1、N.Scott Momaday was born in Lawton,Oklahoma in 1934.Momaday belongs to a generation of American Indians born when most tribal communities had long ceased to exist as vital social organizations.His Kiowa ancestors shared with other Plains Indians the horrors of disease,military defeat,and cultural an
2、d religious deprivation in the 19th century.Their only chance of survival was to adapt themselves to new circumstances.Momadays grandfather,for example,adjusted to changing conditions by taking up farming,a decision pressed upon him by the General Allotment Act of 1887.and in summer the prairie is a
3、n anvils edge.(paragraph 1)metaphorAt a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems almost writhe in fire.(paragraph 1)personificationpopping up like corn to sting the flesh.(paragraph 1)simileMy grandmother was spared the humiliation of those high gray walls by eight or ten years,but she
4、must have known from birth the affliction of defeat,the dark brooding of old warriors.(paragraph 3)synecdoche metaphorand their ancient nomadic spirit was suddenly free of the ground.(paragraph 4)Metonymy The skyline in all directions is close at hand,the high wall of the woods and deep cleavages of
5、 shade.(paragraph 6)Simile This is a perfect freedom in the mountains,but it belongs to the eagle and the elk,the badger and the bear.(paragraph 6)The Kiowas reckoned their stature by the distance they could see,and they were bent and blind in the wilderness.(paragraph 6)alliterationThe great billow
6、ing clouds that sail upon it are shadows that move upon the grain like water,dividing light.(paragraph 7)similethey could see the dark lees of the hills at dawn across the Bighorn River,the profusion of light on the grain shelves,the oldest deity ranging after the solstices.(paragraph 7)simileAt the
7、 top of a ridge I caught sight of Devils Tower upthrust against the gray sky as if in the birth of time the core of the earth had broken through its crust and the motion of the world was begun.(paragraph 8)simile personificationThere are things in nature that engender an awful quiet in the heart of
8、man;Devils Tower is one of them.(paragraph 8)Metonymy There,in a very little while,wood takes on the appearance of great age.(paragraph 11)SynecdocheMetonymyThe windowpanes are black and opaque;you imagine there is nothing within,and indeed there are many ghosts,bones given up to the land.(paragraph
9、 11)SynecdocheMetaphorThe aged visitors who came to my grandmothers house when I was a child were made of lean and leather and they bore themselves upright.alliteration the scars of old and cherished enmities(paragraph 12)battles that took place in the past and were remembered fondly by those old wa
10、rriorsMetonymy Now there is a funeral silence in the rooms,the endless wake of some final word.(paragraph 14)Metaphor.Personification My line of vision was such that the creature filled the moon like a fossil.(paragraph 14)similesimileIt had gone there,I thought,to live and die,for there of all plac
11、es,was its small definition made whole and eternal.(paragraph 14)Climax There,where it ought to be,at the end of a long and legendary way,was my grandmothers grave.Here and there on the dark stones were ancestral names.Looking back once,I saw the mountain and came away.Synecdoche metaphorIn this ess
12、ay,Momadat not only tells the story of his grandmother,but also explores the history of his Kiowas ancestors and thus his own racial and cultural heritage.Intracing the three stages of his peopleshistoryemergence,evolution and declinethe author conveys complicated feelings of notalgia,belonging,and
13、pride,mixed with a sense of loss and a light touch of sadness.Our cultural or ethnic heritage may differ,yet seeking ones roots is a common human experience.Momaday also blends a moving narrative of the stories of the Kiowas with a lyrical and pictorial description of the landscape where his ancestors once ranged in their golden age and where hes returned in order to know where he came from and who he is.In his pictures of his ancetral home,the land,the sun,the moon,the hills,the trees and everything else there are all portrayed with both visual precision and powerful imagination.
