Dances With Wolves Analysis Essay Example

at Fort Sedgewick. Dunbar rides Cisco out to look for the Indians after some encounters with them.He runs into and saves Stands With A Fist, a white woman who’s captured and raised by Comanche and mourning for the death of her husband.

As there are more and more interactions between Dunbar and Comanche, their mutual affection develops. Dunbar becomes a hero among the Comanche after he helps locate and hunt the buffalo on which the life of Comanche depends. After being seen the larkishness with Two Socks, a older wolf who’s been named and befriended by Dunbar, he is given a Comanche name “Dances With Wolves” by Kicking Bird who is a medicine man and wondering the reason of Dunbar’s alone existence in the deserted fort.Dances With Wolves is integrating into the Comanche with the help of Kicking Bird who assigns Stands With A Fist to be the translator and teach Comanche language. Dances With Wolves and Stands With A Fist fall for each other during that period of time. Dances With Wolves later further helps the Comanche fight off the raid from Pawnee by providing weapons.

But his idyllic life ends when he tells Kicking Bird and Ten Bears, chief of the Comanche the inevitable coming and invasion of white soldiers to their land. Then, Ten Bears decides to move the village to its winter camp.Before their leaving, Dunbar rides Cisco back to Fort Sedgewick for his journal and gets captured by the reinforcing Army troops. Without any evidence to prove his post in Fort Sedgewick (his journals gets stolen), Dunbar is regarded as a deserter and traitor and is about to be sent

back to Fort hays. During the transportation, Kicking Bird leads a band to rescue Dances With Wolves and kill the escort soldiers.

Knowing the unavoidable hunt for a fugitive like him, Dances With Wolves doesn’t want to get the Comanche involved and chooses to leave them together with Stands With Wolves.The novel is divided into chapters which are subdivided into parts. Mostly, the story follows the chronological order. But there are a few flashbacks too. Flashbacks give necessary detail and explanation to support the evolution of the story.

There are flashbacks like the one that talks about the reason why Lieutenant Dunbar is assigned to Fort Sedgewick and the one that elaborates the reason why Stands With A Fist who was born a white female but lives with the Comanche. These help to free the readers from confusion and make the story intact. Michael Blake applied lots of metaphors in the novel.By definition, metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison. Let me take an example. In the last chapter of the novel, “human tide was rising in the east”.

A swarm of human beings are compared to the tide in the ocean. Besides, metonymy is applied too. It is a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated. As in the sentence of “the Pawnee come for blood”.

Life is substituted by blood.The beauty of figure of speech is that it can really turn the words printed in the book into vivid visual images

in the mind of reader. Dances With Wolves is narrated in the third person. when I read novel narrated in the first person “I”, I have the feeling of involving in the story.

When I read this novel, though I don’t feel that involved in the story, I feel that I am watching a soccer game from the helicopter above the field. That means I can get a better point of view to gain a clear plot of the story. Dances With Wolves talks about cross-cultural relationship.One side is a white soldier.

The other side is the Comanche. Except for the story of mutually destructive war between them, what else can happen to them? Their contrail of their life shouldn’t be crossed. An interesting character is created to lead the relationship between whites and Comanche to a brand-new and different direction. It is Stands With A Fist, a white woman live with the Comanche and revives her “white tongue” later. Before Dunbar saved Stands With A Fist, what he got from the Comanche are only hostile harassments (couple times of stealing Cisco).

What happened to him are natural and reasonable. Because in the eyes of Comanche, white people are incompetent, weak, dirty and stupid, the last straw is that whites are invading their country. They hate them and sneeze at them. Dunbar’s act of saving Stands With A Fist (one of Comanche) is regarded as an amicability by the Comanche. It is the turning point of the relationship between Dunbar and Comanche.

Then Stands With A Fist’s “white tongue” revives and help Dunbar integrate with the Comanche.From Dunbar’s struggle between his integration with Comanche and his

status as white soldier, I can also sense the force of cultural shock. Dunbar can’t hide his affection for the Comanche, but when he sees his congener got scalped, he feels sad. And he even feels guilty when he stays with the Comanche for so long that he doesn’t perform his duties at Fort Sedewick. These illustrations portray the cultural shock with great impact.

Winds In His Hair’s trade with Dunbar and Dunbar’s trade with the unnamed warriors reveal the philosophy of equality and respect.Though Dunbar thinks the breastplate from Winds In His Hair is more valuable than his tunic, Winds In His Hair thinks Dunbar’s tunic is worthy of his breastplate. To Wind In His Hair, that trade is not about value. He wants the tunic because of the attraction from the exotic beauty of the tunic.

There is no better, just as there is no worse. Things are only different to him. That’s the spirit of equality. And Dunbar doesn't show any inferiority or low self-esteem or fear when he insists on the return of his hat. He is conveying a message that you can’t take advantage of me.His insistence makes the unnamed warriors feel his awe and procure the trade.

That’s the spirit of respect. Dances With Wolves is absolutely a masterpiece. But there are some aspects I don’t like. The novel doesn’t answer some questions in the previous chapters. For example, in chapter 15, Dunbar is sure that “there must be another reason” why Kicking Bird just calls him Loo Ten Nant instead of Loo Ten Nant Dunbar.

However, I can’t find any hint to tell me why later. Maybe the

author forgot to answer that question. There should be an explanation to tell the readers why.Otherwise, “there must be another reason” seems redundant and unnecessary. And some images appear in Dunbar’s dreams are too mysterious to understand.

For example, the hallucinatory woman is one of them. Who is she? Why Dunbar doesn’t dream a hallucinatory man? I don’t know. And Dunbar dreams of a prostitute and his elementary-school teacher. I know dreams can’t be always explainable. And sometimes it is even hard for a shrink to analyze dreams. Maybe it is the author’s strategy to make his readers ponder.

But I just don’t like things that are too mysterious.When Michael implied in the last chapter of the book that the whites would finally take over the Indian lands and the Indians would eventually and unavoidably extinguish, I feel sad about that. Why the whites and the Indians couldn’t coexist? I don’t know. But the ending of the story is the reality and history. The Indian stereotype of a ferocious and aggressive image has been created by the mainstream media, movies and books. And there are movies and books that have glorified the white soldiers’ invasion to the Indian territories.

And these stereotypes have existed for so long and influenced the audiences’ opinions of Indians. As a coin has two sides. Dances With Wolves talks about the evil side of the white soldier and the virtuous side of Comanche. So I think this novel is for anyone who is eager to get complete and broad understanding of the history. I will recommend the book to them. Dances With Wolves is suitable for an ESL 160 class.

Its

plot is easy to follow. Sentences are not too difficult, just occasional challenging. For an ESL 160 students like me, I learned lots of new words from the book so that I have broadened my vocabulary.Though there are some aspects of the book I personally don’t like, it cannot stop Dances With Wolves from being a great epic tale of life on the prairie in 19th-century America. Narrating the story in the third person, through skillful applications of figure of speeches, Michael Blake talks about cross culture, equality and respect in the book. His looking at the story Indian and white army from a new angle provide me a better and broad understanding of the history.

Reading this novel is really a great adventure to me.