical passage comes from N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968), narrated through a close third-person lens focused on Abel, a young Kiowa-Pueblo man returning home from World War II.
Narrative voice / Abel (focalized perspective)
“His grandfather had spoken to him in the old way, and he had understood.”
This quiet yet powerful line comes from N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968), seen through the eyes of Abel, the Pueblo/Jemez protagonist.
Narrator (focalized through Abel)
“You see, the white man has his ways, and they are not our ways. He thinks in a different way, and he talks in a different way.”
This quote is from N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn (1968).
Tosamah (the Priest of the Sun) · The Priest of the Sun
Symbols · 6
Fire and Light
In N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, fire and light represent the struggle between spiritual wholeness and cultural dislocation.
The Albino
In N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, the Albino symbolizes evil, spiritual corruption, and the destructive clash between Abel's Native world and opposing forces.
The Dawn Run
In N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, Abel's dawn run represents his quest to reclaim his Indigenous identity and find spiritual wholeness following the trauma of war and displacement.
The Eagle
In N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, the eagle symbolizes the deep connection between the Pueblo people and the natural-spiritual world, highlighting the consequences of breaking that connection.
The Land
In N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, the Jemez Pueblo and the New Mexico landscape serve as powerful symbols of cultural identity, spiritual wholeness, and a sense of belonging.
The Rooster
In N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, the rooster represents the fractured but enduring connection between Abel and his Native heritage.
Literary devices · 12
Imagery
Momaday's writing is rich with sensory imagery from the Jemez Pueblo landscape.
Symbolism
The dawn and the act of running stand out as the novel's key symbols, highlighted in both the title and the prologue.
Narrative Poem
Momaday constructs the novel as a non-linear, multi-perspective narrative that reflects Abel's fragmented consciousness and the disrupted flow of Indigenous oral tradition.
Prose Poem
Large portions of House Made of Dawn feel more like prose poetry than traditional narrative prose.
Allusion
The title and the song lyrics reference the Navajo Night Chant (Nightway ceremony), a healing ritual for those who feel out of sync with the world.
Dramatic Monologue
The sections narrated by Tosamah — the Priest of the Sun — and Ben Benally serve as extended dramatic monologues that uncover character through voice as much as through events.
Motif
The theme of the Word — encompassing language, naming, and the power of speech — threads through every part of the novel.
Juxtaposition
Momaday contrasts the ceremonial world of Walatowa with the urban displacement of Los Angeles in the middle sections of the novel.
Anaphora
Anaphora is a key rhythmic tool for Momaday, rooted in the oral traditions of Navajo and Pueblo chants.
Extended Metaphor
The novel maintains a rich metaphor where Abel's body represents the land, and the land embodies Abel's body.
Pathetic Fallacy
Momaday uses pathetic fallacy to connect his characters' emotional and spiritual states with the natural world, but he does it in a way that goes beyond mere decoration.
Irony
Momaday weaves structural and situational irony throughout his narrative.
Vocabulary · 27
guardrail
A protective railing or barrier along the edge of steps, a road, or a platform, meant to prevent people from falling off.
noun · Chapter 2
ditches
Narrow channels dug alongside fields to carry irrigation water to crops; a common feature of Pueblo farming landscapes.
noun · Chapter 2
looms
Frames or machines on which threads are woven together to make cloth or rugs; here used as an image for how weavers compose patterns the way a poet composes words.
noun · Chapter 2
middle world
In Pueblo and related Native cosmologies, the earthly realm between the spirit world above and the underworld below, where human beings live out their ordinary lives.
phrase · Chapter 3
albino
A person born without the pigment that gives skin, hair, and eyes their normal color, resulting in very pale or white coloring; in this novel the term also carries an aura of spiritual strangeness and threat.
noun · Chapter 3
kiva
A circular or rectangular underground ceremonial chamber used by Pueblo peoples for religious rituals, community meetings, and the tending of sacred fires.
noun · Chapter 3
deicide
The killing of a god or a divine being; here it refers to the U.S. government's forcible suppression of the Kiowa Sun Dance, which the narrator's grandmother experienced as the destruction of something sacred.
noun · Chapter 5
Sun Dance
A major annual religious ceremony of the Plains tribes, including the Kiowas, involving communal prayer, fasting, and ritual sacrifice; the U.S. government banned it in the late nineteenth century.
noun · Chapter 5
literatures
Here used in the broad sense of written and spoken verbal traditions — stories, sacred texts, and oral records — that a culture takes for granted as the natural medium of meaning.
noun · Chapter 5
commonplace
So ordinary and familiar that it is no longer noticed or valued; taken completely for granted as part of everyday life.
adjective · Chapter 5
knoll
A small, rounded hill rising gently above the surrounding flat land; a modest but distinct landmark on an open plain.
noun · Chapter 7
longhair
A term used in the novel for a Native man who keeps traditional ways, including wearing his hair long in the old style, as opposed to those who have adopted Anglo-American customs.
noun · Chapter 7
landmark
A natural or man-made feature of the landscape that a people recognize and name as a fixed point of reference, giving it cultural and historical meaning beyond mere geography.
noun · Chapter 7
peyote
A small cactus whose buttons contain a hallucinogenic substance used in the religious ceremonies of the Native American Church; participants consume it as a sacrament to seek visions and spiritual healing.
noun · Chapter 7
road man
The ceremonial leader who conducts a peyote meeting in the Native American Church, guiding participants through the night-long ritual; the term reflects the idea of walking a sacred spiritual path.
noun · Chapter 7
relocation program
A mid-twentieth-century U.S. federal policy that moved Native Americans from reservations to cities such as Los Angeles, ostensibly to help them find work, but which often left them isolated and disconnected from their communities.
phrase · Chapter 7
diminished
Made lesser in spirit, understanding, or humanity; reduced in one's inner life by failing to appreciate the full weight and power of language.
verb · Chapter 7
ancient memory
A deep, inherited sense of a people's history and identity, felt not as learned knowledge but as something carried in the blood across many generations.
phrase · Chapter 9
pollen
In Navajo ceremonial language, pollen is a sacred symbol of life, fertility, and blessing, used in rituals and prayers to invoke beauty and wholeness; not merely the biological powder of flowers.
noun · Chapter 10
Night Chant
A major Navajo healing ceremony, also called the Nightway, lasting several nights and involving songs, prayers, and sand paintings intended to restore a sick person to harmony with the world.
noun · Chapter 10
Beautyway
A Navajo ceremonial chant and healing ritual whose prayers invoke a state of hózhó — harmony, balance, and beauty — in the person being healed and in the world around them.
noun · Chapter 10
stream-of-consciousness
A narrative style that presents a character's thoughts and feelings in a continuous, flowing, often unpunctuated rush, as they actually occur in the mind rather than in tidy, ordered sentences.
phrase · Chapter 12
beadwork
Decorative objects or garments made by sewing or weaving small beads together, a traditional art form among many Native American peoples used to mark ceremonial and cultural identity.
noun
regal
Having the dignified, commanding presence of a king or ruler; here describing the eagle's bearing as naturally authoritative and worthy of deep respect.
adjective · Chapter 6
wary
Cautious and watchful because of a sense of potential danger or the need for respect; alert without being hostile.
adjective · Chapter 6
sheer
Pure and absolute, with nothing else mixed in; used here to emphasize that running itself — the bare physical act — is the entire focus of Abel's being.
adjective · Chapter 1
swift
Moving very fast and with force; here describing the speed and energy of the dark river water flowing through the canyon.
adjective · Chapter 1