Alienation in "The Heart Song of Charging Elk"

Charging Elk struggles against Alienation of many different forms in "The Heart Song of Charging Elk." The rational that was made to justifies this in the dominant culture was that Charging Elk was fundementally different from them. It's an idea that Charging Elk seems unable to out run. Even in the whorehouse, he is viewed differently because of his race. Two forms of this racism are present, one more "benelovant" than the other. The first form of racism that Charging Elk encounters is while he is still in America, and is held by almost every American in the novel. This form focuses on his "savagery" and views him as an incongruous member of society, thus using this as a justification of the systems that were in place in the reservations. This American racism within the novel is definitely the most malevolent, because it justified culture war as well as genocide. The next form of racism that Charging Elk encounters is in France. This racism focuses on the exoticness of Charging Elk and was a continuation of the idea of the noble savage. Though, many of the character who held this opinion of Charging Elk treated him much better than the Americans, it still did not allow Charging Elk to be a human and ultimately, at the trial when push comes to shove, he was still viewed in essentially the same light.

The Latino Reader and the Southwest

Of all the borders that we have examined this semester, I think the border, physical and cultural, between the U.S. and Mexico has produced some great art. It is interesting and exceptional for several reasons. For one reason, there was not only a clash between Old World and New World, but there was a clash between Old World and Old World. We see this in works such "The Squatter and the Don" and "Blood Meridian." Many of clashes, interestingly enough see to be the opposite, class wise, of what we are use to in terms of who is forced out of a region. Rather than the upper classes forcing the poor and uneducated out of a region, in the Southwest the old Aristocracy of Spain was forced out by the Westward expansion of poor and middle class Northern Europeans. It seems that the literature from the Southwest, much as the literature from the Southeast does, focuses on subjects that often strays into the occult, the strange and the violent. "The Mexican Village" and "The Rebel" hinted at this, as does "Blood Meridian." It seems the Southern clime tends towards expressions of the strange and grotesque.