The Way to Rainy Mountain By N. Scott Momday

The 1969 essay by Scott Momaday “The Way to Rainy Mountain,” recalls the Kiowa tribe’s life. In The Way to Rainy Mountain, N. Scott Momaday attempts to reunite himself with the American Indian (Kiowa) heritage which he belongs to, by embarking on an expedition to Rainy Mountain in Oklahoma, a place where he would then pay a visit to his late grandmother’s grave.  Scott Momaday loses his capability to attach with his readers since he fails to express his feelings in detail, particularly for a nostalgic writing (Schweninger 21).

For instance, Momaday starts on his essay with a comprehensive as well as expressive survey of Rainy Mountain, a depiction that draws the attention of the readers. “Great green and yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh (Momaday 814). Whereas this sentence is a perfect example of his talented capacity to be engaging, when Momaday tries to paint the reader a picture of his grandmother as a small child, he goes off the way by giving the reader a history lesson when he specifies. As the reader, I was avidly anticipating some portrayal of his grandma as a youngster, not the Kiowa's aura on war or their surrender to the fighters at Fort Sill. I was left with various inquiries: "Would she say she was an inquisitive tyke? Is it accurate to say that she was tall or short? Slight? Did she have numerous endowments?

Momaday, right from the onset of his article, he admitted that “I want to see in the reality what she had seen more perfectly in the mind’s eye, and traveled fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage” (815). This pilgrimage is a spiritual quest for an ethical significance. Others people believed that it to be a voyage to an important shrine taking into account one's confidence or convictions. According to Schweninger (43), Momaday gives extremely distinct sections of the scene he experienced to his extraordinary spot, that of the Kiowa society, for example, “The skyline in all directions is close at hand, the high wall of the woods and deep cleavages of shade…" (815); on the other hand, the reader may be left asking, "How is this influencing him by and by?". Momaday has possessed the capacity to draw in the readers' creative ability here; however, he has not associated with them on an individual level to draw them further into his story. As the reader, I felt that Momaday was originating from a greater amount of a target see rather than an individual one, while the portrayal in spots of The Way to Rainy Mountain are particular and completely added to, the reader neglects to join with Momaday's enthusiastic perspective.

This essay recounts stories told by his late grandmother Aho, who fitted in the last culture to establish in North America. She had memories of hardship and wars that his predecessors persisted before. She likewise kept these stories alive for the duration of her existence with legends, myths and story that she regularly told the crew. Momaday's motivation of the story is to tell others that even through hardship, great results can rise. He gives numerous magnificent illustrations of lessons to be learned. His proposition in section five declares: "however my grandma experienced her long life in the shadow of the Rainy Mountain, the tremendous scene of the mainland inside lay like memory in her blood" (310). He likewise communicates, despite the fact that she might not have seen any of the fights, myths or relocation in individual, it changed her into the individual she is currently through the force of memory of narrating, which was passed down to her from her predecessors.

It was intriguing that Momaday chose to take the fifteen hundred miles outing to Rainy Mountain that his kin experienced such a variety of years back. The best approach to Rainy Mountain was a long and hard one for the Kiowa individuals. Through the Black Hills towards the Washita River he ceased at verifiable area markers, for example, Devil's Tower and considered  all the phenomenal occasions that occurred, which his grandma discussed such a large number of times. In spite of the hardship, they got to be stronger along the way, adapting new aptitudes, and adjusting another religion. So in a manner these hardships helped them survive the new forthcoming American changes. Momaday's approach to Rainy Mountain likewise taught him how to admire his predecessors significantly more in light of the fact that they were going by steed back or foot. He understands the area must have been exceptionally hard to endure. They needed to figure out how to make due amid snow squalls and burning summers, additionally how to chase and to develop what the area could develop in diverse atmospheres.

Absolutely, Momaday likewise admired the magnificence of the land that demonstrates how majestic as well as sensitive it truly can be on occasion, to see the nightfall and dawn or to take in the perspective the same way Kiowa did as such numerous years prior. It must have been magnificent to recover these memories at the genuine locales. The excursion issued him a more noteworthy comprehension of the long journey attempted by the Kiowa and a mental picture of the spots portrayed by his grandma. The grandma's excursion was a voyage of the brain. She learned of the colossal journey through the stories and memories of others. They tackled a structure that was very credible to her. However she had never experienced them in individual.

It was fascinating that Momaday caught the resilience of that his grandmother and his tribe had, albeit such a variety of brutal things happened to the tribe before. An eminent illustration of an extraordinary occurrence that eventual hard to give up happened when the Fort Sill warriors halted them from performing the conventional holy occasion of the sun-move. Momaday notes, "Prohibited without reason the vital demonstration of their confidence, having seen the wild crowds butcher and left to decay upon the ground, the Kiowas stepped back everlastingly from the tree" (311). He additionally expresses "his grandma was there, without intensity, and the length of she lived, she bore a dream of deicide" (311).

It appears like the majority of the voyages in the story end at Rainy Mountain. For Momaday, his trip completes at his grandma's home and grave. He thinks back once to see the Rainy Mountain, and that is the end of his voyage. For his grandma her voyage closes where it started at the Rainy Mountain. She was conceived there, had the capacity witness the last Sun Dance of the Kiowa there, and passed on there. For the greater part of us, we know our Rainy Mountain from the earliest starting point to the end of the trip, yet it is vital to know the way we arrived and withdrew with our Rainy Mountain.

The Way to Rainy Mountain has a unique example in its structure. In every area, it has three sections, each of whose separateness is unmistakably stamped by its own particular place in every page and its own particular typeface: the legend, the history, and the individual memory. The example, be that as it may, never makes it basic for the perusers to comprehend the novel. Rather, it confounds and disturbs the perusers by putting them where the twofold edges of reality meet. From one viewpoint, there is a reality as the consequence of the overwhelming philosophy, which has turned into from the earlier as a rule, and which has shrouded that there is an alternate reality (or potentially, various substances). Then again, there exists an alternate reality, which is available (subsequently, genuine) however truant (or covered), and which makes the prevailing "reality" conceivable at the same time, in the meantime, consistently undermines it. In The Way to Rainy Mountain, the designed structure achieves the two separate substances: in the first place, there is a rambling, or ideological reality, which differentiates legend from history and individual memory.

In conclusion, In Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain, the reader is taken down a superbly descriptive expedition that included his pilgrimage to the grave of his grandmother.  From the clear-cut images of the landscape provided by Momaday to his ability to precisely recall significant pieces of the history of Kiowa history. Momaday offered adequate detail in the description of the landscape all along his pilgrimage. As a result of the emotional disconnection, his capability to effortlessly keep the reader engrossed, conversely, is debatable.